On March 2, 2025, Israel’s parliament discussed a new bill to annex large settlements and settlement blocs around Jerusalem with the goal of ensuring a permanent Jewish majority and thereby aborting any possibility of a future Palestinian takeover of any part of the city.

Known as the Jerusalem Metropolitan Bill, the legislation was introduced by Dan Illouz, a member of parliament and part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party. The bill seeks to absorb 10 Israeli settlements, including Beitar Illit, Ma‘ale Adumim, Givat Ze’ev, Efrat, Ma‘ale Mikhmas, as well as the numerous settlements in the southern Gush Etzion Regional Council (see Settlements), into Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries and apply Israeli law in these areas.1 In a bureaucratic sleight of hand, these settlements would both “come under the jurisdiction of the municipality and mayor of Jerusalem while at the same time retain their independent and autonomous jurisdictions and local authorities,”2 according to a press release by the Jerusalem-focused Israeli nonprofit Ir Amim.

“Israel has to act according to its interests and without fear,” Illouz told Haaretz. “This law is a major step towards full sovereignty [of the West Bank].”3

The Knesset (Israeli parliament) Ministerial Committee postponed making a decision on the bill for three months, but settlement and international law experts warn even its proposal is cause for alarm and signals what’s to come.

Under international law, Israel’s application of its own law over the occupied West Bank (including east Jerusalem) is illegal.

Israeli legislative efforts to annex the West Bank aren’t new. In 1980, Israel passed the Basic-Law: Jerusalem the Capital of Israel, declaring occupied East Jerusalem as part of the Israeli state.4 Following the law, Israel continued to expand the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem westward in order to maintain a Jewish majority in the city (see Where Is Jerusalem?).

In 2017, the “Jerusalem and Her Daughters Plan” aimed to annex the major settlement blocs surrounding Jerusalem and grant them the status of “daughter municipalities,” while downgrading the status of Palestinian neighborhoods located beyond Israel’s Separation Wall, like Kufr ‘Aqab and Shu‘fat refugee camp, so that they would be removed administratively from the Jerusalem Municipality and instead granted small local councils, removing them also from the voter rolls. The municipality is obligated to serve these neighborhoods, which fall within its official boundaries, but it sorely neglects them (see Neighborhoods beyond the Wall).

Referred to as the Greater Jerusalem Bill, the legislation was tabled at the time due to pressure from the US government. Yet in today’s very different political climate, annexation of West Bank settlements appears more likely.

“The Trump administration has always been . . . very indifferent to whatever Israel’s doing,” Diana Buttu, a Palestinian Canadian lawyer and former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization, told Jerusalem Story.5

President Donald Trump’s administration is expected to announce its position on Israeli annexation of the West Bank soon, which is part of why Israel is advancing this annexation bill, Buttu says.

“[This] has given Israel the green light to move ahead,” Buttu said.

But it’s not just Trump’s second term that’s motivated Israel to renew annexation efforts.

“The right wing is really feeling the sting of what happened in Gaza,” Buttu said. “They wanted to soundly ethnically cleanse the place, build settlements, and so on. And since they haven’t been able to, they’ve now turned their sights to the West Bank.”

While the bill’s underlying principle is solidifying complete Israeli control, a core element of this plan isn’t just territorial expansion but also establishing a Jewish majority.

“The bill specifically cites that it will increase the population in Jerusalem in a way that will preserve the ‘demographic balance’—an Israeli euphemism for population control,” Amy Cohen, international relations director at Ir Amim, wrote in the organization’s press release on the legislation.6

Since Israel’s illegal occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, Israeli lawmakers have adhered to policies and practices aimed at maintaining a population ratio of 70 percent Jews to 30 percent Palestinians in Jerusalem (see The History of Israeli Settlement Expansion in and around East Jerusalem from 1967 to 1993).

Yet their policies have largely failed; the Palestinian population has continued to increase and now officially stands at 39 percent of Jerusalem’s residents. Unofficially, because of the way that Israel tracks the data, it is likely considerably higher.7

“To address this trend, Israeli policymakers continue to increase their efforts to bolster the Israeli hold on East Jerusalem, while pushing out Palestinian residents. The advancement of this bill, which would add over 180,000 Israeli settlers to the demographic fabric of Jerusalem, is a prime example of these efforts,”8 Cohen wrote.

Jerusalem (combining both West and occupied East Jerusalem) is today the largest city in Israel, with 966,200 residents at the end of 2021, per the latest available Israeli official data. Of these, 576,600 were Jews, 375,600 were Palestinians (only those registered in the Population Registry were counted, although tens of thousands are unregistered), 3,500 were non-Arab Christians, and 10,500 had no religious classification. Therefore, adding 180,000 Jews to the city would significantly enlarge the city’s population and, critically, alter the ratio of Jews to Palestinians in the city to a point that would guarantee a more comfortable majority in the eyes of Israeli authorities.9

The bill’s language is unclear on the exact area to be annexed. Ir Amim estimates about 223 square kilometers of West Bank land would be annexed, noting this would more than triple the territory already annexed to East Jerusalem by Israel in 1967,10 at which time it expanded the original 6 square kilometers of what had been Jordanian Arab Jerusalem, divided from West Jerusalem since 1948, to 71 square kilometers. Given that Jerusalem (West and East) today is around 126 square kilometers, this would also nearly double the size of the city (see Where Is Jerusalem?).

“It would sever the necessary territorial contiguity between the Bethlehem and Hebron area, Jericho, and the Ramallah and Nablus area and would further isolate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank,” Cohen wrote.

If enacted, the changes called for in the bill would cut off more rural Palestinian communities from urban areas they rely on for work, shopping, health care, and other necessities of daily life.

For the most part, settlers’ daily lives would remain unchanged, but Palestinians will certainly feel the effects of this bill’s passage.

“They have all of the services, so it’s not going to make a big difference for the Israeli civilians, but it’s going to make a difference for the Palestinian public,” Munir Nusseibeh, cofounder and director of Al-Quds Human Rights Clinic, told Jerusalem Story.11

Nusseibeh explained that the bill’s implementation could lead to more construction of settler-only roads and checkpoints in the West Bank. Palestinian Authority (PA) ID holders are required to have a permit to enter Israel, so this would also mean these individuals will need a permit to enter any territory annexed by Israel.

“Israel has built many apartheid roads that are only for Israelis and Palestinians are not allowed to use in the West Bank. And this new thing will probably mean that Israel will establish an additional separate road system in that area in order to make sure people who have green (PA) ID cards cannot enter the newly annexed area in Israel,” Nusseibeh said. “If Israel decides to annex this, how will Palestinians’ already-violated freedom of movement be affected further?”

But the bill could do much more harm than just increase restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement. Annexation could also lead to greater displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank, since those who live in the areas to be annexed would likely become illegal residents on Israeli sovereign territory. The land intended for annexation includes Palestinian communities east of Jerusalem in an area designated by Israel for the E1 Development Plan, such as the Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar, which has long been targeted for demolition and seizure by the state and surrounding settlers. Annexing the land and not providing the Palestinians living there Israeli residency could allow Israel to then forcibly displace these communities.

“This means that Israel is going to forcibly displace more Palestinians from their homes, and that is another war crime,” Nusseibeh said. “[Israel is] going to continue to expand the settlements, here is another war crime.”

Yet Nusseibeh sees an upside if the legislation is passed: All eyes will be on Israel’s illegal actions in the West Bank. In 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s continued presence in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful and must end. Israel officially annexing parts of the West Bank may put it under increased international scrutiny.

“If the law is enacted . . . it’s going to bring, again, the attention of the international criminal court,” Nusseibeh said.

So a step toward implementing Israeli sovereignty in occupied territory means another instance of Israel violating international law.

That notwithstanding, the implications of the bill for Palestinians of Jerusalem are ominous.