Israel seized planning and construction powers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, removing those civil authorities from Palestinian municipal control, officials said.
The step followed a decision by Israel’s Higher Planning Council on Monday night and was announced publicly on Tuesday by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who told a crowd at a settlement inauguration: "Yesterday we cancelled the Hebron agreements."
The move targets planning and construction authority at the Ibrahimi Mosque — also known as the Cave of the Patriarchs — and the adjacent area in Hebron’s H2 sector. Under the 1997 Hebron Agreement, signed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, Israel retained security control over H2 while civil powers, including planning and construction, remained with the Palestinian municipality.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry pushed back on Smotrich’s broader claim in a tweet, saying the Hebron Agreement had not been cancelled and that a cabinet decision made months earlier had addressed planning and construction authority only in the Jewish settlement and at Jewish heritage sites. The ministry also blamed "a complete lack of cooperation from the Hebron municipality." The two statements present a direct contradiction over whether the long-standing Hebron framework has been scrapped.
Palestinian officials responded sharply. The Palestinian Authority condemned Smotrich’s announcement as unlawful, and President Mahmoud Abbas’s office said, "Such unilateral measures are unacceptable and constitute a violation of the agreements signed by the Israeli side, as well as international law." Hebron Mayor Yusuf al-Jabari warned the change would alter "a political framework governing Hebron’s administrative, security and service arrangements" and called any unilateral modification "a serious breach."
Israeli and Palestinian actors framed the decision differently. Pro-settlement ministers and their supporters portrayed the planning move as restoring oversight of Jewish heritage sites, while Palestinian leaders and local officials said it was part of a pattern of unilateral steps that they view as edging toward de facto annexation of West Bank territory.
Critics on Israel’s political left also reacted. The Israeli group Peace Now described the action as politically motivated and attacked Smotrich directly, saying, "After the government promised victory and failed on all fronts, Smotrich the pyromaniac is trying to set the West Bank on fire" and calling the decision "a dangerous and irresponsible step of a failed politician who is ready to harm Israel’s interests and security in order to gather a few votes from the extreme right."
The Ibrahimi Mosque and Hebron’s Old City have drawn international attention before: in 2017 Palestine had the site inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage and World Heritage in Danger lists. The Hebron Agreement’s division of the city into H1 and H2 has long been the administrative baseline for who controls security and who handles civil governance, making any change to planning authority immediately consequential for municipal services, building permits and preservation of heritage sites.
Who is affected on the ground is immediate and familiar: the Palestinian municipality and civil authorities of Hebron stand to lose decision-making power over construction and planning at a site that sits at the center of contested claims. Israel maintains security control over H2, but how far the recent planning transfer will change day-to-day management, permit approvals, or the functioning of municipal services was not clarified in the announcements.
The most consequential unanswered question is operational: officials have not confirmed what concrete steps will follow the Higher Planning Council decision. Will Israeli civil planners begin issuing permits at the Ibrahimi Mosque, or will the change be limited to a legal reclassification affecting only parts of the site? With the Foreign Ministry denying the cancellation of the Hebron Agreement and ministers publicly declaring it ended, the gap between pronouncement and practical implementation remains the central uncertainty.
