Israel is putting key responsibilities in the occupied West Bank under an administrator who answers to a hard-line government minister who favors annexation of the territory, in what analysts and human rights activists describe as the latest step toward the far right’s aim of expanding Israeli settlements there.

The administrative move has been a longtime goal of Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister and settler leader, and increases his formal authority over many areas of civilian life, including building and demolition permits, a crucial tool for settlers who view construction as a way to strengthen their grip on the West Bank.

It follows a series of measures that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, has imposed in the West Bank since the war in the Gaza Strip began Oct. 7. It has cracked down on the territory with near-daily military raids, emboldened settlers and enacted new regulations that have put additional economic pressure on Palestinians.

The latest order, which creates a civilian head of an area previously overseen by the military, was issued as a decree by the military Sunday and is part of an agreement hammered out among government ministers after a long debate, according to Israeli media reports. It names a deputy head of the civil administration in the West Bank who will answer to Smotrich, an ultranationalist member of Netanyahu’s coalition.

Settlers like Smotrich want to build more Israeli settlements across the West Bank on land that Palestinians hoped would be the core of a future Palestinian state. While previous Israeli governments and generals have built and protected hundreds of settlements, the latest order would likely accelerate that process, analysts and activists said.

Critics have already accused Smotrich and his allies of failing to clamp down on illegal settlement construction and violence committed by settlers, and of thwarting measures to enforce the law.

“We are speaking about a change with a very clear political dimension to permit all kinds of plans for building settlements very quickly and without any obstacles,” said Michael Milshtein, an author and expert in Palestinian studies at Tel Aviv University.

The military has for decades been responsible for civil administration in most of the West Bank as well as for security, and critics say the shift to civilian administration, a long-standing aim of Smotrich, ties decision-making more closely to Israeli domestic politics. Analysts noted, however, that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant would retain input and could block certain measures.

Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Ir Amim, an Israeli nongovernmental organization, said that the order was “historic” because “for the first time you have in a formal way management in the West Bank that is not done through the army but through the Israeli civil political system.”

A spokesperson for Smotrich did not respond to a request for comment.

The person named to fill the new administrative post, Hillel Roth, is a settler and a member of the religious nationalist community who will likely act to facilitate Smotrich’s agenda, analysts said.

Milshtein noted that Smotrich has separately aimed to weaken the Palestinian Authority, which administers some parts of the West Bank. Smotrich announced in May that Israel would withhold revenue from the Authority, worsening its severe fiscal crisis.

Since Israel occupied the West Bank, previously controlled by Jordan, in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the government has encouraged Jews to settle there, providing land, military protection, electricity, water and roads. More than 500,000 settlers now live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the territory.

Most of the world considers the settlements illegal. Some Israeli Jews justify settlement on religious grounds, others on the basis of history — both ancient and modern.