While world attention remains focused on the nearly eleven-month conflict in the Gaza Strip, which has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 Palestinians, Israel continues to consolidate its political and territorial gains in the occupied West Bank.
Following the October 7 Hamas-led attack, Israeli politicians took advantage of the situation to give the green light to the largest land grab in the occupied West Bank in three decades: an area of almost 1,270 hectares in the Jordan Valley.
Settlement observers have reported that the land grab will link Israeli settlements along a key corridor bordering Jordan, and warn that the move threatens the viability of a future Palestinian state.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric described the measure as “a step in the wrong direction” and stressed: “We want to move towards a negotiated two-state solution.”
Despite the International Court of Justice’s ruling in July declaring Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories illegal, Israel continues to pursue its expansionist agenda.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler, recently unveiled plans to further expand settlements in the West Bank, pledging to consolidate Israel’s control over the territory and “prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
At least 18 Palestinians have been killed in the northern West Bank since Wednesday as Israel launched its largest military incursion into the occupied territory since the Second Intifada.
Israeli security forces described the operation as an “anti-terror operation to thwart terrorism” in Jenin and Tulkarm.
The operation is a large-scale operation in which Israeli forces are targeting several Palestinian cities simultaneously, including Jenin, Tulkarm, Nablus and Tubas.
Analysts said The new Arab that this new operation, in addition to Israel’s extensive settlement project, is being carried out under the “perfect cover” of the ongoing Israeli war against Gaza.
Israel is using the opportunity to advance its long-standing settlement program, aimed at controlling as much land as possible, displacing Palestinian residents and undermining the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) ability to achieve political gains.
The fragmentation of the West Bank
“Over the past decades, the Israeli occupation has steadily advanced its geographic consolidation in the West Bank,” said Ahmad Abu Al-Hijaa, an expert on Palestinian affairs, in an interview with The new Arab.
He pointed out that although these expansionist efforts had begun long before the Gaza war, the conflict had offered Israel “a strategic opportunity to accelerate these plans”, thereby de facto “subordinating the West Bank to Israel”.
In March, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry reported that at least 40 Bedouin communities across the occupied West Bank had been forcibly displaced due to increasing attacks and crimes by Israeli settlers. Abu Al-Hijaa argues that Israel is using settlers as a tool to implement its plans for the West Bank.
“The settlers are the instruments through which the decisions of the Israeli government are implemented. The coordinator of the civil administration, practically the prime minister of the West Bank, is the real ruler here,” he said. The new Arab.
He adds that Israeli settlers have used the war as a pretext to expel indigenous Bedouin communities from the Maarijat region east of Ramallah and the Jordan Valley, taking control of hundreds of thousands of dunams.
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“The occupation has turned the West Bank into an increasingly uninhabitable, hostile territory for the Palestinians,” he said.
This is Israel’s first significant success on the ground. The second, he argues, is the erosion of the Palestinian political presence in the West Bank.
“The Israeli government has systematically stripped the Palestinian Authority of all the powers it had previously been granted under various agreements, reducing it to a mere administrative unit with no real authority,” Abu Al-Hijaa added.
With the exception of parts of Jenin in the northern West Bank, “90 percent of the territory of the West Bank is no longer geographically connected,” he continued.
“There is no longer any continuity between the towns and the surrounding villages, and this has become a harsh reality that Palestinians have to deal with,” he explained. “Israel maintains complete control through settlements, bypass roads, outposts, buffer zones and military bases.”
Why the West Bank is important
Suleiman Basharat, director of the Yabous Center for Studies, said The new Arab that Israel’s interest in the West Bank is determined by its “geographical importance for the future Jewish state.”
“The West Bank serves as a strategic area for the settlement project.” This, he argues, is the core of Smotrich’s plan to expel Palestinians beyond the Jordan.
He also points out that Israel views the West Bank, especially the Jordan Valley, as a security buffer for the Jewish state. To this end, Israel has “increased its military presence by declaring large swathes of land military zones into which Palestinians are not allowed to enter.”
Israel has long pursued a variety of expansionist strategies, which Basharat said have only intensified since October 7. These include rapid and intensive settlement construction and exerting pressure on Palestinians through land confiscation, home demolition and denial of building permits in Areas B and C, effectively forcing Palestinians into overcrowded cities or “pushing them to migrate.”
“The goal is to capture as much land as possible, build and expand settlements, legalize outposts and achieve the Israeli government’s political goal of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
A third aspect of Israeli policy is a systematic approach to arrests and harassment under the guise of pre-emptive strikes to prevent the emergence of any resistance movements, Basharat added.
“Finally, Israel uses a policy of targeted killings, justified by self-defense or suspicion of attack, to enforce deterrence by force and create a psychological barrier that maintains fear in the West Bank,” he said.
These strategies, along with the destruction of infrastructure such as water and sewage networks, roads and communication lines, are forcing Palestinians to focus on survival and quiet reconstruction rather than pursuing political goals. According to the analyst, this “weakens the foundations of a possible future Palestinian state.”
“This policy also weakens the entire Palestinian support base in the West Bank, thereby significantly weakening any nationalist movements demanding change,” he adds.
A harsh reality
Mohammad Abu Alaan, an expert on Israeli-Palestinian affairs, believes that what is happening in the West Bank is essentially an Israeli policy of “ethnic cleansing and territorial control.”
“The goal is to capture as much land as possible, build and expand settlements, legalize outposts and achieve the Israeli government’s political goal of erecting hurdles on the ground that would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in any future political solution,” he said. The new Arab in the interview.
Israel has been committed to this policy since the formation of the far-right Israeli government before the Gaza war, he added.
He referred to Smotrich’s announcement of a new settlement in the Bethlehem area, which would serve as a bridge between the settlements of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. This would “create new hurdles on the ground” and “prevent any Palestinian geographical continuity”.
“In the past, there were announcements about expanding existing settlements or legalizing outposts. Today, new settlements are being established – this represents an escalation of the annexation process,” Abu Alaan noted.
He also stressed that Israel is taking advantage of the war in Gaza to carry out a series of military operations in the West Bank aimed at crushing any pockets of resistance and facilitating the implementation of its political plans, particularly in the areas classified as “C” in the Oslo Accords.
Since October 7, Israel has enjoyed unprecedented support and a Western-backed mandate to promote its settlement projects and strengthen its security grip on the West Bank.
“From this perspective, one can say that the future of the conflict in the West Bank is not directly linked to the war in Gaza. Rather, the war serves as a cover for accelerating action and consolidating a reality that could shape the next phase of the confrontation,” Abu Alaan said.
This article was published in collaboration with Egab.
