Three of Israel's most experienced defense and negotiation figures have issued an unusually blunt warning five days before the October 27 election: the next government must decide the future of Judea and Samaria openly, through the Knesset, rather than one administrative file at a time.
Writing in The Jerusalem Post on October 19, 2026, former Shin Bet director and Israel Navy commander Ami Ayalon, former chief negotiator Gilead Sher, and entrepreneur Orni Petruschka argued that decisions taken in February 2026 on land registration in Area C amount to a transformation too consequential to be left to bureaucratic accumulation.
What happened in February 2026
According to The Jerusalem Post, the government authorized the resumption of land-registration procedures in Area C in February, allocated an initial NIS 244 million for the 2026-30 period, and created new positions to carry the process out. Hundreds of former senior security and government officials petitioned the High Court of Justice, arguing the measures and related administrative changes amount to de facto annexation. The government rejects that characterization, describing the steps as matters of security, land administration, and strengthening Israeli control.
The authors make a point that should resonate with every Zionist: except for the eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods united with the capital immediately after the Six Day War, Israel has not formally annexed any part of the West Bank in nearly six decades. Sovereignty, they argue, can arrive incrementally through planning, jurisdiction, and regulation, without an explicit national decision.
Why the security argument matters
Ayalon, who commanded the navy and later ran the Shin Bet, does not idealize the Palestinian Authority. He and his co-authors acknowledge its serious shortcomings. But they note that Israeli security officials have long regarded coordination with the PA as a working instrument for disrupting terror attacks.
Their warning is concrete: policies that fragment territory or squeeze the PA economically could collapse it, and the vacuum would be filled by radical armed groups. That would hand the IDF direct security responsibility for a large hostile population while Israeli communities remain under threat on multiple fronts, with a heavy financial and administrative bill for civilian control.
The authors also raise an uncomfortable domestic point. Decisions that grant governmental legitimacy to land takeovers in Judea and Samaria, they write, risk acting as a tailwind for Jewish terrorism, which they say is rising while state authorities look away. For a nation whose army is its most trusted institution, that charge from a former Shin Bet chief cannot be dismissed.
Jerusalem, the region, and the Abraham Accords
The stakes reach beyond the hills of Samaria. Jordan's security relationship with Israel, anchored in the peace treaty signed after Israel reunited Jerusalem in 1967, gives Amman a direct interest in West Bank stability. Egypt holds the keys to Sinai security and the Gaza file. And the authors recall an explicit Israeli commitment embedded in the Abraham Accords: unilateral changes that make a negotiated regional framework more remote could stall further normalization, including the ambitious architecture envisioned with Saudi Arabia.
They add that settlement-related policies are already straining relations with governments and international institutions, exposing Israeli officials and military personnel to legal and diplomatic pressure abroad. Israel's silence on such fronts has already cost it dearly, as