End game: What’s Israel’s plan in the occupied West Bank?

In the occupied West Bank, the war on Gaza has provided cover 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 International Court of Justice’s recent ruling that Israel’s continued presence there is unlawful.

“No anti-Israel or anti-Zionist decision will stop the development of the settlement,” Smotrich, who leads the Religious Zionist Party and is himself a settler, said.

“We will continue to fight against the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state. This is the mission of my life,” he continued on the same day that the Israeli military raided the West Bank cities of Hebron and Nablus.

In addition, Israel has been expanding illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, despite repeated international condemnation.

Analysts told Al Jazeera that these actions are part of Israel’s larger plan to annex and ethnically cleanse a region it has been militarily occupying since 1967.

Solidifying the occupation

“Israel has for decades been pursuing a maximalist policy of expansion in the West Bank, but different governing coalitions have approached the same objectives with different tactics,” Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a policy fellow at Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, told Al-Jazeera.

“What we’re seeing right now with Israel’s far-right governing coalition is more of an accelerationist approach that aims to formalise what has for so long been a de facto reality on the ground.”

That process has intensified since October 7, when a Hamas-led attack on Israel killed an estimated 1,139 people, with another 250 or so people taken captive, analysts said.

The response by Israel was brutal, an ongoing bombardment of Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 people while many more are expected to die from other impacts of the war, even if fighting were to stop immediately.

Ceasefire talks have not stemmed the violence, which follows a familiar pattern by the Israelis.

In that time, Israel has killed more than 630 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, the most recent death coming overnight on Friday as masked settlers rampaged through Palestinian towns, attacking people and setting property ablaze.

Before the current war on Gaza, near-daily military raids and 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’s been a real escalation since October because settler violence is always backed up and covered by the military and has gone through the roof,” said Ori Goldberg, an Israeli political commentator.

‘It’s bound to get a lot worse’

Continued Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank signal continued ethnic cleansing or even a possible full annexation.

“We are so close to rock bottom,” Goldberg said, describing potential scenarios including “complete annexation” and “all-out war”.

While analysts say Israel’s policies of expansion have existed even under more liberal-leaning governments, they point out that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current administration’s far-right elements are taking advantage of the war in Gaza to push their agenda.

“Israel has been exploiting the ongoing war in Gaza to settle old colonial scores in the West Bank by imposing sovereignty, annexing Area C, and legitimising settlements, ultimately leading to the expulsion and displacement of Palestinians – a goal for the religious settler coalition,” Ihab Maharmeh, a researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, told Al Jazeera.

Area C is a West Bank division stipulated by the 1993 Oslo Accords – which were seen as a path to a Palestinian state. Areas A and B are only inhabited by Palestinians, while Area C is fully under Israeli security control.

Effect of sanctions

Israel’s expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank is regularly criticised by the international community, including by the country’s major backer and ally, the United States.

“It’s been longstanding US policy, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, that new settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the press in February.

“They’re also inconsistent with international law. Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion. And in our judgement, this only weakens – it doesn’t strengthen – Israel’s security.”

But, in practice, the US does little to deter Israel’s illegal settlement policies – which are supported by most across Israel’s political divides.

In fact, the US moved its embassy to West Jerusalem, despite Israel’s continued illegal occupation of the eastern half of the city, in 2018.

The next year, the US recognised Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights, which are occupied Syrian territory. Both occurred during former US President Donald Trump’s administration but were not reversed under President Joe Biden.

In July, the US did sanction three individual settlers and five entities over violence committed in the occupied West Bank. However, that has been insufficient to deter the Israeli state from supporting the settlers – Palestinians say the Israeli military actively supports and defends the settlers’ actions at times.

The current government, which includes Smotrich and fellow far-right wing settler, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, has contributed strongly to this policy. The pair have pushed for more settlements as a step towards full annexation and have been rewarded by Netanyahu with more power over the occupied West Bank.

“The sanctions are against settlers, but this government is very much led by settlers and so sanctions remain on the individual and not the organisational level,” Goldberg said.

“Settlers continue to do everything to harass Palestinians and to actively throw them off their land including all sorts of miniature-scale ethnic cleansings that are backed up by the military.”

Unless the US and others in the international community change tack and start holding Israel accountable for their policies and actions in the occupied West Bank, the ethnic cleansing and annexation will only continue.

“Sanctions on individual illegal settlers will do nothing to deter what is a wider systematic process,” Kenney-Shawa said.

“Israel is acting with increasing boldness and hubris because the international community has made it clear that it is not willing to take actual measures to hold Israel accountable.”