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but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to libsynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today history as it happens
- [01:22]
Martin DeCaro
April 3, 2026 Israel annexes the west bank. The Israeli Parliament has given early approval for two bills to annex the entire occupied West Bank.
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Israeli Settler (Amishav)
Israel's Security cabinet has approved a series of sweeping measures expanding its powers. They include easing the sale of Palestinian land to Israeli settlers, facilitating illegal land grabs.
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Dalia Shenlund
Before leaving Tel Aviv, Vice President J.D. vance told reporters he personally took insult to the Knesset vote, adding that if it's a political stun, it's a quote, very stupid political stunt.
- [01:54]
Martin DeCaro
With the greater Middle east on fire, it is easy to overlook bureaucratic and administrative changes taking place inside Israel that amount to annexation of the west bank. Since the Six Day War in 1967, the West Bank's been occupied by Israel. It's land eyed by Jewish settlers who believe their holy book sanctions settlement of Palestinian territory. Their dream is now being realized. That is next as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.
- [02:22]
Dalia Shenlund
A group of Israeli settlers came up
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Martin DeCaro
this road and into this village Jaloud and went on a rampage.
- [02:28]
Dalia Shenlund
They firebombed. In March, at least eight Palestinians were killed by settlers. Nine others were killed in Israeli army operations in the occupied west bank, expropriation of Palestinian land, settler attacks, killings.
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Israeli Settler (Amishav)
I was born five minutes from here, from the Old City, and this was my dream for 20 years to see this place race. And I think we will not give it back. Never.
- [02:48]
Dalia Shenlund
You have Palestinians in the west bank living under effective Jordanian rule, for the most part civilian rule, and not only that, but because of this effort to kind of prevent the consolidation of the Palestinian national movement. Palestinians under the west bank were given Jordanian citizenship. That was the status quo until Israel began the occupation. You know, from 67 onwards, Israel places that region under military occupation. It's under martial law.
- [03:16]
Martin DeCaro
If you don't closely follow what happens inside the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, you may have missed what happened last October. Or maybe you saw it at the time and just forgot about it. A bill applying Israeli law to the occupied West Bank, a move tantamount to annexation, won preliminary approval from Israel's Parliament. This report courtesy Reuters.
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Israeli Settler (Amishav)
I declare that the bill, titled the Application of Israeli Sovereignty over Judeh and
- [03:50]
Dalia Shenlund
Samaria Law 57852025 proposed by Knesset member Avi Mot, has been approved in its preliminary reading and will be referred to the Foreign affairs and Defense Committee.
- [04:01]
Martin DeCaro
You may have heard the names Judea and Samaria in there. That is what some Israelis call the occupied West Bank. More recently, as Dalia Shenlund wrote in Haaretz in February, Israel's Security Cabinet, an inner club within the government, approved a series of measures regarding the west bank that an uninitiate observer would find head spinning. And I do count myself among uninitiated observers, she wrote. The new measures canceled Jordanian land acquisition regulations in the West Bank. They canceled the requirement for a transaction permit for Israeli land purchase. The cabinet also decided to expand Israeli authority in Areas A and B and transfer planning and building authorities around the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and at Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, from the Hebron municipality to Israel's civil administration, she adds, does it matter who picks up the trash around a holy site? In her column, Shenlin cites the work of another scholar, Yael Berda, who co authored an article in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies titled A Theory of Annexation, in which he explains how annexation moves from de facto to diure. It is a process, not a single headline making event, and I will share links to both those articles in the show Notes to this episode and and in my weekly newsletter. I highly recommend them and you can sign up for my newsletter by going to Substack and searching for History as it happens. So about the West Bank. Most Americans are not aware of these legalistic or bureaucratic developments. They do see the settler terrorism which is making international headlines. Soldiers standing idly by until something else draws their attention. It helps advance the cause of annexation by pushing Palestinians off their land.
- [05:49]
Israeli Settler (Amishav)
The word of the Bible is everything.
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Martin DeCaro
As this Sky News report shows. Jewish settlers believe their God gave them the land, period. And no one argues with God.
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Dalia Shenlund
We are carrying on with our forefathers path in this land. It's the same tradition, the same ancient heritage that we have here.
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Israeli Settler (Amishav)
Amishav is a settler, part of a movement that sets up communities on Palestinian land and claims it for Israel.
- [06:14]
Martin DeCaro
The west bank with East Jerusalem has always been the prize. And Israel's smashing victory in the Six Day War of 1967 opened the way
- [06:22]
Israeli Settler (Amishav)
the Mandelbaum Gate between Israeli and Arab Jerusalem. It became an arbitrary barrier when Israel forced the world to acknowledge her existence nearly 20 years ago. But now a triumphant Israeli army had smashed the barrier and was letting in waves of soldiers and civilians. Orthodox Jews jostled to be the first to cross. I was born here. I think it's one of the greatest things we've ever done. One minute. Come on, let's go. I was born five minutes from here, from the Old City. And this was my dream for 20 years to see this place. And I think we will not give it back. Never. It will be international for all the religions in the world, for all the people in the world. I think this must be a holy place for all the people in the world. What's going to happen to all the Arabs here? They'll have all freedom like the Arabs that they have in Israel now.
- [07:07]
Martin DeCaro
The Trump administration has publicly criticized annexation, but does not appear to be doing anything about it or about the expansion of illegal settlements in the west bank, which is a decades old catalyst for conflict. Dalia Schenlin is a public opinion researcher and a political advisor who has worked on nine national campaigns in Israel and in 15 other countries. She's an expert on the Israeli Palestinian conflict, the author of the Crooked Timber of Democracy in Promise Unfulfilled. Yael Berda is an Associate professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Hebrew University. Her research focuses on the way bureaucracy shapes politics and how mundane and routine practices of the state determine citizenship, sovereignty and social power. Our conversation next Tap. Subscribe now in the show notes or go to historyasithappens.com to get ad free listening, early access and all of our bonus content. Dalia Shenlin welcome back to the Show.
- [08:07]
Dalia Shenlund
Thank you as always for having me
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Martin DeCaro
and Yael Berda, welcome. This is your first time. It is great to have you here.
- [08:13]
Yael Berda
Thanks so much for inviting me.
- [08:15]
Martin DeCaro
So, before we start talking about the West Bank, a related topic, because all these wars are connected, what has it been like living in Israel the past month?
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Yael Berda
Well, I live in Jaffa with my two children. We have a shelter across the street. So it feels kind of weird because you have the siren and then you're running outside, but it's fairly close, so it means that within one minute we can be there. It's tougher at night when, like you have to wake kids up and get your shoes on, get everything, you know, whatever. But like my kids, they can tell the difference between the sound of unmanned. How do you say, Kat? Bomb.
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Dalia Shenlund
Drone.
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Yael Berda
Drones, like an unmanned drone and a missile. And it's just the weirdest thing. But I mean, we have to put it in perspective that we actually have like a minute and a half to get to the shelters. Whereas people that are on the border, like with Lebanon, like, they have no time. People in Lebanon and Gaza and probably Tehran have no time. I'm constantly putting it in perspective that we, you know, we kind of got it good. It just makes you really tired, the whole thing.
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Dalia Shenlund
Well, I have a similar experience. I am that person who goes close to the shelter already with the pre alert, which means that I have learned not to rush. That's how more people have gotten injured. Rushing actually. Actually, you know, falling and tripping. But it is extremely disruptive. I made a joke with a friend in the first week that let's say the whole process, from the pre alert to getting out of the house, going down two flights of stairs, going two buildings down where there's an underground shelter, waiting for the actual siren when you have a minute and a half to get in the shelter, waiting for another 10 minutes before you get the all clear notification. That whole process can take 20 or 25 minutes, but it feels like you lose a full hour of concentration of sleep, of your general peace of mind. And, you know, then there's the sense of fear and uncertainty. How long is it going to go on? When is it going to end? What's the next hour going to look like? What's the next?
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Martin DeCaro
The mentality. The mental strain.
- [10:17]
Dalia Shenlund
Yeah, it's mental strain. And I think a lot of people, including myself, we feel like zombies because this happens, you know, several times. Most nights, not every night, but most nights we feel like zombies. I think we all are suffering from a kind of lack of concentration, but also lack of motivation. People feel very unmotivated because they're not sure how to plan for the next minute and they're kind of depressed thinking about what, what does or doesn't come next. I think we should also mention not only the countries y' all mentioned, but all the Gulf countries. You know, they're. I was just got off the phone with a colleague in one of the Gulf countries and they're getting just as badly hit, you know, within many of the same patterns, sometimes 12 o' clock at night and 5 o' clock in the morning. And I said, oh, that sounds just like us. It's become a routine. You're getting ready to go to bed at midnight. Siren. You have an hour left to sleep until your alarm goes off. Siren. Israel and the US started this war, so I guess they took those costs into account or maybe they didn't. And then you start asking yourself this question and you never really get out of the cycle of why, where's it going? What is the reason? What's it going to mean? When is it going to end?
- [11:19]
Martin DeCaro
Dalia, since you are an expert on public opinion, from what I gather here in the United States, as a distant observer, it seems the Israeli public is still behind. Behind the war fairly strongly. Is that right?
- [11:31]
Dalia Shenlund
It is behind the war fairly strongly. That's the big picture, right? We have two thirds of Israelis who are behind the war supporting the continuation of the war, which was the last question asked by the Israel Democracy Institute last week in their survey. But that is a very significant decline from the first week of the war when you had 81% of all Israelis. And among the 75% who are Jewish Israelis, over 90% supported it in the first two weeks. That support is now down to 77% percent among the Jewish population, which is still very high. But it is a consistent decline in the three surveys that the Israel Democracy Institute has conducted. And so you can see very clearly in the numbers people are getting, I think, internalizing that this has not been a fast war. It's not going to be a fast war. It's not going to accomplish all of the goals. There's a big drop off in the percentage of people who think that the regime will. That the Iranian regime will collapse and a higher percentage of people who think the war will go on longer. And that's taking its toll. Now. The Palestinian citizens of Israel, the Arab population, Israel never supported the war in terms of majorities. Two thirds opposed it from the beginning. Only 25% supported it. That's according to Israel Democracy Institute surveys. And that support has declined still further from 25% to 19% in the last survey. So I think the war is taking its toll and we see it anecdotally all the time with people being exhausted the way I mentioned. But we're also seeing that translated pretty clearly into numbers as well.
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Martin DeCaro
Yael, what is your take on public opinion and how much longer do you think support will hold up? Although as Dalia just said, it's already waning.
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Yael Berda
I mean, there's a pattern with all wars here that at the beginning, like the Jewish population is gung ho about the war and then it starts declining with the attack on Iran, there's more support because like this has been like for 20 years. There's a buildup of the story that this is, you know, Israel's major enemy and that this is the existential threat and you know, all this stuff that. But we have to remember that in June there was that 12 day war and Israelis were told that there was total of victory and that the threat has been mostly eliminated and then sustained.
- [13:42]
Martin DeCaro
Obliterated is the word Donald Trump used. Obliterated also.
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Yael Berda
It has to do a lot with the frailty and the weakness of the formal opposition in Israel. So it doesn't manage to conjure up any opposition really. But you could already see, I mean, even in terms of protests. So in the first week you had 50 people that were dispersed by police within five minutes just this Saturday. So you had a few thousand and you had protests all across the country and also reporting about it, which is significant in a place where media is quite controlled. So I think that there is, week by week, a decline in support of the war. Hopefully it won't take that long to stop it.
- [14:25]
Martin DeCaro
So about the west bank, my most recent full length episode, I spoke to Jean Pierre Filleu about Gaza. The territory of Gaza became the Gaza Strip in 1949. When did the territory of the west bank as we know it today, when did the west bank become the West Bank?
- [14:44]
Yael Berda
That's such an interesting question because, I mean, there's a lot of answers to it because there always has been a West bank also in Israeli political imagination, right? Even as Evra Botinsky would say, stegadot le o den there are two banks to the Jordan River. And so the west bank has been, you know, has been around for a long time. It becomes an important territorial space. In 67, with Israel's conquest of the west bank and Gaza and the Golan Heights and Sinai, Jerusalem.
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Israeli Settler (Amishav)
Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkal must be the proudest man in the world, especially when he entered into the Jordanian sector of Jerusalem. And to stand before the Wailing Wall. To world jury a deeply emotional occasion of great historic importance. Hero today of the Jewish peoples, General Moshe Dayan, Defence Minister and architect of the swiftest, most overwhelming victory of all time.
- [15:42]
Yael Berda
The west bank specifically was important because of its proximity to Israel and also the fact that East Jerusalem is part of the West Bank. So it's a very prominent space. And so it first becomes that in 67, and then less than a decade later for the first settlers after the occupation of 67 begin to create settlements in the West Bank. It becomes then a site of massive contestation. Lastly, I think with the Oslo Accords, the West bank gets reshuffled and cut up into three, which is areas A, B and C. We can go into that a little bit later. People don't fall asleep by the bureaucratic stuff.
- [16:31]
Dalia Shenlund
No. I was fascinated by Yale's answer because it's always a matter of where does anything in a conflict history start. You went back to Jabotinsky, which was earlier than I was going to go, and then to 67, which was later than I was going to go. And I think it's worth mentioning the partition plan of 1947 in which there are these two defined areas within Mandate Palestine.
- [16:51]
Israeli Settler (Amishav)
The Jewish state will include the ports of Haifa and Tel Aviv and the whole of the Negev Valley. The Arab will occupy the fertile eastern part. Jerusalem will come under United nations trusteeship. First reaction from the Jews was one of joy. Crowds gathered in the streets and greeted
- [17:08]
Dalia Shenlund
the birth of their state, British Mandate territory. Territory called British Mandate of Palestine, which was what we know of as the map of the whole land of Israel, at least that's how Israelis call it, or what Palestinians call Palestine. And then the partition plan divided that up into a big chunk on the eastern side of that land that was supposed to be part of the Arab state and other parts. But during the war of Independence, Israel conquered additional territories beyond that map. And so they got extra parcels of land beyond what the United Nations Resolution 181 had approved. In the partition plant, the city of
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Israeli Settler (Amishav)
Haifa and its harbor become the center of bitter conflict as a new Jewish state is born. In the tense atmosphere of civil war, Haganah troops search for Arabs after capturing the city. Arab strong points are taken after being blasted to rubble during the mopping up operations.
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Dalia Shenlund
And as a result we have the map that we know of today where the west bank looks like this kind of reverse B shape, but that is less than the actual land that was designated for the Arab state in 1947 and gave us the contours we know today. Also cutting it off from Gaza, because those two areas of land were to be connected in addition to, or almost connected in addition to other parts of the country that where there would have been a little bit more territorial contiguity, I shouldn't say exactly connected between Gaza and the west bank, but there were other parts of the Palestinian state that were supposed to have greater contiguity. Since the War of Independence, those have been both separated and designed in the shapes that we know them now by conquest. And then, of course, 1967, you have the occupation that Yale mentioned.
- [18:43]
Martin DeCaro
These legalities and technicalities can get complicated, but it's an integral part of this story. You know, in my mind, the west bank begins in 1967 with Israel's victory in the Six Day War. What was the main difference or the changes from Jordanian control of this territory? That's as far as I know, never been part of a modern state. The changes from Jordanian control to Israeli control after the Six Day War.
- [19:13]
Yael Berda
So one thing that we Forgot to say in 48, War of Independence, which is also the Nakba, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees are moving, are displaced from the territory of 1948 into the territories that will then be the territories of 67, like when the Gaza Strip is created. Also parts of the west bank become the areas of the refugee camps. And so it's important to kind of remember that as we're thinking, it's super
- [19:44]
Dalia Shenlund
important because of course, it's not just the physical geography, it's the political and sociological geography that makes the Palestinian territories what they are today. Remember that after the war of 1948, Israel, well, Israel conquered those extra bits, but there was still this big chunk of various chunks. And Egypt kind of took military control over Gaza, but Jordan actually formally announced annexation of the West Bank. It was not recognized by most countries, even though a couple of countries recognized that. But for the most part, the Palestinians didn't want that either. To the extent that there was any sort of political organization, there were always some who were kind of willing to entertain it. But it was a very divisive idea among Palestinians. And the idea of the Jordanian annexation was primarily because they didn't particularly support a separate Palestinian state at the time either. I think the world was still coming to terms with Palestinian and distinct national identity. And the Palestinians themselves also trying to kind of translate their. What they were realizing was their unique history. And identity relative to the rest of the region and realizing that a state was the best way to do it. But that process, like most nations, is an evolving process. So you have Palestinians in the west bank living under effective Jordanian rule, for the most part, civilian rule, and not only that, but because of this effort to kind of prevent the consolidation of a Palestinian national movement. Palestinians under the west bank were given Jordanian citizenship. I think not all of them have it today, but many of them do have Jordanian passports and citizenship today. By contrast to the other countries where Palestinian refugees went in 1948, they had greater opportunities, both employment, economic, and citizenship, Although many of them were simply poor and lived in refugee camps in Jordan, and some still do. That was the status quo until Israel began the occupation. What happens is when Israel captures it, and Yael is really, literally has written the book about this, so I'll turn it over to her soon. But then, you know, from 67 onwards, Israel places that region under military occupation. It's under martial law. There's a whole series of laws that are all determined by the military establishment. But they were basically ready, and the reasons why they were ready and in place, or at least ready and kind of waiting for this moment of the. Of the occupation beginning in 1967. You know, Israeli authorities, and certainly the military advocate general and the military legal authorities had considered this possibility ahead of 1967. Once under military occupation, the Israeli army, and, you know, led of course, by the political levels, essentially develops a kind of pick and choose or patchwork understanding of law. It's all under, theoretically, the authority of the military. But they pick and choose from Ottoman law, from Jordanian law, from British mandatory colonial law. None of them are democratic laws, of course. None of them represent. None of them are determined by representatives of the population. So they're not even trying to be democratic. But it does create a completely impenetrable patchwork thicket of laws that not only were not chosen by the people, but can't even be, for the most part, understood by the people. So I'm happy for you, Elle, to elaborate on anything there.
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Martin DeCaro
Occupying powers are not supposed to make permanent changes to the territory they're occupying. I don't know how anyone could look at what's happening in the west bank today, what's been happening with the settlers, the settler movement for the past several decades, and say that Israel is abiding by the laws of occupation.
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Yael Berda
It's very interesting because we jump to the settlers and the settlements, and then that becomes the issue. But there's an issue that is Prior to that. And then you have to ask yourself, okay, what is occupation? What is it supposed to do, the idea of occupation? In international law, you can't acquire land by force, by conquest. Not allowed. And so what can happen is until there is an agreement or until there's some sort of arranged political arrangement, that's when the occupying power is like a trustee on the land and its people, and its people are supposed to be protected. The sovereign is the military. What's so interesting is as they're, they're kind of devising. This is four years prior to 1967 was the time when the military Advocate general, then Meir Shamgal, who later would become the Chief justice of the Supreme Court, they decided to devise a plan for the governing of the West Bank. And now you might say to yourself, wait a minute, wasn't the 67 some surprise war? Yes, but there were definitely plans about the army needing to take over the west bank because of the problems in Jordan. And so in 63, they make this plan. It's written in one of the diaries of. He was then a young lawyer in the military Advocate General. He then goes on to be the legal advisor for the Defense Ministry and other things. And he writes, well, we tried to find what is the best law to use for this. And I was told to go to the colonial laws of Transjordan, to the emergency defense regulations, which was the mandatory law. And then what I did was I cut out the words His Majesty and instead I put the military commander of the area. And so it was very literally a cut and paste. It wasn't in word. It was actually he cut it out and then pasted with glue to make this new law, kind of the old British law become applicable. And then it becomes the base plate of the administration of the occupation. What that allows is basically if you have emergency law as the framework of your governance, what that gives you is a very high flexibility of executive power. Because what you have is the executive that is also making the law. Because there is no legislative body other than the executive. And even the military courts were something that were done later. So this is all taking place prior to the conquest of the territory. And the article that we just wrote is about annexation. Were actually saying something very simple to the international community. If you're going to stand there and wait for somebody to write in neon letters, we are now declaring sovereignty over this territory. In order to act, you're going to be too late. What you need to look at is the bureaucratic changes, is the administrative changes, because this Whole thing, you can't wait for formal law, because there is no formal law here. What you have is military decrees. What you have is emergency regulations. That's the grammar of the law there. And we show how in the last three years, the administrative and bureaucratic changes in the west bank amount to full annexation. And not just something that is happening
- [26:24]
Dalia Shenlund
de facto because those military authorities are being transferred into civilian powers. The only thing I would add, you know, that there's often this image that the occupation is just this military apparatus and that it can be dismantled that by definition, makes it a temporary occupation. An occupation is, by definition supposed to be temporary, even if it's a long one, which is why, actually we only saw the declaration or the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice determining that this has really become a permanent, you know, situation only as recently as 2024. But all to say that the image that this is a separate military regime, frankly, has always been wrong. And the very simple reason I say that is because from the very first year, pretty much all branches of the Israeli government, all the authorities of the government were already involved. The executive branch, of course, through the army, which is, you know, under the Ministry of Defense, the judiciary was very quickly hearing cases in the Palestinian territories. In other words, extending its jurisdiction beyond where Israel has formal sovereignty, so extraterritorial jurisdiction, you know, and not to mention that, you know, very quickly you had the Israeli parliament, the civilian parliament, making laws that, in a kind of convoluted process, that extend Israeli authority into the west bank, mostly to apply to Israeli citizens, so that Israeli citizens, I. E. Settlers, can live as if they are living under regular Israeli laws. It's a little more complicated than that through a kind of process that I like to call a legal vpn. But everybody has their metaphor. But the point is these are all ways of extending the civilian authorities, all branches of government, into the west bank, which made the whole idea of a separate military regime a bit of a fiction from the start, but certainly now that under the current government, the Minister of Finance doubles as a minister within the Ministry of Defense, a different minister, not the Minister of Defense. And he has formalized the transfer of powers away from what I'm arguing is a bit of a sham of a separate military authority into civilian hands. So Israel has done almost everything except the neon sign that Yael talked about to declare, and by the way, you know, at the rhetorical level, you don't need to be a lawyer or a political scientist or a foreigner or not to listen to this government. They say all day, every day. This is all part of the land of Israel.
- [28:37]
Libsyn Ads Representative
Yeah.
- [28:38]
Martin DeCaro
And we'll return in a moment. You know, how do we know something is annexation? And what is the significance of that? As Yael has been writing about and as you have been writing about Dalia, I just want to add here we'll kind of skip over the Oslo period, the whole Oslo process. I've covered it on so many podcasts. But I will say that is the time. That is the period when the west bank is made into three areas, which I suppose still exist on paper today. Area a, that is 18% of the west bank that is under Palestinian administrative and police control. Area B, that is 22% of the west bank that is under Palestinian Authority administrative control, but it is shared security control with Israel. And then the largest area, Area C, which Israel administers, that is where, in addition to East Jerusalem, Area C is where the Israeli settlers live. I'm only bringing this up because it kind of takes us to. Today. You said that there's more to annexation than the settler movement, but the settlers are so much a part of the story. They're the catalyst for so much of the conflict and the violence. What are the ideas driving this conflict? For instance, we often hear it's not the west bank, it's Judea and Samaria.
- [29:55]
Dalia Shenlund
I think from the Orthodox Jewish perspective, this is not a political matter. It is a divine matter. They are looking at these lands as lands that were promised to the Jewish people in the Bible. And that, as far as they're concerned, is a real estate deed, especially for those among the religious who are actually religious fundamentalists, which is not everybody, but. But a fundamentalist perspective says what is written in the text is to be interpreted exactly as it is written. Which actually brings us even to more dangerous territory. When you look at the borders of the Bible, go way beyond the west bank into many countries in the Middle east. And we should talk about that, too. But for the most part, this is, you know, a sense that this is divinely ordained Israel owning. This is the modern manifestation of the fulfillment of God's word and promise. The idea of giving up on Israeli control in Israel's iteration as a Jewish state, and I don't mean in a cultural way, but I mean from the perspective, from the religion, religious perspective, Israel is a religious Jewish state that must follow the word of God. And that the idea that Israel would give up sovereignty, even if it hasn't formally declared sovereignty, right from their minds, it is already Israeli sovereign territory because they don't think in political science terms or in international law terms, they think in religious terms it's biblical sovereignty. So any acknowledgment that the land, you know, that we call the Palestinian territories or West Bank Gaza would belong to anybody else, no matter how, no matter what form of rule that other person might or might not have, that other community that, from their perspective, is a direct violation of God's will. And they will interpret pretty much everything that happens as supporting, you know, this deterministic kind of understanding that God's will has to be fulfilled. Now, I'm merging kind of crudely those religious people who hold this as a mythical dream and think it would be nice, but maybe we're on the more moderate side at various points, and those who are really fundamentalists who believe that they must actively do everything to make that happen. Now, the latter are definitely among the driving forces of the settlements. But the settlements would never have been able to accomplish what they have without the tacit backing of the Israeli state, secular authorities included. That is, up until recently, Israel's institutions were essentially secular institutions, secular state institutions without the backing of the state and the army and political decision making, including under the Labour Party, which is considered to be a left wing secular movement, which was in power for the first decade. And I always give credit to the great journalist and historian Gershom Gorenberg, who wrote the book about that first decade and how that was the decade in which the settler project was able to take root with the backing and the enabling and the tacit and sometimes not so tacit support of all of the fabled kind of secular Israeli political and military leaders of the time. And it has accelerated or very rarely slowed somewhat, but it always enjoyed the backing of the state in all of this. And so we have to understand this is both a religious ideological movement and it is backed by another kind of ideology, which is both nationalist and oftentimes in the guise of security. But the question about whether it really keeps Israel secure, I think is a bit of a red herring, because Israel has shown at various points that it can give up on its control over territory and be more secure, for example, giving up, you know, the Sinai Peninsula and a peace treaty with Egypt. But there is an ideology simply that Israel needs to be bigger, whether it's religious, security oriented or simply nationalist. And those forces have all combined over all of these years since 1967 to keep that project growing.
- [33:27]
Yael Berda
It's important to maybe talk a little bit about the competing projects in Israeli society. And so the project of state building, that was kind of the labor or what, what is called the left, but is really centrist, was a project that said we'd rather have settlements that form a Jewish majority on less land than have more land without a Jewish majority. Whereas religious Zionism in their different forms, I mean, that's their latest name. The political party has always said, we don't care how many people live there. We're not into a demographic headcount. We don't mind being a minority in parts of the territory. What we're interested in is the land. And one of the reasons that the compromise that the labor leaning Israelis made for wanting a Jewish majority on less land was the enabling of what they call the Jewish democratic state. Whereas when you have more land and you're a minority that is ruling this majority that has no rights. Rights, then you're already out of the realm, you're out of the democratic realm. So that's always been part of the fight between the different factions. And for now, the. I mean, the government today is controlled by those that decidedly believe that it's better to have more land no matter how many, no matter how much Jews are a minority on it. Because there's also a plan to kind of rid it of Palestinians. It's called the decision plan, articulated as being either Palestinians give up on their national identity and goals or they will be deported or they will be killed. This is its project.
- [35:17]
Martin DeCaro
3 million Palestinians. 3 million Palestinians have to be deported or just kind of give up on being Palestinian.
- [35:24]
Yael Berda
Exactly.
- [35:25]
Dalia Shenlund
And that's just in the West Bank. That's just in the West Bank.
- [35:27]
Yael Berda
They can be Palestinian, but like they can't like have a national project of Palestinian.
- [35:33]
Martin DeCaro
Can't have a state of.
- [35:34]
Yael Berda
Yeah, they need to relinquish that goal and that identity. And then they could live as some sort of subject. I don't even know what exactly is the plan, but what status. But. But it would be like kind of imperial subjects or something like that. I don't know.
- [35:49]
Martin DeCaro
The conversation continues in a moment. Tap. Subscribe now in the show Notes to skip ads or go to historyasithappens.com.
- [36:11]
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- [36:50]
Martin DeCaro
Does annexation, which you both argue has happened, this is now sovereign Israeli territory. Does annexation as it has get Israel closer to that goal? I guess what I'm trying to figure out here is like, what problems does this solve? Because it seems to be creating a whole number of other problems.
- [37:10]
Yael Berda
Because annexation is entirely illegal in international law, the international community has an obligation to respond to it, actually. And that's why everybody is waiting for that annexation to happen. You know, this is de facto. This isn't really that. That we're waiting. They're going to plant their flag. They might plant their flag, they might declare a law. Whatever. The reason that it's being prolonged is because it really does demand action. The thing about annexation is what, for instance, Israel's done it in multiple instances. The annexation of the Golan Heights, the annexation of East Jerusalem. So in the Golan Heights, they provided the residents with citizenship. That was a very small amount of people. In East Jerusalem, people became residents, but not citizens who. And in the West Bank, I don't know what the plan is in terms of what is going to be the status of the population, because it hasn't been really articulated. One thing is for sure that as soon as annexation is a reality, so you don't have like apartheid as a metaphor, it becomes the legal reality because you have people that have no status.
- [38:19]
Martin DeCaro
They can't become citizens, because then it would no longer be.
- [38:22]
Yael Berda
They're also not residents. So you can't even claim that at
- [38:25]
Martin DeCaro
some point, because then Israel would no longer be a Jewish majority state if you have 3 million more or even more than that, Palestinian citizens.
- [38:35]
Dalia Shenlund
So let's just also think about the numbers for one second. But there are 5 million Palestinians altogether in the west bank and Gaza. Roughly, you know, it can add east Jerusalem, another 200,000. But if you add that to the Palestinian citizens of Israel, you have about 7 million Palestinians in the territory of historic Palestine and about 7 million Jewish Israelis. So that means you have parity between the populations. Two million of the Palestinians or a little bit less, actually, because that includes east Jerusalem. About 1.8 have citizenship and all the rest will have no status, or we don't know what the status is. And they will be formally second class, not even second class. They may not have citizen status at all. But what I want to say is that. And to follow up, if it Wasn't totally clear. Maybe it was was this alternate vision for Zionism of a Jewish and democratic something or other, which we can talk about. How well those sit together. I think the difference with this government is that they have no pretensions. They're not even claiming to want a democratic state. I mean, occasionally they use the word. It's really in a very flimsy way that usually means the opposite. So I think that for one thing, they pretty much don't know what democracy is in any substantive way. If they did, they would be worried at best. I think people in this government might think democracy is majority rule. Of course it's not, but they don't even seem to know that. Or they would be worried that there would be not a Jewish majority. But I think that they fundamentally don't care. And so they don't plan on making them citizens. If they do call them citizens, they're going to deny them the substantive aspects of citizenship, like voting in national elections. And then it won't matter that they call it citizenship because they don't know what these terms mean anyway. They certainly don't understand concepts of citizen equality under the law. We passed a law yesterday that involves the death penalty, tailored in a very clear way without even really hiding it, so that it would only really apply to Palestinians. And so this government is not even claiming to be part of the other project that Yael mentioned of having something like democracy with, you know, Jewish identity.
- [40:28]
Martin DeCaro
So, Yael, how do we know it's annexation? I know this can get very legalistic or bureaucratic, but there's no way around that.
- [40:36]
Yael Berda
Annexation is when it's no longer the authority of the military, where they start moving authority and decision making from the military to the civilian branches of government. Now you could say, hey, that's been happening forever. So what are you talking about? But here there's really the issue of the chain of command and things that just go by under the radar. So, like the deputy of the military civil administration is now a civilian, and that civilian works under Smotrich, who is the Minister of Settlements. That breaks the military chain of command. You can no longer claim these are security decisions. You can no longer claim they're military decisions. Even when you had civilians working for the military administrations, they were called Ezra Ved Sahal, a citizen that is working for the army. There are definitely designations that were done in order to provide, I mean, this massive governmental apparatus that was in place until. Until the Oslo agreements, breaking the chain of command and moving from military to civilian authority. That's Annexation, Sure. And you can see it with the bureaucratic shifts that that have been done in the last two and a half years so rapidly, even somebody that was sitting and waiting for it to happen, like me, I was shocked by how swift the changes came about.
- [42:00]
Dalia Shenlund
You said it before, Yael, that everybody's waiting for Israel to like plant a flag. And that's not going to happen. I have to tell you that having done, you know, in a recent trip to the West Bank, I was driving in the main road that cuts north to south to north through the northern part of the west bank, which Israeli Jews call Samaria. On that main road, what settlers have done is actually literally planted flags. I would say it's about every hundred meters. So if you're driving in a car, it's a constant stream of flags. And while I was driving, I heard clang, clang, clang, because there were settlers literally banging in stakes, metal stakes, to hold more flags so that they would be even less than 100 meters between each one. And so the Palestinians, you know, literally standing there watching them, you know, I can't even imagine what they're thinking. But Israel actually literally is planting those flags in a way that is you cannot miss them. I mean, they're, they've planted flags through fields that lead to the latest army position, so called, because immediately after I visited became a settlement called Sanur. So, you know, this is happening all the time.
- [43:01]
Martin DeCaro
Dalia and you wrote about this issue in February in Haaretz. By the way, I subscribe to that newspaper because of your work. I encourage all of my listeners who want to keep up on news in Israel and the Middle east to subscribe to Haaretz Digital. Of course, I only have one paper newspaper delivered. I don't think Haaretz is available paper here in Washington. But anyway, we were writing about this issue in February and about its significance. Does this mean that we could see Israeli settlers in areas A and B, which I should add, are not discrete chunks of territory. They're not contiguous. Those are the Palestinian controlled ones. Because all the settlements are in area C. Right. So does this mean it's kind of just open up everywhere?
- [43:43]
Dalia Shenlund
I have to tell you that that process began way earlier on in the term of this government. And the process is a little bit more complex than I'm making it seem. It's not like you just said it up a settlement all of a sudden in the middle of area B or A, but the state has had various ways of expanding its presence and there have already been efforts to Expand into Area B from. I would say maybe, you know, but I think about early 2023 or late 2022 already, but probably 2023 with the new government. And now we're seeing. We're hearing reports of efforts to establish various positions, even in Area A. Area A was kind of the Holy Grail up until now. If there were incursions already into Area B, now we're really seeing efforts to go right into Area A. And it's almost like these just, you know, these distinctions aren't meaningful anymore. I remember talking to a soldier one time and asking how often he. And this was well before even the current government. This was some years ago. I said, how often did you go into Area A? Because I was trying to get a sense of what it's like for Palestinians living in Area A, where they are supposed to be under the administrative and police control. Very accurate wording, by the way. We sometimes say security control of Palestinian Authority. It's not really true. Everything is under, effectively, ultimately under the Israeli military, but it's local control that Palestinians have for security anyway. All to say that when I asked the soldier, how often do you go into Area A? He looked at me like he wasn't sure what I was talking about. And he said, you know, we don't really think about that kind of thing.
- [45:05]
Martin DeCaro
So most Americans are not following these bureaucratic or legislative changes. What they do see are attacks almost every single day by Jewish settlers. These are terrorist attacks on Palestinian villages. Murdering, beating, looting, burning. And they're asking, why do the settlers get away with it? Now, one unit was punished the other day because they beat up the wrong people. They beat up a CNN camera crew. So that made international headlines. But most of the time, the IDF protects the settlers or even arrests the Palestinian victims of these attacks.
- [45:43]
Dalia Shenlund
First of all, violence goes way back. Right from the moment Israel took over that land, there was violence. We should also say there has been Palestinian terror against Israeli civilians, too. And for the purposes of using violence, a settler is also a civilian if they're not actively armed or on duty. So there is violence in both directions. I think that two realities we have to keep in mind is that they are under completely different systems of law. They fall under different systems of law, even though theoretically anybody living in the occupied territory should fall under military law. But Israel's found ways around that. Jewish perpetrators traditionally have barely been punished at all and usually are sent to civilian courts, where Palestinians are always put through military courts. And the violence, the actual quantitative numbers, make it much more dangerous to be Palestinian in the west bank despite very confident declarations of some of our, of all of the right wing that it is more dangerous to be Jewish because of Palestinian terror. The numbers are exactly the opposite. I actually calculated them Based on the UN's Office for Coordination of Humanitarian affairs and found that from 2023 onward, about 20 times more Palestinian civilians were killed by Israel, either IDF forces or settlers as Israelis who were killed. Now, I don't want anybody to be killed, any civilian, and I don't even want soldiers to be killed. I wish there wasn't a war and a conflict, but I just think it's important to get that information straight because there is a lot of disinformation around the issue. And the fact is that Israel, you know, has never, apparently never really seen an interest in treating perpetrators of these kinds of attacks.
- [47:16]
Martin DeCaro
It just seems so much worse, so much worse recently.
- [47:20]
Dalia Shenlund
Yeah, but I also want to make the point that up until recently, Just one more quick point. Up until recently, the vast majority of Palestinians who would be killed, including civilians, were killed by the army and troops. Truth, Israeli civilians killing Palestinian civilians, you know, what we're calling settler terror was still very limited, number wise, most of this history. I think first of all we have to ask what does Israel do about its army cheapening Palestinian life, considering any Palestinian to be a terrorist or a threat or the rules are more lax when it comes to military conduct because militaries are there to basically hold territory by force and they undertake violent acts as part of their duty. So it's always been seen in a different zone. And plus the whole concept of what law, what kind of law beyond law, what kind of law, ethics, morality holds in a place like this. It's always been a kind of ambiguous gray zone, partly by design.
- [48:09]
Yael Berda
I think one of the things that is hard to understand internationally is how much what we're seeing has to do with Israel's internal turn towards authoritarianism. People speak about the settler violence, but they won't speak about the judicial overhaul. One of the major goals. So. So there was this massive protest movement, we can call it the pro democracy movement or, you know, democracy for Jews movement or whatever, which I was very much part of, also that focused on the dismantling of legal institutions in Israel. But there was very little talked about what was the goal of that dismantling. In my view, the goal of that dismantling was the annexation. Because what is this settler violence? The settler violence is meant to displace Palestinians off of lands in order to annex them and settle them that is the reason that it's happening. It's all part of one plan. So the obstacles to annexation and to this violence were mainly the Supreme Court and the legal advisors, who were like the last bastions of maintaining the separation between the area of Israel and the area of the territories. Now, they didn't do it very well, but they were still perceived by religious Zionism and environs as the obstacles to annexation and to the settlement of the West Bank.
- [49:44]
Dalia Shenlund
I couldn't agree with that more. In fact, in 2019, I just want to say I wrote a paper called, you know, the Real Aim of Israel's Assault on the Judiciary, which gives you a sense of how long it had been going on, because I had been tracking it since. I would say a turning point was 2009, when Netanyahu came back to power.
- [50:00]
Yael Berda
Another turning point is, of course, October 7th. And one of the reasons that the settlers are achieving the level of violence and control that they are was because on October 7, the military used civilians in every settlement, not just in the west bank, but across Israel. It's called Kitat Kunenut. It's like when civilians are. How do you translate that, Dalia?
- [50:27]
Dalia Shenlund
I think local defense squads.
- [50:29]
Yael Berda
So civilians are local defense squads. They carry weapons. And after October 7th, they also wore uniforms. And this is the thing that becomes so insidious in the West Bank. Settlers that are wearing uniforms or partial uniforms, it becomes fuzzy. The distinction between military and settlers become entirely fuzzy.
- [50:52]
Martin DeCaro
Yeah. The people who beat up the CNN camera crew were settlers wearing military. Go ahead.
- [50:57]
Yael Berda
So then you have militias, vigilantes, and actual army battalions that are indistinguishable. And that, in distinction, creates the kind of. It's not lawlessness because it's full of law. Right. But it's chaotic in the sense that it's unclear, both visually or legally, who is in charge, who calls the shots, who holds the power in the eyes. Think of it in the eyes of soldiers who are 18 or 20 or 22. Right. And they're there, and they're told, oh, you have to separate between violent settlers and Palestinians. And then they're on the scene, and you have these settlers and they're wearing uniforms. Even if everybody was on their absolute best behavior and really cared about this, which is not the case. It's an impossible situation. And it's one of the reasons why. I mean, people ask me what to do, and I'm like, you want an international stabilization force in Gaza. You should have an international civilization force in the West Bank. And everybody's like, like, oh, that's so extreme. We've never heard about it. But it's like, look at this mess. Who can organize this? You need presence of boots on the ground that actually take control and can protect all populations. I mean, I think that right now, Palestinian civilians are the population that needs to be protected the most. But I can imagine if the whole thing erupts, it can be all over the place. And so, so this is also part of the judicial overhaul, dismantling institutions, so you can deploy militias and vigilantes as those that have the force of law. And it's very powerful. It's very powerful, super destructive, super hard to repeal. But this is what's going on.
- [52:42]
Martin DeCaro
The sum of all of this is that a Palestinian state is being eliminated, that Israel right now is bureaucratically, legally, politically, and physically making a Palestinian state impossible. And that is. That has been the goal the whole time. The west bank has really always been the prize. Palestinians in Gaza have been reduced to a collective of people who are not living, they're barely existing, a number of stomachs that need to be fed or bodies that have to be buried. Gaza has been annihilated. The west bank is being annexed. So you're the experts here. Am I wrong to say that a Palestinian state is not going to have to happen?
- [53:18]
Yael Berda
You know, I, I wouldn't go there. Yes, the prevention of Palestine has been a goal for 80 years, but I, I think that there is still total possibility to have a. A Palestinian state. Just, you have to think of how that might take place and what are the, the shifts in power that need to be. And also, you know, how that would work. But, yes, I mean, that's the goal. The goal is exactly that. I just don't think that we're at the point where it could never happen. What needs to be stopped is a. This government and the forces that it enables and grows, and also the impunity. We're standing there going, hey, you know, this is annexation. Please get involved. And people are still saying, oh, is this de facto or de jure? You know, come on.
- [54:06]
Martin DeCaro
Well, the most powerful force in all of this, potentially, is the United States. And in the past, American administration's Dalia used to put some pressure on Israel when it came to settlements or the use of weapons on civilians. Not anymore, and certainly not in this administration, which will be around for three more years.
- [54:25]
Dalia Shenlund
Okay, so first of all, let me agree with Yael in the sense that I don't think there's any. There's no actual analytic reason to Write off the idea of a Palestinian state in the future. And the reason, from a political science perspective, is that you have the territory. We still understand the definitions of that territory. You have the people and you have the people's desire. Right. The people still want to identify themselves as independent as a Palestinian nation. The main thing that has to happen is that Israel withdraws its power. And the thing is, that's not going to happen, certainly by choice. But the contours of a Palestinian state have not gone away. Of course, the Palestinians also need to have a completely reconstituted leadership because their current leadership has. Has no legitimacy nor unity, nor accountability. Whether it's a democracy or not is a different question. But all of those things are conditions that have to be put into place. How they happen, I have no idea. I don't think any one actor can make those conditions come true. But those are kind of necessary conditions for a Palestinian state. And if they do come true, now or later, there will be one. It's also a matter of what relationship it will have with Israel. Right. We should say Elle and I are both members of an organization called the Land for All Wall, which advances the idea of two independent, equal sovereign states in a confederated association. We think that's more realistic and more optimistic, but it's also more realistic politically for reasons we maybe don't have time to get into right now. In terms of the United States, you know, we're seeing a very interesting. I don't even know what to make of it, but we think that it seems like the White House put some pressure on the Israelis because the settler violence had become so extreme, so gruesome and so photogenic in a way. In other words, it was making headlines around the world and probably complicating relations between the US and the Gulf states and, you know, making it difficult to work well with other Middle east actors at a critical time that the White House seems to have conveyed to Israel that you have to do something about this. And so all of a sudden we're seeing this massive outpouring of right wing, very influential figures, including the very same Minister of Finance and Settlements or Annexation, who have now been saying, oh, actually we don't like this kind of vigilante violence. It's really not very nice. With one of the arguments that Smotrich made was actually incredibly interesting. He said, there's no need for that kind of violence because we are already extending our sovereignty in the name of the state openly and with the help of the army. And so in a way, it's almost like the next phase in which you don't need to diminish and break down the law. You completely transformed what the state and the state institutions are actually there to do. So it's, it's all okay. Now we can have the law and we can have institutions because they've been reconstituted as religious, messianic, annexationist institutions establishing Jewish supremacy. So that's all to kind of make the argument that it's not just the political contours that has to change or the Palestinian leadership that has to be reconstituted, it's frankly, Israel's policy that would have to change. Israel's government, Israel's policy. And how that happens. Well, as you pointed out, when America wants to, it can put pressure on Israel. I gave this little episode as a very small example of how effective America can be when it wants to. Personally, I think it's misguided. I mean, of course I want the settlement violence, the settler violence to end, it goes without saying. But without a deeper change kind of counteracting all the forces we've talked about, it won't really change the reality that Palestinians are violently suppressed and dispossessed and effectively being expelled. So I think if America wanted to make that change, it can. If Trump wanted to do it, he could, or at least he could go some long way and a future president might be able to as well. I don't think the basic dynamics of America's leverage over Israel have changed if America ever wanted to use it.
- [57:56]
Michael Kimmage
But the Palestinian people's right to self determination, their right to justice, must also be recognized. And put yourself in their shoes. Look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own, Living their entire lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements, not just of those young people, but their parents, their grandparents, parents every single day. It's not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished. It's not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands or restricting a student's ability to move around the west bank or displace Palestinian families from their homes. Not neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer.
- [59:04]
Martin DeCaro
On the next episode of History as it Happens, the Limits of Power with historian Michael Kimmage. Look around the world today. Why do militarily powerful countries continue to have trouble winning their wars? Why do modern wars drag on without decision? That is next, as we report history as it happens, make sure to sign up for my free newsletter at Substack.