{"id":11906,"date":"2026-02-08T11:07:55","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T11:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/?post_type=article&p=11906"},"modified":"2026-02-08T11:08:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T11:08:00","slug":"israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel’s Right to Apply Civil Law in Judea and Samaria"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cI will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,\u201d President Donald Trump said in response to a question from a journalist last September. The statement is one of the few aspects of his foreign policy that appears to have cheered Democrats. It came after a symbolic, nonbinding vote in the Knesset in support of applying Israeli civil law in the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Knesset never used the term annexation<\/em>, and for good reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a simple, clear rule to determine the borders of new countries, whether they arise from imperial collapse, decolonization, federal breakup, cession, or any other cause. Under the doctrine of uti possidetis juris<\/em>, <\/em>a new country automatically inherits the borders of the last top-level administrative unit in that area. In other words, the pre-independence internal boundaries carry over to the new state. The continuity of prior borders is the sole factor, trumping fuzzy and hard-to-administer considerations like ethnic self-determination or historical title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This rule has been applied to new states from Latin America to Europe. It is a matter of textbook international law. The reasons for it are clear. Demographics and history would give rise to multiple competing claims, whereas uti possidetis<\/em> provides a unique, unambiguous solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To give a recent example, consider Crimea. The territory has been part of Russia for most of the past several hundred years. A majority of inhabitants were Russian speakers. Yet the international community rightly considers Russia\u2019s annexation illegal and regards it as Ukrainian territory to this day\u2014because of the uti possidetis<\/em> principle. Nikita Khrushchev had redrawn the borders of the Ukrainian and Russian Soviet Socialist Republics to give Crimea to the former. When the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine became an independent state, it automatically inherited the borders of its Soviet administrative predecessor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Annexation<\/em>\u00a0has a very precise meaning in international law: the taking and incorporation by one state of the territory of another state. The actions Israeli politicians have contemplated\u2014applying Israeli civil law in areas that have been under nominal military administration\u2014would not constitute annexation for two related reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, the area of \u201cthe West Bank,\u201d a term coined by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to refer to the lands it occupied after Israel\u2019s 1948 War of Independence, did not belong to any foreign state when it came under Israeli control in 1967. The law of belligerent occupation, which governs territory taken in war\u2014which is what most people mean when they talk about \u201cIsraeli occupation of the West Bank\u201d\u2014applies only to the sovereign territory of foreign states. This covers most cross-border conflicts but not some postcolonial transitions where there is a gap in sovereign control. For example, in 1975, Morocco seized Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that had not yet emerged as an independent state, despite the national aspirations of its Indigenous Saharawi inhabitants. While there was some tepid United Nations pushback on Morocco\u2019s land grab, it was not treated as an occupation by the United States and the European Union. Today, Rabat\u2019s annexation of the \u201csouthern provinces\u201d has been accepted as lawful by much of the world, including the United States and Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indonesia\u2019s 1962 takeover of the similarly orphaned Dutch New Guinea colony gained universal acceptance. North Vietnam\u2019s forcible incorporation of the entire country of South Vietnam, against the passionately expressed views of its residents, has long been universally accepted, no doubt because of Hanoi\u2019s long-standing claims to sovereignty over both parts of French Indochina\u2014just as Israel has long claimed Judea and Samaria as its own territory under the terms of the League of Nations mandate. In short, it is clear that Jordan was never sovereign in the territory. Thus, there is no basis for legal concepts like belligerent occupation and annexation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is a second reason that Israel\u2019s actions here wouldn\u2019t constitute annexation: Israel itself has a sovereign claim to the territory, which it calls \u201cJudea and Samaria\u201d\u2014a term used for more than 2,000 years, not only in the Bible but also by Roman historians, and by secular authorities including the United Nations up through the middle of the 20th century. Needless to say, a state cannot annex its own territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Israel gained independence, its preceding geopolitical entity was Mandatory Palestine, which included the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), though it was not called that. Indeed, Judea and Samaria was never considered a distinct administrative entity. Under the application of standard rules of international law, the borders of the new state at independence would be the borders of the mandatory territory it succeeded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other states that arose in the Middle East from mandatory territories\u2014Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan\u2014all acquired exactly the borders of those entities at the moments of independence. Each of these mandatory borders was drawn in arguably arbitrary ways that included discontented minorities in a larger state, be it Muslims in then-Christian majority Lebanon or the Kurds in Iraq. But in none of these cases have such arguments been seen as a reason to establish minority statelets in the territory of successor states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or consider Karabakh, a majority Armenian region within Azerbaijan with a deep Armenian history, which Yerevan took control of in a war with Azerbaijan at the time of the countries\u2019 independence, much as Jordan grabbed the West Bank. With the collapse of the USSR, the two former Soviet republics entered into a protracted conflict over the territory. Yet since Baku captured the territory in September 2023, dislodging the Armenians, no one has treated it as an occupying power. The reason is simple: Karabakh had been within the boundaries of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, and so it automatically became part of the new independent state of Azerbaijan, even though this frustrates the self-determination aspirations of the Armenians there. This territory\u2019s occupation by another country for two decades did nothing to erase Azerbaijani rights. This is a contemporary example of a situation quite comparable to Judea and Samaria being adjudicated by the international community the exact opposite way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let us briefly recap the political history of Judea and Samaria. For many centuries, up until 1918, the entire Levant belonged to the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Ottoman rule ended with its collapse at the end of World War I. Instead of taking Constantinople\u2019s territories as colonies for themselves, the Allied powers sought to create independent nation-states\u2014just as they did with the former territories of the defeated Austro-Hungarian Empire in Central and Eastern Europe. This process of making new nations out of older multinational empires was overseen by the newly formed League of Nations, which, by the treaty that created it, had the power to administer \u201cmandatory territories.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The League\u2019s 1923 Mandate for Palestine was designated as a \u201cNational home for the Jewish people\u201d and consisted of what we today would call Gaza, Israel, Judea and Samaria, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in one undifferentiated mass, cobbled together from parts of several Ottoman provinces. The terms of the mandate provided that it could be divided at its natural boundary of the Jordan River to create a Jewish and an Arab entity. The British promptly did just that, with the territory west of the river becoming the Mandatory Territory of Palestine\u2014the Jewish entity. The area east of the river known as \u201cTransjordan,\u201d the Arab entity, was given to Britain\u2019s defeated Hashemite supporters in Iraq and became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1946.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britain then terminated the Palestine mandate in 1948 following a U.N. vote to recognize two states in the remaining \u201cJewish\u201d part of the mandatory territory\u2014one for Jews and one for Arabs. The Jews accepted this proposal, which had no legal basis in the terms of the mandate but was seen at the time as an attempt to peacefully accommodate the existing balance of power. In other words, partition was a political solution that might allow the United Nations to fulfill in some part the inherited terms of the League of Nations mandate while avoiding what many expected to be a massacre of the Jews by the Arabs. Palestinian Arab representatives, expecting victory, uniformly declined the U.N. partition plan, which therefore did not \u201ccreate\u201d either Israel or a Palestinian state and has no standing in international law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uninterested in partition, five Arab states immediately invaded the mandate territory, with the stated goal \u201cto prevent the establishment of a Jewish state.\u201d Egyptian tanks rolled toward Tel Aviv but were turned back, but managed to seize a sliver of coastal territory that came to be known as the \u201cGaza Strip.\u201d Similarly, Jordan\u2019s Arab Legion was stopped by Israeli forces on the Samarian ridgeline, but not before it captured a significant part of Mandatory Palestine.<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>The League\u2019s 1923 Mandate for Palestine was designated as a \u201cNational home for the Jewish people\u201d and consisted of what we today would call Gaza, Israel, Judea and Samaria, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in one undifferentiated mass, cobbled together from parts of several Ottoman provinces. The terms of the mandate provided that it could be divided at its natural boundary of the Jordan River to create a Jewish and an Arab entity. The British promptly did just that, with the territory west of the river becoming the Mandatory Territory of Palestine\u2014the Jewish entity. The area east of the river known as \u201cTransjordan,\u201d the Arab entity, was given to Britain\u2019s defeated Hashemite supporters in Iraq and became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1946.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britain then terminated the Palestine mandate in 1948 following a U.N. vote to recognize two states in the remaining \u201cJewish\u201d part of the mandatory territory\u2014one for Jews and one for Arabs. The Jews accepted this proposal, which had no legal basis in the terms of the mandate but was seen at the time as an attempt to peacefully accommodate the existing balance of power. In other words, partition was a political solution that might allow the United Nations to fulfill in some part the inherited terms of the League of Nations mandate while avoiding what many expected to be a massacre of the Jews by the Arabs. Palestinian Arab representatives, expecting victory, uniformly declined the U.N. partition plan, which therefore did not \u201ccreate\u201d either Israel or a Palestinian state and has no standing in international law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uninterested in partition, five Arab states immediately invaded the mandate territory, with the stated goal \u201cto prevent the establishment of a Jewish state.\u201d Egyptian tanks rolled toward Tel Aviv but were turned back, but managed to seize a sliver of coastal territory that came to be known as the \u201cGaza Strip.\u201d Similarly, Jordan\u2019s Arab Legion was stopped by Israeli forces on the Samarian ridgeline, but not before it captured a significant part of Mandatory Palestine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel and Jordan signed an armistice agreement in 1949, ending the fighting without agreeing to permanent borders. Jordan remained in control of the Old City of Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. It proceeded to ethnically cleanse every single Jew from this territory, which it then annexed in 1950 and dubbed \u201cthe West Bank.\u201d All but a few nations rejected the legitimacy of this move, as Jordan had no credible sovereign claim on the territory, having taken it in a war of aggression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quite clearly, when Israel retook this territory in 1967, it was not occupying territory from Jordan, but rather ending Jordanian occupation of a portion of Mandate Palestine, the territory reserved by the League of Nations for a Jewish homeland under the British Mandate. Indeed, to say that \u201cthe West Bank\u201d continues to have some special status 50 years after the end of Jordanian occupation is to retroactively give legal effect to the aggression against Israel in 1948. It is to say that to the extent the Arab states succeeded in occupying parts of Mandatory Palestinian territory and ethnically cleansing every single Jew, those areas must permanently remain Judenrein.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It emerges that under widely agreed-upon international rules, Israel has sovereign rights to the territory known to the State of Israel as Judea and Samaria and to many foreign scholars and writers as \u201cthe West Bank.\u201d Some want to create a unique carve-out from these rules for the Jewish state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who believe that a peaceful resolution of Israeli-Arab conflict depends on the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state may worry that the legal analysis presented here prevents such a settlement. Indeed, one might suspect that the strenuous denial of Israel\u2019s legal rights has at times been designed to steer it toward what for many decades most diplomats regarded as the ideal solution: two states for two peoples. To date, the track record of that solution has not been a positive one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the law is neutral as to diplomatic solutions. If you like your two-state solution, you can keep your two-state solution. Israel\u2019s sovereign title to the territory does not prevent the country from ceding some or all of Judea and Samaria, or any other part of Israel, for a creation of a Palestinian state or any other type of state or entity\u2014and indeed enables it. What the legal analysis does make clear is there is nothing about the 1949 Armistice Lines that makes them legally mandated borders of such a state, or that obligates Israel to cede all this territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another consequentialist mode of analysis holds that if Israel does have sovereign rights to Judea and Samaria, it would put it in the uncomfortable position of ruling over the Arabs there, which could result in a high percentage of the population under Israeli rule not being Jewish\u2014therefore forcing Israel to choose between being a Jewish state or a democracy. This is a serious consideration that is downstream from Israel\u2019s legal rights. Like the idea of establishing a Palestinian state, or some other form of politically autonomous Palestinian Arab entity, Israel can choose to address its security problems, demographic problems, or regional security problems however it wants. While some of those choices might have better or worse real-world results, \u201cinternational law\u201d is not a magical formula that can or will compel Israel to make the choices that either its critics or its supporters might think best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel\u2019s sovereign rights over all of Judea and Samaria do not dictate the form of governance there. Indeed, since the Oslo process of the early \u201990s, Israel has not <\/em>governed the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria, who are instead misruled by the Palestinian Authority. Israel neither taxes them nor conscripts them; it does not write their schoolbooks or make their welfare policies or clean their streets. Israel\u2019s current interactions with the Palestinian population focus almost entirely on hard security issues. Given that all nations enjoy an inherent right to self-defense, this would be the case whether the Palestinian areas were technically an independent sovereign or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Trump\u2019s 2020 peace plan, recently reaffirmed in his 20-point plan for peace, contemplated Israel extending its civil law to roughly half of Judea and Samaria, where the Jewish population is concentrated, and leaving the other half for a potential Arab state. This helps explain his comments about \u201cannexation of the West Bank.\u201d However, while Trump does not support Israel applying its law to those areas under Palestinian Authority control, that is not inconsistent with the proposals being discussed in the Knesset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The so-called annexation plans being discussed in Israel are thus not about the incorporation of foreign territory into Israel proper. Rather, they are about ending the anomalous military administration that has applied in this area since 1967. After the Six-Day War, Israel never fully applied its domestic laws to the territory because it always expected the Arab states to sue for peace, and it was always prepared to transfer to them at least some part of the territory. Until the late 1980s, many Israelis assumed that the party for such negotiations would be Jordan. With the Oslo process, Israel\u2019s \u201cpeace partner\u201d became the Palestine Liberation Organization. In both cases, there was no point in hurriedly applying Israeli law to territory that might not remain Israeli because of a negotiated peace settlement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel\u2019s system of military governance in Judea and Samaria was always intended to be temporary. In retaining that system through decades of negotiations with the Palestinians, all of which resulted in their rejection of internationally backed statehood offers, Israel seems to have both severely misjudged the preferences and intentions of its Arab neighbors while also injuring its own citizens, creating a new problem of its own making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, roughly 700,000 Jewish Israelis live in Judea and Samaria\u2014where they have every legal and historical right to live and buy property. Yet Israelis and Arabs alike continue to find themselves governed by an odd patchwork of military regulations that has deliberately never been normalized or transparent to anyone and, over time, has become increasingly unwieldy. Property law is based on obscure Ottoman statutes, permitting for infrastructure projects is difficult and burdensome, and environmental regulations don\u2019t exist for either Jews or Arabs. Clearly, this ad hoc situation is being sustained by a combination of official Israeli delusion and sloth and by external actors whose goal is to make life in these areas as practically unpleasant as possible for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five decades of Arab rejectionism interspersed with violent terrorist assaults has made it untenable to continue to hold the legal regulation of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria in limbo. And neither international law nor Western principles of democracy stand in the way of Israel finally applying its own civil law to its own citizens in those areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(First appeared in Tablet<\/a><\/em>, “Yes, Israel Can Apply Israeli Law to the West Bank”, Jan 15, 2026).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,\u201d President Donald Trump said in response to a question from a journalist last September. The statement is one of the few aspects of his foreign policy that appears to have cheered Democrats. It came after a symbolic, nonbinding vote in the Knesset in support of […]","protected":false},"featured_media":3629,"template":"","article-category":[],"custom-tags":[41,538,683],"ppma_author":[49],"class_list":["post-11906","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","custom-tags-international-law","custom-tags-israeli-palestinian-conflict","custom-tags-judea-and-samaria"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIsrael's Right to Apply Civil Law in Judea and Samaria - kohelet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Israel's Right to Apply Civil Law in Judea and Samaria - kohelet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cI will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,\u201d President Donald Trump said in response to a question from a journalist last September. The statement is one of the few aspects of his foreign policy that appears to have cheered Democrats. It came after a symbolic, nonbinding vote in the Knesset in support of […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"kohelet\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Kohelet.org.il\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-02-08T11:08:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/\u05d4\u05ea\u05e0\u05d7\u05dc\u05d5\u05ea-\u05ea\u05e7\u05d5\u05e2-\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d3\u05d9\u05ea-\u05d2\u05e8\u05e0\u05d9\u05e7\u05d5\u05dc-yehudit-garnikol-3.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@koheletforum\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"14 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/\",\"name\":\"Israel's Right to Apply Civil Law in Judea and Samaria - kohelet\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/\u05d4\u05ea\u05e0\u05d7\u05dc\u05d5\u05ea-\u05ea\u05e7\u05d5\u05e2-\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d3\u05d9\u05ea-\u05d2\u05e8\u05e0\u05d9\u05e7\u05d5\u05dc-yehudit-garnikol-3.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-02-08T11:07:55+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-02-08T11:08:00+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/\u05d4\u05ea\u05e0\u05d7\u05dc\u05d5\u05ea-\u05ea\u05e7\u05d5\u05e2-\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d3\u05d9\u05ea-\u05d2\u05e8\u05e0\u05d9\u05e7\u05d5\u05dc-yehudit-garnikol-3.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/\u05d4\u05ea\u05e0\u05d7\u05dc\u05d5\u05ea-\u05ea\u05e7\u05d5\u05e2-\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d3\u05d9\u05ea-\u05d2\u05e8\u05e0\u05d9\u05e7\u05d5\u05dc-yehudit-garnikol-3.jpg\",\"width\":800,\"height\":600},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Israel’s Right to Apply Civil Law in Judea and Samaria\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/\",\"name\":\"\u05e4\u05d5\u05e8\u05d5\u05dd \u05e7\u05d4\u05dc\u05ea\",\"description\":\"\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/#organization\",\"name\":\"\u05e4\u05d5\u05e8\u05d5\u05dd \u05e7\u05d4\u05dc\u05ea\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/\u05dc\u05d5\u05d2\u05d5-\u05e7\u05d4\u05dc\u05ea-\u05e2\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05ea-SVG.svg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/\u05dc\u05d5\u05d2\u05d5-\u05e7\u05d4\u05dc\u05ea-\u05e2\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05ea-SVG.svg\",\"width\":292,\"height\":459,\"caption\":\"\u05e4\u05d5\u05e8\u05d5\u05dd \u05e7\u05d4\u05dc\u05ea\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Kohelet.org.il\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/koheletforum\"]}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Israel's Right to Apply Civil Law in Judea and Samaria - kohelet","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Israel's Right to Apply Civil Law in Judea and Samaria - kohelet","og_description":"\u201cI will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,\u201d President Donald Trump said in response to a question from a journalist last September. The statement is one of the few aspects of his foreign policy that appears to have cheered Democrats. It came after a symbolic, nonbinding vote in the Knesset in support of […]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/","og_site_name":"kohelet","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Kohelet.org.il\/","article_modified_time":"2026-02-08T11:08:00+00:00","og_image":[{"width":800,"height":600,"url":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/\u05d4\u05ea\u05e0\u05d7\u05dc\u05d5\u05ea-\u05ea\u05e7\u05d5\u05e2-\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d3\u05d9\u05ea-\u05d2\u05e8\u05e0\u05d9\u05e7\u05d5\u05dc-yehudit-garnikol-3.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_site":"@koheletforum","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"14 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/","url":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/","name":"Israel's Right to Apply Civil Law in Judea and Samaria - kohelet","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/\u05d4\u05ea\u05e0\u05d7\u05dc\u05d5\u05ea-\u05ea\u05e7\u05d5\u05e2-\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d3\u05d9\u05ea-\u05d2\u05e8\u05e0\u05d9\u05e7\u05d5\u05dc-yehudit-garnikol-3.jpg","datePublished":"2026-02-08T11:07:55+00:00","dateModified":"2026-02-08T11:08:00+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/\u05d4\u05ea\u05e0\u05d7\u05dc\u05d5\u05ea-\u05ea\u05e7\u05d5\u05e2-\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d3\u05d9\u05ea-\u05d2\u05e8\u05e0\u05d9\u05e7\u05d5\u05dc-yehudit-garnikol-3.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/\u05d4\u05ea\u05e0\u05d7\u05dc\u05d5\u05ea-\u05ea\u05e7\u05d5\u05e2-\u05d9\u05d4\u05d5\u05d3\u05d9\u05ea-\u05d2\u05e8\u05e0\u05d9\u05e7\u05d5\u05dc-yehudit-garnikol-3.jpg","width":800,"height":600},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/israels-right-to-apply-civil-law-in-judea-and-samaria\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Israel’s Right to Apply Civil Law in Judea and Samaria"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/","name":"\u05e4\u05d5\u05e8\u05d5\u05dd \u05e7\u05d4\u05dc\u05ea","description":"","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/#organization","name":"\u05e4\u05d5\u05e8\u05d5\u05dd \u05e7\u05d4\u05dc\u05ea","url":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/\u05dc\u05d5\u05d2\u05d5-\u05e7\u05d4\u05dc\u05ea-\u05e2\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05ea-SVG.svg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/\u05dc\u05d5\u05d2\u05d5-\u05e7\u05d4\u05dc\u05ea-\u05e2\u05d1\u05e8\u05d9\u05ea-SVG.svg","width":292,"height":459,"caption":"\u05e4\u05d5\u05e8\u05d5\u05dd \u05e7\u05d4\u05dc\u05ea"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Kohelet.org.il\/","https:\/\/x.com\/koheletforum"]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/11906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-category?post=11906"},{"taxonomy":"custom-tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom-tags?post=11906"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}