A Hebrew opinion-style news analysis says a series of low-profile bureaucratic and legal moves has produced an unprecedented change in Israeli control and settlement policy in the West Bank, with Hebron as the clearest example. The most visible project is the long-planned covering of the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where structural elements are being manufactured at a special plant while heavy equipment prepares access routes for cranes and trucks. The article says the project is advancing with almost no media attention, and that it would let hundreds of thousands of annual worshippers pray in the main courtyard under a roof protected from the weather. It identifies former Hebron municipal committee chairman Abraham Ben Yosef as a longtime champion of the plan.
The article argues that the covering project reflects a broader strategy used by Religious Zionist ministers and officials: avoid headlines, work step by step, and remove legal and administrative obstacles quietly. It says Cabinet ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Orit Strock led a key decision transferring planning powers over Area H2 in Hebron, the zone allotted to the Jewish community under the 1997 Hebron Agreement, to Israeli planning authorities. According to the piece, that move effectively stripped the agreement of its limiting force and removed planning barriers that had constrained the Jewish community in Hebron for nearly three decades.
It also describes major institutional changes in the West Bank’s civilian administration, including the creation of the Settlement Administration and the appointment of Yehuda Eliahu to head it. The article says the administration gained expanded powers after a struggle with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, including a deputy head for civilian affairs, more authority taken from the Civil Administration and the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, and the transfer of legal authority from the Judea and Samaria legal officers to the Defense Ministry’s legal adviser, who reports directly to the Settlement Administration chief. The article says these moves helped neutralize one of the central legal obstacles to Israeli development in the area.
Over recent months, the piece says, the Settlement Administration changed enforcement against illegal Palestinian construction, altered the workings of the Higher Planning Council, and helped declare thousands of dunams as state land, while coordinating closely with the regional commander. It adds that the finance minister funded the effort, coalition lawmakers advanced legislation repealing the Disengagement Law in northern Samaria, and Orit Strock promoted agricultural farm outposts. The article says the strategy kept the European Union, the U.S. administration, and Israeli far-left groups from realizing the scale of the changes until the results were already in place, and that in recent months officials have begun formally inaugurating new communities, returning to Homesh, Sa-Nur, Ganim, and Kadim, and recognizing additional settlements.
