Dan Steinbock
Informed Comment / August 30, 2026
Singapore – 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 fuelled 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 labour, 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 thousand 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 labour 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 favour 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.
Dan Steinbock is the author of The Obliteration Doctrine and The Fall of Israel
