Western leaders may be pushing for a Palestinian state, but in the West Bank, 'annexation is the reality'

While the world has been focused on the devastation in Gaza, "the annexation of the West Bank has become reality," Hagar Shezaf, Haaretz's West Bank correspondent, said on the Haaretz Podcast.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Shezaf explained, has created a system "that is accelerating" the process of integrating the West Bank into state institutions "while keeping the empty shell of the Civil Administration that represents military rule."

Shezaf is stepping down from her beat for a year of studies after six years of covering what she describes as a "deteriorating" situation in the territories, that is generally neglected by the Israeli media.

Despite settlement expansion continuing apace, violent extremist settlers becoming increasingly bold, and the direct and indirect displacement of Palestinian civilians from their homes by the Israeli military, "the West Bank is totally uncovered by Israeli news journalists," Shezaf said.

Most recently, her reporting called attention to the uprooting of 3,100 trees by the IDF alongside a village after an attempted terror attack by one of its residents. Shezaf described it as an "outrageous" act, and the army's attempts to justify it, she said, "cannot convince me that this is not collective punishment."

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