Israel shifts settlement law enforcement from army to police

Israeli Army Minister Israel Katz announced on Friday that responsibility for enforcing the law on civil matters inside West Bank settlements passes from the military to the Israeli police.

Enforcement in the settlements has until now run through the military command that holds the occupied West Bank. Moving the civil side of it to the police changes which chain of command a complaint travels up, and which body a Palestinian with a case against a settler has to reach.

The practical question is what happens to a Palestinian who reports a settler. Under military authority the commander on the ground can restrain a settler directly; the head of the army's Central Command, Avi Blot, drew political attacks in Israel for trying to do exactly that in a recent case.

A Palestinian expert on settlement affairs, who was not named, called the transfer a step toward de facto annexation, on the reading that it treats the settlements as ordinary Israeli localities rather than as installations in occupied territory. That is an assessment of where the change leads, not a description of what has been enacted.

What has been enacted is narrower and still incomplete: an announcement, without a date for implementation and without published detail on which civil matters move and which stay with the army.