HEBRON, West Bank, June 17 (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Israeli authorities officially approved plans on Wednesday to construct a 1,000-square-metre building for a Jewish school situated in the historic core of this Palestinian city.
The decision follows a significant policy shift that removes the local Palestinian municipality from the planning and construction process in the area, a move that alters a long-standing agreement regarding the occupied territory.
The approval for the school expansion was confirmed by Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister. This decision was announced only one day after Smotrich declared that Israel had unilaterally terminated key sections of the 1997 Hebron Agreement. Under that original protocol, the Palestinian municipality maintained civil authority over planning, zoning, and construction around the city’s center. By dismantling these specific clauses, the Israeli government has now consolidated direct planning and construction powers under its own control.
Smotrich framed the decision as a necessary step to exert sovereignty over the region.
In a statement regarding the project, he said, “We are continuing to build the Land of Israel in practice and to implement practical sovereignty in the settlements.”
The minister has previously expressed an explicit goal to prevent the development of a future Palestinian state by creating permanent facts on the ground.
The site selected for the new school expansion is located near the Cave of the Patriarchs, a location revered by Muslims, Jews, and Christians. This area serves as a primary flashpoint in the West Bank, where roughly 1,000 Jewish settlers currently reside among tens of thousands of Palestinians. The entire enclave remains under complete Israeli military security control.
The city’s historic center has faced decades of volatility, further complicated by the situation on Shuhada Street. Once the vibrant central commercial hub of Hebron, the street was closed to Palestinian vehicles and pedestrians following the 1994 massacre of 29 Muslim worshippers by an Israeli extremist. The military subsequently welded hundreds of Palestinian shops shut, leaving much of the area abandoned and earning it the label of a ghost town from various human rights organizations.
The decision has prompted strong opposition from Palestinian residents and activists who fear the loss of municipal control will lead to a total breakdown in essential public services. Issa Amro, a Palestinian activist living in the city, voiced concerns that the policy is designed to pressure families to leave their homes permanently.
“It means ethnic cleansing of Palestinian families from their homes, and more displacement,” Amro said.
While Palestinian leadership and organizations have condemned the move as an assault on property rights, local settler councils have praised the decision as a milestone for the expansion of the Jewish presence in the city. The development occurs amidst a wider surge in settlement activity across the region this month, including a proposed package to fast-track dozens of projects throughout the West Bank. Despite these domestic approvals, the United Nations and the European Union maintain that all Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory are illegal under international law.
