Israel’s Foreign Ministry publicly contradicted Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Tuesday, saying in an unusual English-language post on X that the Hebron Agreement has not been canceled. The ministry said the earlier cabinet decision dealt only with specific planning and building powers related to the Jewish community in Hebron and Jewish heritage sites there, and that no other changes were made.
Smotrich, who also serves as a minister in the Defense Ministry, announced the move during a ceremony marking the inauguration of the new settlement of Doran in the Mount Hebron area. He said that overnight the civil planning and construction clauses in the 1997 Hebron Agreement had been canceled, and that the Higher Planning Council in Judea and Samaria had approved measures removing the Palestinian Hebron municipality’s authority in those areas.
The agreement, signed as part of the Oslo Accords, divided Hebron into Palestinian H1 and Israeli security-controlled H2. Even in H2, the Palestinian municipality retained some civilian authority, including planning approvals, construction, and infrastructure development. Smotrich said, “For many long years, one of the most absurd clauses of Oslo remained in place, when powers concerning the Jewish community in Hebron and the holy sites were dependent on the Hebron municipality.”
The Foreign Ministry’s statement said that, contrary to Smotrich’s claim, the agreement itself was not revoked. It stressed that the cabinet decision from several months ago was limited to planning and construction authority, following years of what it described as complete lack of cooperation from the Hebron municipality on those matters.
