Trump’s peace plan in Gaza is unacceptable to the Jewish supremacists in Israel’s ruling coalition. Even though it submits Gaza to an American-led occupation, even though it gives Israel a free hand to kill as it pleases, it holds out vague hope for a Palestinian state, at least in words. Their whole programme is to destroy any prospect of a Palestinian homeland.
However, for all their threats, these settler parties have not withdrawn from government. Against the West’s recognition of a Palestinian state in words, they are using their unprecedented power in government ministries to make it impossible in practice. Alongside the genocide in Gaza – and the invasions of Lebanon and Syria – they have been quietly ramping up their efforts to snatch the real prize: the West Bank, home to three million Palestinians.
However, by pursuing this recklessly, Israel’s coalition is shattering the system that has kept Palestinian subjugation within ‘manageable’ limits for decades. They are driving the West Bank toward an explosion, with grave implications for the whole Middle East.
Settlers in power
From 1967 to 1998, the West Bank was under direct Israeli occupation. But Palestinian resistance, exploding with the First Intifada, made this untenable. Fearful of losing control and under international pressure, Israel agreed – in the Oslo Accords – to cede small patches to the Palestinian Authority.
Israel was still in real control – of borders, water and the economy – but now parts of the occupied territories would be policed on their behalf by a loyal Palestinian force. Within this framework, successive Israeli governments have, over the last 30 years, directed their efforts at piecemeal conquest of the West Bank: annexations, demolitions, the ‘separation wall’, and by encouraging settlement. Their aim is not only to render a Palestinian state unviable, but to tip the demographic balance in these areas and eventually to force out the Palestinian population.
But things have accelerated since 2023 when Netanyahu, desperate to cling to power, entered into coalition with extremist settler parties. These fanatics strive for the total expulsion of the Palestinians from Palestine, whatever the means and no matter the consequences. Until recently, their designs – annexation of the West Bank, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Greater Israel – have been fringe fantasies.
Now, they are state policy. Illegal settler Bezalel Smotrich is Minister of Finance and has control of civil affairs in the West Bank. Khanist Itamar Ben-Gvir is Minister of National Security, with control over the police. Over the last two years, they have used these positions to render the annexation and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank an irreversible fait accompli. They have only stepped this up and become more explicit since Trump’s ceasefire.
In August, Smotrich announced the commencement of construction in the E1 area, which would cut East Jerusalem off from the West Bank, destroying the geographical contiguity of any hypothetical Palestinian state and effectively bisecting the West Bank. During that announcement, which came just after the Knesset had voted for a symbolic motion to annex the West Bank, Smotrich boasted:
“The Palestinian state is being erased from the table, not with slogans but with actions. Every settlement, every neighbourhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea.”
Since 2023, Israel has annexed more of the West Bank than in the last two decades combined. An unprecedented number of legal settlements have been approved – including the notorious settlements in the E1 area – and restrictions on illegal settler outposts have all but ceased. Meanwhile, Palestinian homes in Area C (the 61 percent of the West Bank directly occupied by Israel) are being demolished at a record rate of almost five per day.
The settlers themselves have been militarised and deputised. Since 2023, over 120,000 guns have been handed out by the state to settlers. Over 500 armed settler militias have been formed, and with much of the military deployed elsewhere, 7,000 settlers have been conscripted into the IDF to guard their own settlements.
The settlers have always been a useful auxiliary to the land-grabbing of the Israeli state. Before, however, this was kept within manageable limits. Now, they are being unleashed to seize the land they see as theirs by force. Either uniformed themselves or conspicuously guarded by occupation troops, they enjoy near total impunity.
With the encouragement of the state, settler violence has risen to its highest level since records began. At least eight settler attacks are currently occurring every day.
This goes far beyond vandalism and stone throwing: settlers armed with guns and clubs beat Palestinians, torch their buildings, steal or poison their flocks of sheep, destroy power and water sources, and tear up their olive trees. Civilians have been robbed, shot and beaten to death by settlers. So far, at least 57 Palestinian communities have been terrorised into evacuating their homes. 50 of those communities have been wiped off the map entirely.
Palestinian Authority in collapse
As settlers seize the villages, Area A – the enclaves formally under the control of the so-called Palestinian Authority (PA) – is being besieged.
Economically dependent upon Israel, it has been cut off. Hundreds of thousands of work permits have been cancelled, and billions of dollars of taxes are being withheld.
In consequence, the West Bank’s economy has contracted by a third. Unemployment has tripled, to 35 percent. Smotrich has threatened to go even further and unplug Palestinian banks from their Israeli counterparts.
The PA has been crippled. It is unable to pay the salaries of half of its employees. Schools have shut, and even the PA Security Forces – who collaborate in maintaining ‘Israeli security’ – have been given a pay cut, forcing many onto second jobs.
The Palestinian Authority has long been despised as a corrupt puppet. Now, as Israel carries out genocide and threatens a new Nakba, it is exposed more than ever as a gang of prison guards drawn from among the prisoners.
An October 2025 survey showed that 85 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank want 90-year-old Abbas to resign. His picked successor, the notoriously corrupt Hussein al-Sheikh, described by an Israeli official as “our man in Ramallah”, is even more unpopular. Almost half those surveyed now support the dissolution of the PA altogether.
In some areas, the PA has already lost control. From 2022, young people in the northern refugee camps – outside of any party – took their defence into their own hands by setting up armed local militias.
In late 2024, the PA tried to reassert itself by cracking down on these groups. It justified its beatings and siege tactics on the grounds that, if it didn’t do so, Israel would use the militants as an excuse to expel more Palestinians. Or as a baker from the West Bank put it:
“The PA are traitors, people don’t trust them. From the beginning, they have always been against the resistance.
“Everyone knows they are in Jenin to send a signal to the Israelis and to America that they can handle security and take control of Gaza again.
“Sooner or later Israel will run out of use for the PA and will discard them.”
This happened in early 2025. With the PA unable to restore order, Israel shoved them aside and did it themselves, using fighter jets, Reaper drones, and tanks. Jenin, Tulkarm and
Nur Shams – historic centres of the Palestinian resistance – were turned into ‘mini-Gazas’. Now the camps lie in ruins. 40,000 have been displaced, the largest number since the West Bank was annexed.
But this failed to extinguish the militias. It has just spread them further. This week, Israel launched a new offensive in the northern West Bank. Just like in Gaza, where a genocide did not defeat Hamas, Israel’s indiscriminate violence is fuelling the resistance it seeks to destroy.
In the cities, fear of Israel’s extreme brutality – over 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have been murdered by the IDF since October 2023 – has prevented a revolt, for now. As one young activist explained:
“People would still protest and take to the streets to fight for Palestine if there were leaders, but there are no leaders now.
“We tried some small protests after 7 October, but the crackdown was very harsh and there has been very little since.”
But the Israelis are pushing things to their limit. Life is becoming impossible. With the PA discredited, teetering, and assisting the occupation, people are being left with very few options. Already, 49 percent see armed struggle as the path to a free Palestine. The situation is combustible. All it would require is a spark. In the words of one senior IDF officer:
“One act of settler violence in which several Palestinians are killed could instantly turn the West Bank into a major war zone that draws the entire IDF into it.”
Even diehard Zionists see where this is leading. As US Ambassador Mike Huckabee warned: “Desperate people do desperate things”.
Blowback
The Israeli establishment sees the red lights flashing. They see that this would be a disaster for Israel.
Militarily, the IDF is overstretched and – according to IDF General Itzhak Brik – facing “the worst manpower crisis in its history.” Economically, Israel is creaking under two years of war on six fronts. Socially, it is divided: the army and the executive are publicly split, and protests against Netanyahu continue.
Internationally, it is a pariah. In Europe and America, support for Israel is at its lowest level in decades, if not ever. Israel’s outrageously brazen policy is radicalising workers and youth worldwide. Under pressure of million-strong marches, the encampments, and a general strike, even some of Israel’s most stalwart allies have been forced to condemn it in words.
An eruption on the West Bank would magnify all of these crises. A war would trap the IDF in a quagmire 16 times larger than Gaza. The collapse of the PA – which still administers schools, healthcare and infrastructure – would lead to humanitarian chaos, and would leave the Zionist regime with no one to negotiate with to pull things back. A Nakba would set the Middle East on fire.
Israel’s Arab neighbours are terrified. From the beginning of the genocide, they laid out the annexation of the West Bank as a hard red line.
Washington itself is uneasy. On a ‘Bibi-sitting’ mission – Trump has sent a stream of representatives to pressure Netanyahu into sticking to his Gaza peace plan – JD Vance described the Knesset’s vote to annex the West Bank as “stupid” and an “insult” that could jeopardise the ceasefire in Gaza. Trump himself reassured his Arab allies that:
“It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries… Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”
Their concern has nothing to do with the Palestinians themselves. Their difference with Israel is over tactics, not strategy. For the US and the Arabs, the Palestinian Authority has been the key to stabilising the Palestinian ‘problem’ and thereby maintaining the American status quo in the Middle East. By giving the occupation a Palestinian face, Israel was made palatable enough for the Arab states to normalise relations.
Israel’s escalations are upending all of that. Most of all, its push towards the forced exodus of three million Palestinians would destabilise Jordan and Egypt, risking their overthrow.
The same is playing out across the region. In Gaza, the West Bank, Syria and Lebanon, Israel is taking what it wants. Taking advantage of the weakness of its neighbours – and propelled by political crisis – it is pursuing its most ambitious war aims and asserting itself as a regional imperialist power in its own right.
But it is doing so unilaterally, without regard for its allies. By putting Israel first, above America, Netanyahu and co. are dynamiting the equilibrium of the past period, hastening the breakup of the American-led order, and opening the way for new conflicts and catastrophes.
Trump might want to wash his hands of this whole mess. But his term has proven many times just how difficult it is to disentangle America from its imperial commitments. Trump came to power hoping to end the war in the Middle East and then get the hell out of the region. Now he is chairman of the board of Gaza. As Netanyahu escalates all along the line – against Trump’s wishes – America is being dragged further into the bloody marsh to extricate Israel.
In any case, Israel’s ruling coalition has a mind of its own. They are not driven by what is rational for Israel, nor America. Netanyahu wants to stay in power, out of prison and at war. For that reason, he has devolved a huge amount of power on the coalition partners on whom he depends.
They want a final solution to the Palestinian problem. As long as they remain in control, they will go as far and as fast as possible, marching over every red line in pursuit of ethnic cleansing. To them, the PA is but an obstacle. Ben Gvir suggested that its officials should be assassinated.
But even if they fall, their term in power has set in motion forces that can’t necessarily be restrained. Tens of thousands of settlers have been armed, shielded by or integrated into the army, and emboldened. IDF officers already acknowledge that there is a “near-total breakdown of law enforcement” in the West Bank. The settlers are now a law unto themselves. Netanyahu and his gang have let the genie out of the bottle, and it won’t be easy to put it back.
An uncontrollable spiral looms. The Israeli onslaught continues, backed and funded by the ruling classes of the West. ‘Peace’ in Gaza might have temporarily cut across the rising tide of anger against these public massacres. But by placing such intolerable pressure on the Palestinians, Israel’s rampage is preparing an outbreak of violence which could open up an all-out war or another genocide.
Were that to happen, the Palestinian solidarity movement would erupt like a volcano. The Italian general strike in solidarity with Palestine was just a foretaste of what is being prepared in country after country.
