1 Oslo and Areas A, B & C
2 Complete consolidation of the West Bank
3 Trump and West Bank annexation
4 Ground Realities
5 PA’s existential dilemma
6 IOF raids in West Bank
7 Storming Al Aqsa compound
8 The future hangs in the balance
1 Oslo and Areas A, B & C
The West Bank and Gaza were annexed by Jordan and Egypt, respectively, after the 1949 conflict that ended with the newly formed State of Israel in control of most of the Mandate for Palestine territory. Israel captured both in the 1967 war. International law considers the West Bank and Gaza to be occupied territories, and multiple UN resolutions have called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in those territories.
As part of the 1993 signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel, the occupied West Bank was divided into three areas – A, B and C. Oslo II intended for the divisions to be temporary, with full jurisdiction of all three areas gradually transferred to the Palestinian Authority over time. Instead, the divisions persist, with Area A administered by the Palestinian Authority, Area C by Israel, and Area B under joint control. The Oslo Accords represented the first direct Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement. This led to the formation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) – an administrative body that would govern Palestinian internal security, administration and civilian affairs in areas of self-rule, for a five-year interim period.
Area A initially comprised 3 percent of the West Bank and grew to 18 percent by 1999. In Area A, the PA controls most affairs. Of the 3 areas, Area A is the most densely populated. Although under Palestinian control, much of the available land for building lies on borders with Area C. Area C divides Areas A and B into hundreds of separate segments.
Area B represents about 22 percent of the West Bank. In both areas, while the PA is in charge of education, health and the economy, the Israelis have full control of external security, meaning they retain the right to enter at any time. The majority of Palestinians in the West Bank live in areas A or B. These areas are not contiguous.
Area C represents 60 percent of the West Bank. Under the Oslo Accords, control of this area was supposed to be handed over to the PA. Instead, Israel retains total control over all matters, including security, planning and construction. The transfer of control to the PA never happened. An estimated 300,000 Palestinians live in 532 residential areas located partially or fully in Area C, along with some 400,000 Israeli settlers residing in approximately 230 settlements. In addition, around 30% of Area C is a designated “firing zone” for military training – are located within these training areas. Altogether, 60% of Area C is made up of these firing zones, other military land, or state land and nature reserves. Palestinian residents struggle to obtain land permits for housing and farming in the remaining 40%.
A lack a primary school, forcing children to travel or walk long distances to reach the nearest school. Many areas are not connected to a water network and rely on tankered water at vastly increased cost. 95,000 people receive fewer than 50 liters of water per capita per day – half of the minimum amount recommended by the World Health Organization report that their access to emergency and basic healthcare is hampered by the long distances to the nearest clinic or the need to pass through checkpoints. The figures for 2024 represent the highest number of structures destroyed in one year since the UN began tracking in 2009. Over the past 15 years, Israel has demolished at least 11,500 Palestinian-owned structures, with three-quarters of those located in Area C.
Illegal Israeli Settlement Expansion
Israeli settlements are Jewish communities built on Palestinian land. There are roughly 700,000 Israelis living in at least 250 settlements and outposts in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israeli settlements are illegal under international law as they violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring its population to the area it occupies. The settler population is growing faster than Israel’s overall population, with about 10 percent of Israel’s 6.8 million Jewish citizens living in these areas. Settlers receive Israeli citizenship and government subsidies that lower their cost of living.
Israeli Separation Wall and Checkpoints
Since 2002, Israel has been constructing a wall that stretches for more than 700km (435 miles), cutting deep into Palestinian territory. Israel has also constructed hundreds of road obstacles and checkpoints, severely limiting Palestinian freedom of movement. While Palestinians may have to wait for hours at these checkpoints and travel along segregated road networks, Israelis can travel freely on their own “bypass roads” which have been built on Palestinian land to connect illegal Israeli settlements to major metropolitan areas inside Israel.
Occupied East Jerusalem and the Old City
The Old City, located in East Jerusalem, is home to some of the holiest sites in Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The area, which is smaller than 1sq km (0.39sq miles), is home to Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Western Wall, St James Cathedral and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, among others. A city sacred to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, has had West Jerusalem under Israeli control since 1948, with a Jewish majority. East Jerusalem, including the Old City, has been under Israeli occupation since 1967 and is mostly Palestinian. Since its inception, Israel keeps stealing Palestinian land. Then, in 1980, Israel considered the entire city of Jerusalem a part of its territory. This is not internationally recognized. For this reason, Israeli maps do not show East Jerusalem a part of the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian Refugee Camps
The West Bank is home to at least 870,000 registered refugees, with about 25 percent living in 19 camps established after the 1948. On May 14, 1948, the British Mandate expired and Zionist leaders announced they would be declaring a state, triggering the first Arab-Israeli war. Zionist gangs expelled some 750,000 Palestinians and captured 78 percent of the land. The remaining 22 percent was divided into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Some 1.5 million Palestinian refugees are living in 58 official UN camps located throughout Palestine and neighboring countries. In total, there are at least 5.9 million registered Palestinian refugees mostly living outside of these camps. The plight of Palestinian refugees is the longest, unresolved refugee problem in the world. Since launching its severest raids in two decades Israeli forces have killed 100s of Palestinians across the West Bank. The assaults involved hundreds of ground soldiers advancing in bulldozers and armored vehicles, supported by fighter jets and drones that dropped bombs.
2 The Complete Consolidation of the West Bank
Less noted in the western Mainstream media is the harsh reality that, in the course of the twenty months in which the current Israeli government has been in power, Ben Gvir has armed a 10,000 strong settler vigilante movement that has been terrorizing Palestinians in the West Bank. The police in the occupied territories respond to Ben Gvir’s authority.
What is missing from this appreciation is that whilst Ben Gvir has been assembling the ‘State of Judea’s novel army’, Finance Minister Smotrich, who heads the Administration of the Territories, has revolutionized the situation for Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank. Authority in the West Bank has been turned-over to a closed, Right-wing messianic movement that answers only to a single man: Smotrich (in all but name). As a stealth pincer-movement deployed by Smotrich, one arm of power has lain with his authority as finance minister; the second arm consists in the power delegated to him in his capacity as second minister in the Defense Ministry. Smotrich’s, and the Israeli government’s objective has not changed: to induce the collapse of the Palestinian Authority; to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state; and to give the seven million Palestinians who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea a choice: to die fighting; to immigrate to another country, or to live forever as vassals in a greater Israeli state.
Have no doubt, ‘the Decisive Plan’ for Palestinians is well underway – terrorizing West Bankers to quit their land; the destruction of social infrastructure in the West Bank (as with Gaza); and through a harsh financial squeeze on Palestinian society – as in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s government intends to announce the formal annexation of the West Bank in the coming weeks. The Israeli leadership will formally annex the West Bank in the very near future , in the hope that the decisive step will end, once and for all, any talk of a two-state solution and will convince some in the skeptical Arab world to reconsider financing the planned reconstruction of Gaza. If true, the move would coincide with the last few weeks of Biden’s administration and create a new “reality on the ground” by the time Trump takes office in January. During his first term in the White House, Trump recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights and moved the US embassy to Jerusalem.
The Israeli military and police have also cracked down on Palestinians in the West Bank, which is run by Fatah, a Palestinian faction at odds with Hamas. The Israeli settlers are preparing to carry out a major attack, to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population; attack will be particularly focused on completely erasing Palestinians from what is known as Area C, which constitutes roughly 60 percent of the West Bank. That escalation has already begun. On 4 November, Israel launched a brazen assault on the Palestinian city of Al-Bireh, marking a surge in the violence that has gripped the West Bank. In October alone, settlers carried out 100s of provocations against the Palestinians, their property, and their land – often under the supervision and protection of occupation soldiers.
In the past, extremist settler attacks against Palestinians were characterized by their spontaneous nature and uncoordinated thuggery, but this has begun to change. During a recent West Bank Settlement Council leader Israel Gantz commented on a meeting he had with the recently Israeli Defense Minister Gallant: “We asked that the West Bank be treated as Jabalia, Rafah, and the villages of southern Lebanon were treated, which means displacing the residents, killing the terrorists in these villages, cleansing the terrorist infrastructure, confiscating the weapons and then returning them to their villages.” While the statement includes the idea of returning Palestinians to their villages, if such an operation replicated Gaza and southern Lebanon, there would be no village to return to. Gantz also requested that Palestinian villages bordering illegal Jewish settlements be ‘cleansed’ due to the potential security threat posed to Israelis living there – both ideas reportedly opposed by Gallant.
On 5 November, however, Netanyahu replaced Gallant and handed the defense minister position to long-time ally Israel Katz. While serving in his previous role as Israel’s foreign minister, Katz openly boasts of promising to expel Palestinians their homes in the West Bank, unlike his predecessor. The assault on Al-Bireh was particularly alarming – a “pogrom-style attack, “as “they feel emboldened by the impunity they enjoy.” Rampaging settlers burned 18 vehicles and two apartments while Israeli soldiers looked on. One West Bank Palestinian described how settlers showed up outside her home armed with Molotov cocktails, but “were luckily scared off” prior to assaulting family members: “I had just left my home prior to the attack, but I knew something was wrong because the soldiers were acting very violently at all the checkpoints as I was leaving … you have to understand that these kinds of attacks don’t happen without the soldiers participating in some way.”
“The settlers are acting more and more like organized militias; they are an extension of the Israeli army working towards an agenda of ethnic cleansing”. This year’s attacks have been dramatically increasing reaching an unprecedented number of attacks in 2024.
Through the use of state-backed settler militias, ‘Israel has managed to ethnically cleanse 16 Palestinian communities in the southern hills of Al-Khalil (Hebron). “Around 700 [Israeli] roadblocks cut off Palestinian villages from each other.” Set up by occupation forces, the roadblocks provide cover for “attacks from violent settlers who target Palestinians passing by … greatly affecting the ability to even travel safely across the West Bank.” The attackers can rely on unconditional impunity from Tel Aviv, he explains: “They feel that they have enough resources, weapons, arms, political backing, to commit whatever crime they choose.”
3 Trump and West Bank Annexation
In September, Israel declared the West Bank closed military zones “as buffers surrounding the illegal Jewish settlements. Smotrich, as a longtime West Bank settler himself, Smotrich openly works on behalf of a 2017 settler movement proposal, outlined in a document entitled ‘’ which seeks to double the settler population of the West Bank. If this is combined with Israel’s decision to begin transferring the Israeli settler population into it becomes clear that the process of annexation is already underway.
With the victory of Donald Trump in the recent US elections, it is more than likely that Netanyahu views annexation of the West Bank to suddenly be a very viable option, despite the historic opinion delivered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July that declared Israel’s occupation of the territories to be a violation of international law and demanded that Tel Aviv end its occupation, dismantle all settlements, pay reparations for damages to Palestinians, and facilitate the return of all displaced natives. But Trump’s sweeping electoral victory was aided by uber-Zionist Adelson’s contribution of $100 million to his campaign. Recall too that the Adelson’s financed Trump’s first presidential bid, in 2016, with the promise the that Trump move the US embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognize the Holy City as Israel’s undivided Capital – a promise that Trump implemented in 2018. The Adelson family is a front for the Rothschild’s. Their casinos act as a perfect “Laundromat” to wash narco-money. Now, Miriam Adelson is pushing for the annexation of the West Bank. Combined with the surge in settler violence, the formation of Jewish militias, the distribution of a calculated strategy is taking shape. This is not just about sporadic attacks – it is a deliberate, state-backed campaign to alter the demographics of the West Bank permanently in line with the expansionist, settler-colonial ideology of the most extremist coalition government in Israel’s history.
This is the Zionist plan, but the Resistance groups in the West Bank are giving the IOF a hard time. Time and again Israel invades a certain district. They are unable to hold onto it, and after facing stiff resistance, they withdraw. They then return later, and this cycle just repeats itself. Netanyahu effectively launched the next phase in Israel’s war: Military action in the north of Israel, aimed at creating the conditions for the return of its displaced residents. These three Israeli components (north Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon) mesh together. In fact, they are interlinked: Netanyahu’s ‘Great Victory’ plan to clear Greater Israel of Palestinians is unfolding, however crushing Hezbollah remains outstanding. Are all these ‘victories’ remotely feasible? No. They risk rather, the collapse of Israel. Israeli forces have intensified incursions into cities and towns across the area in recent weeks, carrying out a series of raids and arrests. These operations have been met with fierce resistance, as fighters confront the forces in what have often escalated into prolonged and violent clashes.
Israel plans to confiscate around 5,900 acres in the occupied West Bank and declare it as “state” territory with the aim of illegal settlement expansion, with the move being described as the largest Israeli land grab in decades. “More than 5,000 acres of land for the benefit of the settlement in Yosh. We determine facts on the ground and thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state!” Smotrich said via X, which would make the move is one of the largest land appropriations since the Oslo Accords in 1993. Since then and up until the end of 2023, about 10,000 acres in the West Bank have been declared as Israeli “state land.”
The story continues in Part 2 …
