GENEVA - The decision by Israel's security cabinet to expand land expropriation in the occupied West Bank will consolidate annexation, may amount to aggression under international law and will further entrench an occupation ruled illegal by the world's highest court, a UN expert warned today.
"These measures are not routine administrative adjustments. They are deliberate, incremental steps toward permanent annexation, advanced piece by piece, in broad daylight, and with total impunity," said Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. "They will only deepen and entrench an occupation that the world's highest court has determined to be unlawful, further eroding the rights of Palestinians."
On 8 February 2026, the Israeli security cabinet ratified measures facilitating expanded land registration and property acquisition in the occupied territory. The changes make it easier for Israeli nationals and foreigners to acquire property in settlements, accelerating territorial conquest. By opening land registries to public claims, Palestinian landowners are rendered increasingly vulnerable to pressure, dispossession, and coercive transfer.
Albanese warned that the annexation of occupied territory is categorically prohibited under international law, and violates Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and the foundational principle that territory may not be acquired by force. This may also entail liability for foreigners participating in such an overtly unlawful activity.
"This rule, that is the foundation of the post-1945 world order, has been repeatedly reaffirmed by the Security Council, the General Assembly, and the International Court of Justice. And yet Israel continues to defy it," the expert said.
In its July 2024 Advisory Opinion, the ICJ confirmed that Israel's settlement policy is irredeemably illegal and clarified the obligation of all States not to recognise as lawful the illegal situation arising from Israel's conduct, nor to render aid or assistance in maintaining it.
Albanese said the new measures must be understood within that legal context.
Settlement expansion constitutes a transfer of the occupier's civilian population into occupied territory, prohibited under Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention and criminalised under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Legislative facilitation of such transfer entrenches an ongoing serious breach and criminal responsibility.
"The architects of the measures, including the Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich and the Minister of Defence Itamar Ben-Gvir, have openly and repeatedly stated that the objective is to accelerate settlement development for 'Jewish self-determination' only," the Special Rapporteur said. "This is not neutral governance. It is a criminal policy pursuing ethnic cleansing that must be halted immediately."
The legislation expands Israeli administrative authority into Areas A and B, which under the Oslo framework were designated for Palestinian civil and security control. Extending Israeli enforcement and demolition powers into these areas directly encroaches on Palestinian governance. Combined with Israel's 2025 decision to take control of land registries in Area C-reversing the planned transfer of authority to Palestinian institutions-these measures undermine the territorial and administrative framework established by the Oslo Accords.
"Annexation does not produce stability," Albanese said. "It produces systemic discrimination, dispossession, and permanent subjugation."
She recalled that the ICJ has ruled that the prohibition of annexation and the right of peoples to self-determination are customary law from which no derogation is possible by any state. Breaches trigger obligations erga omnes - owed to the international community as a whole - to intervene, stop and redress those breaches.
"States must comply with their legal obligations: refrain from recognition, to withhold assistance, and to take effective measures to bring the unlawful occupation to an end," the Special Rapporteur said.
"States must therefore cut diplomatic, economic, and military ties with a state that has chosen to commit international violations and crimes as policy. There is no other way to restore credibility in international law and the United Nations as a whole."
