Prime Minister Netanyahu does not seek a negotiated peace with the Palestinians; instead, he perpetuates constant hostilities as a means to incrementally seize ever more territory in the West Bank and Gaza—territory he knows he could never secure at the negotiating table. Israel’s post–October 7 policy in the West Bank amounts to a deliberate strategy of annexation implemented through illegal administrative integration, settlement expansion, and organized settler violence. Cumulatively, this would allow Netanyahu to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state and ultimately realize his goal of establishing greater Israel by any means necessary, however beastly.

Israel’s current governing coalition has taken a series of structural measures that convert the West Bank’s military administration into a civilian one, integrate settlements into Israel’s domestic systems, and entrench permanent demographic and territorial changes. These moves go beyond ordinary occupation and align with what the International Court of Justice and UN bodies describe as “de facto annexation” and the consolidation of an apartheid like regime in violation of international law.

Territorial Consolidation
A cornerstone of this transformation is the transfer of key powers over settlements from the military commander to Civil Administration, particularly to the bigoted Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who was granted such powers in the Defense Ministry. This shift situates core aspects of West Bank governance inside Israel’s internal bureaucracy, blurring the distinction between sovereign territory and occupied land and directly contradicting the law of occupation, which requires a separate, temporary regime.

Smotrich has explicitly framed this process as groundwork for applying Israeli sovereignty forever both in Gaza and over the West Bank, stating that “the year 2025 will be the year of sovereignty in the West Bank…” The Israeli government has opened dozens of roads around settlements and outposts, connecting Jewish communities while restricting Palestinian movement and enabling further land seizures that ruthlessly strip the Palestinians of their principal source of livelihood.

Palestinians face systemic denial of building permits across most of Area C (controlled and administered by Israel), making “illegal construction” almost unavoidable; Israel then deploys demolitions and forced displacement to clear “strategic” areas. From November 2023 to October 2024, at least 1,779 Palestinian structures were mercilessly demolished in the West Bank, forcibly displacing 4,527 people and further shrinking Palestinian territorial presence.

At the same time, Israel advanced plans for more than 10,300 housing units in West Bank settlements, supporting at least 49 new outposts, alongside plans for over 20,000 units in East Jerusalem. These illicit activities serve the project of territorial reengineering designed to obliterate Palestinian roots from their land, preempting the emergence of a viable Palestinian state.

Settler Militarization and State-Enabled Violence
Following Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack, Israel dramatically expanded its legitimization of settler violence. Thousands of settlers were incorporated into official security structures or armed with state-issued weapons, blurring the line between irregular settler militias and state security agents and embedding them in the machinery of control over Palestinians.

The UN and human rights reporting reveal that rampant settler-initiated brutality surged to a harrowing crescendo, averaging 118 incidents per month in 2024, often in the presence or with the participation of Israeli forces. These attacks involved killings, beatings, property destruction, and forced expulsions of Palestinian communities. Yet, accountability remained minimal, indicating tacit or explicit state support for settlers’ brutal and terrorizing violence against the Palestinians to consolidate territorial control.

Airstrikes and Property Destruction
Although Israel is not at war in the West Bank, its forces have repeatedly used heavy battlefield weapons—including airstrikes—in urban refugee camps such as Jenin and Tulkarem. By October 2025, UN monitoring documented at least 108 airstrikes in the West Bank, killing 445 Palestinians and displacing an estimated 30,000–40,000 people, while destroying significant parts of the targeted camps, which amount to nothing less than crimes against humanity.

This level of force, deployed outside a declared armed conflict and on territory under prolonged occupation, deepens the depopulation of key areas and entrenches the message that Palestinians lack security anywhere the state seeks tighter control. For Israel, ‘security justifications’ are regularly used to rationalize large-scale destruction and displacement.

Between October 7, 2023 and October 17, 2025, at least 1,001 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, by Israeli forces and settlers—roughly one in five of them a child. This reflects a systemic, morally depraved policy that renders Palestinian presence precarious and facilitates the normalization of Israeli settlements and sovereignty claims.

Sovereignty and the “Death” of Palestinian Statehood
Explicit political statements and parliamentary acts underline the governing coalition’s intent. In July 2025, the Knesset adopted a resolution affirming Israel’s “natural, historical, and legal right” to the entire Land of Israel and calling on the government “to extend Israeli sovereignty, including law, jurisdiction, and administration, over all areas of Jewish communities… in Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley.”

During the debate, Likud MK Dan Illouz stated that “for the first time, the Knesset is officially expressing its support for applying sovereignty over Judea and Samaria” and insisted these areas “are not bargaining chips.”

Erasing Palestinian Identity
In the West Bank, Israel operates separate legal systems, whereby settlers live under Israeli civil law, enjoy full political and civil rights, and receive extensive state services. At the same time, the Palestinians remain subject to military rule, sweeping movement restrictions, and systematic denial of building and planning rights. This entrenches a system of demographic and territorial engineering that systematically benefits Israeli Jews over Palestinians.

The pattern of killings, forced displacement, property destruction, and institutionalized discrimination fits key indicators used by UN bodies and independent experts to characterize regimes of apartheid: fragmentation of the oppressed population, segregation into enclaves, denial of political participation, and use of extraordinary violence to maintain domination. Together, they function as a central tool of de facto annexation that systematically erases the Palestinians’ national identity.

While Trump busies himself collecting fees for his ‘Board of Peace,’ allegedly in pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian peace, he has yet to utter a single word to halt Netanyahu’s ruthless violations in the West Bank—actions only he, as president, can check to prevent the obliteration of any remaining hope for a two-state solution.

Netanyahu and his fervent messianic regime will stand condemned, having shackled Israel to an endless vortex of violence and peril because Palestinians uphold their immutable right to resist unyieldingly until they achieve their absolute, unassailable right to statehood.
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Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.