“Clearly it’s time for a quantum change,” Naftali Bennett, the education minister, who plans to introduce the annexation bill, said in an interview. “The incremental approach has not worked. We have to understand it’s a new reality. We have to go big, bold and fast.”

The Parliament seems poised to approve a law that few thought had any chance of passage just a few months ago: It would ultimately legalize settlement homes built illegally on private Palestinian land. Critics call this yet another form of creeping annexation.

Many Palestinians agree this is a critical moment. They fear Ma’ale Adumim will be just the beginning of the annexation of settlements in the West Bank, now home to roughly 400,000 Jews, and the end of the two-state dream.

“We believe in two states for two nations, but if they took that” — Ma’ale Adumim — “there will be no longer two states,” said Yousef Mostafa Mkhemer, chairman of the Organization of Jerusalem Steadfastness, which focuses on issues like Muslim holy sites, refugee camps and Israeli settlements. “There will be one state called Israel.”

Many Palestinians and peace activists argue that the line has already been crossed — that any annexation of Ma’ale Adumim, after so many years, would be a technicality.