In the occupied West Bank, the war on Gaza has served as a pretext for continued Israeli violence and expansion.
On Wednesday, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced new plans to expand settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, ignoring international law and the recent ruling by the International Court of Justice that Israel’s continued presence in the territory is illegal.
“No anti-Israel or anti-Zionist decision will stop the development of the settlement,” said Smotrich, who heads the Religious Zionist Party and is himself a settler.
“We will continue to fight against the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state. This is my life’s mission,” he continued on the same day the Israeli army launched a raid on the West Bank cities of Hebron and Nablus.
Furthermore, Israel has expanded its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, despite repeated international condemnations.
Analysts told Tel Aviv Tribune that the actions are part of a broader plan by Israel to annex and ethnically cleanse a region it has militarily occupied since 1967.
Consolidate the occupation
“Israel has been pursuing a maximalist policy of expansion in the West Bank for decades, but different governing coalitions have approached the same goals with different tactics,” Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a policy researcher at Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, told Al-Jazeera.
“What we are seeing now with Israel’s far-right governing coalition is rather an accelerationist approach that seeks to formalize what has for so long been a de facto reality on the ground.”
This process has intensified since October 7, when a Hamas-led attack on Israel left around 1,139 dead and about 250 others imprisoned, according to analysts.
Israel’s response has been brutal, with a continued bombardment of Gaza killing more than 40,000 people, while many more are expected to die from other consequences of the war even if the fighting were to stop immediately.
Ceasefire talks have not ended the violence, which follows a familiar pattern among Israelis.
During that period, Israel has killed more than 630 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, with the most recent death occurring overnight Friday as masked settlers rampaged through Palestinian towns, attacking people and setting fire to property.
Before the current war on Gaza, military raids and near-daily attacks on Palestinians by settlers in 2023 made it the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005 – the year the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) began recording casualties.
“There has been a real escalation since October because the settler violence is still supported and covered by the army and has reached new heights,” said Ori Goldberg, an Israeli political commentator.
“It will definitely get worse”
Israel’s continued actions in the occupied West Bank signal continued ethnic cleansing and possible total annexation.
“We are so close to the bottom,” Goldberg said, describing potential scenarios including “complete annexation” and “total war.”
While analysts say Israel’s expansionist policies have existed even under more liberal-leaning governments, they point out that far-right elements in the current administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are taking advantage of the Gaza war to advance their agenda.
“Israel is exploiting the ongoing war in Gaza to settle old colonial scores in the West Bank by imposing its sovereignty, annexing Area C and legitimizing the settlements, which ultimately leads to the expulsion and displacement of Palestinians – a goal of the religious settler coalition,” Ihab Maharmeh, a researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Area C is a division of the West Bank stipulated by the 1993 Oslo Accords, which were seen as the path to a Palestinian state. Areas A and B are inhabited solely by Palestinians, while Area C is entirely under Israeli security control.
Effects of sanctions
The expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is regularly criticized by the international community, including by the country’s main supporter and ally, the United States.
“It has been a longstanding U.S. policy, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, that new settlements are counterproductive to achieving lasting peace,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in February.
“These measures also violate international law. Our administration maintains firm opposition to settlement expansion. And in our view, this only weakens – not strengthens – Israel’s security.”
But in practice, the United States does little to dissuade Israel from implementing its illegal settlement policy, which is supported by most Israeli political parties.
In fact, the United States moved its embassy to West Jerusalem, despite Israel’s continued illegal occupation of the eastern half of the city, in 2018.
The following year, the United States recognized Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights, occupied Syrian territory. Both acts took place under former US President Donald Trump, but have not been reversed under President Joe Biden.
In July, the United States did sanction three settlers and five entities over violence in the occupied West Bank. But that was not enough to deter the Israeli state from supporting the settlers. Palestinians say the Israeli military actively supports and sometimes defends the settlers’ actions.
The current government, which includes Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, another far-right settler, has been instrumental in this policy. Both men have pushed for more settlements to be built as a step toward full annexation, and have been rewarded by Netanyahu with greater power over the occupied West Bank.
“The sanctions are aimed at settlers, but this government is largely run by settlers and so the sanctions remain at the individual level, not the organizational level,” Goldberg said.
“The settlers continue to do everything to harass Palestinians and expel them from their lands, including all kinds of small-scale ethnic cleansing, supported by the army.”
Unless the United States and other members of the international community change course and begin holding Israel accountable for its policies and actions in the occupied West Bank, ethnic cleansing and annexation will only continue.
“Sanctions against individual illegal settlers will do nothing to deter what is actually a larger, systematic process,” Kenney-Shawa said.
“Israel is acting with increasing audacity and arrogance because the international community has made clear that it is unwilling to take concrete steps to hold Israel to account.”