Colonial Legacy in Plain Sight
When Bloomberg reports that Israel is asserting “ownership rights” in the West Bank, allocating 80,000 dunams (nearly 20,000 acres) of land, the framing suggests a legal process. This is presented as an additional 20,000 acres declared “state land” since October 7, 2023, effectively building on existing, controversial policy. Most mainstream outlets echoed this narrative, emphasizing the sheer
scale of the land grab. What remains largely unsaid is that these “ownership rights” are predicated on a colonial framework. The tactic of declaring land “state land” has been employed consistently since the 1970s, enabling the expansion of illegal settlements. The United Nations General Assembly, in contrast, consistently refers to these actions as illegal under international law, citing the
Fourth Geneva Convention's prohibition on an occupying power transferring parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. This is the same playbook that led to the Nakba in 1948, where land policies were instrumental in dispossessing over 750,000 Palestinians. The current “ownership assertion” in the West Bank is not an isolated event but a continuation of decades of
systematic land seizure under the guise of legal technicalities, all while international attention is diverted to humanitarian crises elsewhere. It is a slow, methodical erasure of Palestinian presence, unfolding in real-time but disguised as administrative procedure. The silence from capitals that preach international law for others is deafening. The question is not if this expansion will happen,