The Hebrew newspaper Haaretz said, on Sunday, that since the authority to approve the demolition of illegal buildings in the West Bank was transferred to the extremist minister, Bezalel Smotrich, the Civil Administration does not evacuate or demolish any illegally built Israeli buildings, except in a limited number and exceptional cases. .

And the Hebrew newspaper indicated that it obtained data showing that the pace of enforcement operations against illegal construction by settlers has decreased significantly since the installation of the current government.

It quoted sources familiar with the details, that since Smotrich assumed responsibility for the settlement file in the Ministry of Defense, there has been a significant change in the actual enforcement procedures to prevent the evacuation of buildings.

The data shows that during the whole of 2022, the rate of demolition of illegal structures erected by settlers was about 25 per month, while only two enforcement operations were carried out on average between January and May of this year.

The newspaper notes that the current official in charge of the settlement administration in the Ministry of the Army, whose authority is under Smotrich, is the extremist Yehuda Eliyahu, who, with Smotrich himself, founded the far-right Regavim organization that wages an open war against Palestinian construction in the West Bank.

Various sources said that there are reports about illegally built buildings with the aim of evacuating them, but the administration tends not to agree to this except in exceptional cases, such as if there is an immediate security need for that, or related to private land.

During the past few months, there were several cases in which forces came to demolish buildings or prevent the construction of buildings, but after the intervention of the political level, especially Smotrich, those forces withdraw without executing orders.

The Hebrew newspaper says that even before the transfer of powers to Smotrich, the enforcement of the law against illegal Israeli construction in the West Bank was weak, and the Civil Administration was mainly focused on demolishing Palestinian buildings.

She refers to old data, which shows that out of 187 orders to demolish new buildings issued from 2019 to the end of 2020, 159 of them were for Palestinians, and only 28 for settlers. Flowering settlements and some legalized.