The Balasan Initiative for Human Rights convened a diplomatic briefing on 4 December 2025, at the Wonder Cabinet in Bethlehem, to mark the launch of its new report: “Israel’s Annexation by Stealth: Bethlehem as a Blueprint”. The briefing, which was attended by multiple diplomatic missions and partners, including the EU, Spain, the UK, and Australia, sought to engage with the report’s findings and discuss the accelerating impact of Israel’s annexation policies on Bethlehem and the broader occupied Palestinian territory.
Israel’s “annexation by stealth” has transformed Bethlehem into a model of gradual, illegal incorporation of occupied Palestinian land. Through settlement expansion, land confiscation, forced displacement, and demographic engineering, Israel is entrenching permanent control while erasing its last remaining Palestinian Christian population.
Last week, Israeli settler groups started bulldozing the lands in Beit Sahour in preparation for the recent establishment of the “Shdema” settlement outpost on the hilltop of Ush al-Ghurab in the town, which marks a substantial escalation in Israel’s settlement expansion and territorial consolidation in the Bethlehem district.
For 77 years, Palestinian women have carried a double burden of violence, as the oppressive occupation domination intersects with patriarchal control to turn their bodies into contested sites of power, punishment, and resistance. Each day, thousands of Palestinian women cross Israeli military checkpoints on their way to home, work, education, or healthcare, yet this daily necessity becomes an encounter with abuse, humiliation, surveillance, and bodily intrusion. The female body, under occupation, is transformed into a terrain where control over movement mirrors control over land, society, and sovereignty.
The violence Palestinian women face at Israeli checkpoints is neither random nor exceptional; it is a structural manifestation of patriarchy, where militarized power, gendered domination, and racialized control intersect to maintain occupation over both land and body.
Israel’s ID-based system of control over Palestinians affects their daily lives across geographic lines. Since 1948, Israel has imposed an ID system that categorizes Palestinians, impacting residency, movement, family reunification, and citizenship. This division creates distinct classes among Palestinians—those in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, and the diaspora—each facing unique restrictions that limit access to basic rights like movement, healthcare, education, and property ownership.
