The half-century struggle in Israel over what to do with the West Bank has effectively ended. Various processes of de facto incorporation, including the transfer of three-quarters of a million Israeli citizens into areas east of the green line and the effective rejection of all negotiating opportunities toward a political settlement, have resulted in a state of affairs featuring Israel as the effective ruler of all territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. But much of what has become real hasn’t been codified, producing a legal and political situation as dynamic as it is complex. Multiple proposals have appeared in recent years, including many new Knesset bills offered by members of the current ultra-right-wing government, to adjust the legal status of parts of the territory beyond the green line. Yet these proposals, usually advanced as necessary to realize the country’s sovereignty or to make “annexation” real, either avoid using the words “sovereignty” (Ribonut) or “annexation” (sipuach) or carefully avoid giving them operational meaning. The paper will offer five mutually reinforcing explanations for this puzzle. Since 1948, most areas treated as sovereign Israel were never subject to official annexation or sovereignty declaration, but assumed that status via de facto processes similar to those that have occurred in the West Bank after 1967. Both Israeli courts and the executive branch have avoided giving “Ribonut” operational meaning, even in the one statute that uses that term. The indefinite nature of the concepts of “annexation” and “sovereignty” in international law opens space for changes in the status of a territory to occur as a result of the unarticulated strategy of using the consequences of long-term control that Israel has employed. The ordinary language of advocates of new legal measures directed at the status of territories occupied in 1967 shows that the core meaning of the term “Ribonut” for these advocates has much more to with the psychological sensation of, and political campaign to establish, Jewish supremacy, than with their legal status. By avoiding terminology which explicitly incorporates Arab-inhabited territory into Israel, advocates of “annexationist” measures intend to reduce future opportunities for non-Israeli inhabitants of these areas to gain political rights. Our paper will corroborate the “one-state reality” from a legal point of view. This will show that for Israeli, Palestinian, and international actors debates over annexation are consequential for the constraints and opportunities they highlight with respect to coming struggles for democratization.