Ma'ale Adumim's municipal borders include an area known as E1 that Israel has been quietly trying to settle for years. Until now, the US and Europe have vehemently opposed any development there, warning that it would strike a double blow against prospects for peace. It would complete East Jerusalem's encirclement with settlements and effectively split the West Bank in two.
Exploiting the change of mood in Washington, however, Naftali Bennett, the education minister and leader of the settlers' Jewish Home party, has pushed annexation of Ma'ale Adumim to the top of Israel's agenda, as a prelude to seizing other parts of the West Bank.
So futile does the case for Palestinian statehood seem in Israel that even prominent liberals, such as the writer A B Yeshoshua, have come out in hesitant support of annexation. Mr Yehoshua has argued for annexing so-called Area C -- some two-thirds of the West Bank -- on supposedly "humanitarian" grounds. A change of status, he says, would entitle its 150,000 Palestinian residents to more rights than they have now, without threatening Israel's Jewish majority.
The annexation trend was underscored by a little-noticed law passed last week by the Israeli parliament. For the first time, the rulings of Israel's military courts against Palestinians will be admissible in Israel's civilian courts. Ostensibly the measure is designed to assist settlers who wish to sue Palestinians for damages in Israeli courts by allowing them to rely on the verdicts of West Bank military courts.
Aside from issues of justice -- military courts operate on low levels of evidence, accept secret information from the army, and have high conviction rates -- the new law blurs the existing separation between the legal systems of Israel and the West Bank. It is further evidence of a creeping process of incorporating the West Bank into Israel.
Those few "relics" who object are being purged. Israel's deputy attorney general, Dana Zilber, was this month stripped of her authority over law enforcement in the West Bank after attempts to rein in the settlers. The readying of the infrastructure of annexation will only accelerate under the blind eye of a Trump administration. Palestinians will need more than grudging unity to withstand the birth of the new order.
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