The West Bank’s Ultra-Apartheid (and the Collusive International Silence)
Today, the West Bank is a nightmare of vicious settlement expansion, land seizure, economic strangulation, settler violence and forced displacement.
With the collusion of the Israeli military and police, the Israeli-occupied territories are effectively ruled by the Messianic far-right settlers who see their mob-like racist pogroms of Palestinians as a divine step to Final Redemption.
The ongoing year has accelerated the process from settlement expansion toward territorial consolidation and displacement. The scale is stark.
Displacement becomes systematic
By August 10, the UN reported 76 Palestinians killed in the West Bank, including 18 children; about 3,800 Palestinians had been displaced during 2026 through settler violence, demolitions and evictions, nearly half children.
More than 1,430 settler incidents had been recorded, affecting roughly 260 Palestinian communities.
The crucial point is not simply Jewish settler violence but its geographical and economic function. Settler attacks increasingly target homes, agricultural land, livestock, water and electricity infrastructure.
In a recent podcast, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right extremist who believes in Jewish racial supremacy, urged Israelis to kill “30 to 40” Palestinians in Gaza every night. He also supports aggressive, lethal actions against Palestinians in the West Bank, applying a similarly hardline approach through legislative, judicial, and security policies.
These statements no longer reflect a “lunatic fringe,” as often portrayed by the media in the West. They reflect the brutal repression of Palestinians that’s now the new normal. OCHA reports that displacement caused by demolitions, settler violence and access restrictions has averaged 17 Palestinians a day in 2026; twice the average of the preceding three years.
Since 2023, 127 communities have experienced full or partial displacement; 47 have been completely emptied.
The economic damage compounds the demographic pressure. UNCTAD estimates that West Bank GDP contracted 17% in 2024, while cumulative unrealized Palestinian GDP from occupation-related restrictions between 2000–24 reached $170.8 billion – about 17 times 2024 West Bank GDP.
The settlement economy in Area C and East Jerusalem, by contrast, generated an estimated $53 billion in 2024.
Great conjuncture
Right before Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, I warned about an impending war, as the status quo was approaching a boiling point in Gaza. After all, it was the 50-year anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.
In The Fall of Israel (2024), I used the term great conjuncture to refer to structural forces that account for a series of cumulative disasters in the Middle East, starting with the waves of Palestinian expulsions since the 1940s.
Second, it refers to the aggressive expansion of the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. The rise of the Messianic far-right has fostered settler militarization accelerating anti-Arab pogroms in the West Bank, which is being annexed into Israel.
Third, the great conjuncture is fueled by a half century of failed American diplomacy in the Middle East. The Fall of Israel showed how the US-Israeli ties moved from hedging and choosing sides to partnership and eventually a symbiosis. These are not ties that bind, but ties that blind. They account for 50 years of military destabilization in the region and U.S. complicity to genocidal atrocities, even ecocide – both in Gaza and Lebanon.
Finally, instead of fostering peace in the region, America’s massive military aid to Israel has amplified Israel’s parallel securitization degrading its economy, politics and military. Washington has provided at least $22 billion in direct military aid to Israel, alongside up to $12 billion spent on related U.S. military operations in the region, since October 7, 2023. From Gaza and beyond, Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinians and Palestinian children.
These four structural forces feed on each other forming a vicious cycle, thereby intensifying and broadening regional escalation. When I extended the argument into a book, these views were still seen largely as marginal. Today, things have dramatically changed. Even the bipartisan consensus over the U.S.-Israel ties has collapsed.
But this erosion came only after Gaza has been obliterated and ethnic cleansing escalates in the West Bank with the tacit blessing of the international community.
Ethnic cleansing from Gaza to the West Bank
In the Israeli occupied territories, ethnic expulsion has not been an accidental by-product but a recurring political mechanism. From Labor’s post-1967 Allon Plan through the Likud era and the Messianic far right, its logic has been cumulative as it has sought to
- acquire territory;
- fragment Palestinian space;
- make Palestinian economic and social life increasingly unviable;
- if massacres don’t suffice, use genocidal atrocities;
- expand Jewish civilian presence;
- and eventually convert temporary occupation into permanent sovereignty.
The objective is not simply “security,” nor even the exploitation of Palestinian labor, but the Judaization of territory and prevention of a sovereign Palestine.
The Palestinian expulsions are intimately linked to both ideology and political economy. Land, subsidized settlements, real estate and state resources create constituencies that benefit materially from Palestinian dispossession.
Gaza became the extreme version: bombardment, destruction of housing and infrastructure, displacement and proposals for population “transfer” created conditions in which Palestinians were physically removed and territory becomes available for redevelopment or settlement.
In the West Bank, the mechanism used to be more incremental: settlement outposts, land seizures, demolition orders, restrictions on building and movement, settler violence and pressure on herding communities.
In the absence of international penalties, sanctions and blockades, settlers have been dramatically emboldened. They avoid one spectacular expulsion but seek to make the remaining Palestinian communities progressively untenable.
Their goal is the “Judaization” of Palestine – death by a thousands cuts.
Apartheid and “ultra-apartheid”
Not only has Israel evolved into an apartheid state. It is practicing ultra-apartheid.
Classical South African apartheid was brutally exploitative but effectively accommodationist. White minority rule sought to preserve racial hierarchy, segregate the black majority, deny political rights and extract cheap labor. The system needed the black population to remain economically useful. As a result, black South Africans’ income relative to whites actually rose during apartheid, from 8.6% to 13.5% between 1948 and 1994.
Israel’s system goes “beyond” apartheid. Palestinians are subjected to differentiated legal systems, military rule, checkpoints, territorial fragmentation, restricted mobility and unequal access to land and resources, while Jewish settlers in the occupied territory fall under Israeli civilian law.
The occupied territories consequently resemble South African Bantustans: fragmented enclaves, walls, restricted mobility and economic dependence.
But the decisive difference is the end-state. Israeli apartheid is not designed indefinitely to contain and exploit a Palestinian population. It is an interim instrument for displacement and dispossession. Segregation reduces Palestinian territorial, economic and political viability while expanding Jewish settlement.
That distinction also explains why the West Bank is strategically more important than it may appear. Fragmentation is not merely a condition; it is the mechanism by which territorial annexation becomes politically and physically irreversible. Hence the Israeli “ultra-apartheid”: that is, apartheid plus an expulsive logic.
What makes Israeli ultra-apartheid different is its ultimate purpose: ethnic expulsions, even genocidal atrocities. It sees Palestinian labor as a redundant surplus that will eventually have to be expunged or decimated.
And it is ultra-apartheid – first in Gaza and now in the West Bank – that the international community is witnessing yet trying to ignore.
Smotrich’s “Decisive Plan” for Gaza
Meanwhile, the political machinery has moved toward annexation. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s control over the Civil Administration, land declarations and settlement approvals institutionalize de facto annexation.
As documented by The Fall of Israel two years ago, Smotrich is executing a decade-old plan. In 2017, when he was still a young Knesset member, he presented his “Decisive Plan” in closed religious Zionist circles. It represented an endgame of sorts for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The plan portrayed the conflict as devoid of any reconciliation. It rejected partition. It shunned any idea of a Palestinian state, or even Palestinian presence. Smotrich envisioned a singular state from the sea to the river, for one nation only: the Jewish people. True to his beliefs, he built on biblical allegories, which to him were no allegories at all:
When Joshua entered the land, he sent three letters to its inhabitants: Those who want to accept [our rule] will accept; those who want to leave, will leave; those who want to fight, will fight…
When they have no hope and no outlook, they will leave, just as they left in 1948.
Since October 7, Smotrich has championed his not-so-voluntary population transfer. The logic is simple: Eliminate the adversary, resolve the dilemma.
The approaching October 2026 Israeli election sharpens the incentive. The Knesset has dissolved and campaigning is underway. Today, four in ten Jewish Israelis favor full West Bank annexation and 55% want all settlements retained under Israeli sovereignty. That’s Netanyahu’s legacy.
As Israel approaches its October 2026 election, the question is no longer whether the occupation is becoming permanent, but whether the West Bank is being progressively emptied of Palestinians to make annexation irreversible.
The electoral center of gravity is not moving toward Palestinian statehood. It is moving further away from any reconciliation – with longstanding U.S. support.
Three West Bank scenarios
In the current status quo, there are three plausible future trajectories.
Accelerated annexation and “silent transfer” (most likely).
The present trajectory continues settlements expand, outposts become normalized, Area C is progressively absorbed into Israel, Palestinian construction remains restricted, and settler violence – mostly tolerated and inadequately restrained by the state – pushes vulnerable Bedouin and farming communities out.
There need be no formal annexation declaration. Facts on the ground accomplish the same result.
The UN’s 2026 reports verify the mechanism operating. Violence, demolition, restricted access, economic strangulation and displacement reinforce one another. The October election could strengthen this trajectory if Netanyahu requires the far right to construct another governing coalition.
Scenario II – Managed containment, not peace. A centrist or more pragmatic coalition emerges after the election and faces heavy U.S., European and Arab pressure. It slows settlement expansion, restrains the most provocative settler actions and restores some Palestinian economic access – but avoids dismantling the settlement architecture or recognizing full Palestinian sovereignty.
This would resemble a renovated Allon-plan/Bantustan model: Palestinian enclaves with limited autonomy surrounded by Israeli-controlled territory.
This could stabilize the system but only temporarily without resolving its underlying contradiction. But it would also set the stage for annexation by a subsequent conservative cabinet.
Scenario III – Rupture and international reversal. A major escalation – mass displacement, annexation, renewed Palestinian uprising, regional war, or a severe Israeli political crisis – could finally make the status quo untenable.
International recognition of Palestinian sovereignty, sanctions against settlement activity, economic pressure and an externally imposed political framework could halt territorial consolidation.
This is the least likely short-term scenario, but potentially the only route to reversing the trajectory.
The conflict can no longer be solved by Israeli-Palestinian bargaining alone. The asymmetry of power has made meaningful external intervention indispensable.
Bottom line: Gaza shows what happens when the expulsive logic is pursued through overwhelming military force. The West Bank is demonstrating a presumably more subdued version: settlement, fragmentation, coercion, economic pressure and incremental displacement.
The decisive question after the October election is therefore less whether Israel will “annex” the West Bank formally than how much of it can be absorbed – and how many Palestinians can be induced or forced to leave or decimated in new genocidal atrocities – before the process becomes irreversible.
The original commentary was published by Informed Comment (US) on Aug 30, 2026
Qusra Is Just a Warning: Israel’s Blueprint for the West Bank
If you want to understand the bleak future awaiting the occupied West Bank, do not look away. Just pay attention to the events unfolding in the small Palestinian town of Qusra, south of Nablus.
The story of the future of the West Bank begins here.
While much of the media is treating reports emerging from the area as simply another episode of “settler violence,” it is not. Qusra represents something far more consequential: a glimpse into the new Plan Dalet that Israel has in store for Palestinians.
Plan Dalet was the military blueprint through which Zionist forces conquered much of historic Palestine, village by village, during the Nakba.
The plan did not suddenly emerge in 1948. It built on military schemes dating back to 1945, developing into a strategy for conquering Palestinian towns and villages, destroying communities and expelling their inhabitants.
The significance of this history today is not merely symbolic. The Nakba was a process, implemented in stages. So, too, is the annexation of the West Bank.
Nor is this merely an intellectual argument. Israeli officials have openly invoked a new Nakba as an intended outcome. In November 2023, Avi Dichter declared: “We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” adding, “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”
True to form, this new Nakba carries many of the characteristics of the old one: coordinated violence, massacres, ethnic cleansing, forced displacement and land confiscation.
The genocide in Gaza represents the zenith of this violence – a more devastating manifestation, but a continuation of the original sin upon which the Israeli state was established.
While all eyes were on Gaza beginning on October 7, 2023, the West Bank was largely ignored, allowing Israel the space to escalate violence in all its forms to levels unseen in decades.
The result has been staggering. Since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,100 Palestinians in the West Bank, including over 240 children, and wounded thousands more. Tens of thousands have been detained, while more than 33,000 Palestinians remain displaced from the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps alone.
Now, back to Qusra.
Beginning on August 9, armed Israeli settlers surrounded three Palestinian homes in the Ras al-Ain area on the outskirts of the town.
They blocked access to the houses, erected tents outside them and cut water and electricity supplies. Families, including young children, were effectively trapped inside.
The Israeli military subsequently declared the surrounding area a closed military zone, restricting access by Palestinians, activists and journalists.
What emerged was not simply settler violence but a division of labor: settlers create the crisis; the army imposes the restrictions; Palestinian movement is curtailed; and the victims themselves are pressured to leave.
And the siege continued. As I write these words, the siege of the Qusra homes has concluded its second week.
Qusra is not incidental to this strategy. Israel has already confiscated its land for the settlement of Migdalim, while nearby outposts including Esh Kodesh have long been associated with attacks and attempts to seize Palestinian agricultural land.
Control of such areas is essential to the larger project of connecting settlement blocs, fragmenting Palestinian territory and transforming Palestinian communities into isolated enclaves.
A few years ago, the Israeli government behaved as though its plan to formally annex large swathes of the West Bank had been placed on hold. Yet, since October 7, annexation has moved from aspiration to obsession – in both words and action.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir oversaw the mass distribution of weapons after October 7, arming thousands of civilian security-squad members with rifles amid an already heavily armed settler population.
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has systematically worked to transfer powers over the West Bank from military administration to Israeli civilian authorities – one of the clearest institutional mechanisms of annexation.
And now another piece is falling into place: Defense Minister Israel Katz has ordered preparations to transfer law-enforcement responsibility over Israeli settlers in the West Bank from the military to the Israeli police, another critical legal step toward annexation.
The picture is becoming complete: settler militias, government funding, weapons, the army, police, civilian bureaucracies, courts and political decisions originating at the highest levels of the Israeli state.
Seen in this wider context, Qusra becomes a microcosm – and potentially a testing ground – for the mechanisms through which larger-scale annexation can be implemented. These realities echo the past. The Nakba did not simply ‘happen,’ but followed years of planning and incremental military schemes. That is why Qusra matters.
Some governments are warning of accelerating annexation; others sanction individual settlers, as though targeting a few extremists could reverse a blueprint implemented by an entire state apparatus.
Palestinians in the West Bank are fully aware of the challenge awaiting them. Urging the Palestinian Authority, which maintains security coordination with Israel, to suddenly devise a ‘strategy’ is painfully redundant.
But for the rest of us who understand the horrors of the Nakba – and the reverberations of that catastrophe from Deir Yassin to the genocide in Gaza – recognition is no longer enough.
The price of silence is already being paid by every Gazan living among the ruins of the Strip and every Palestinian in the West Bank confronting the violence of settlers and their military partners.
It needs to end now, before Qusra becomes the blueprint for what comes next: today, Qusra; tomorrow, the whole of the West Bank.
