Since the 1967 war, Israel has been attempting to impose a new order on the occupied West Bank, notably aiming to reduce the Palestinian presence there and encourage Israeli settlement expansion.
A significant shift in Israel's control over the Palestinian territories began after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. Israel divided the territories into Areas A, B, and C, effectively controlling more than 66% of the occupied West Bank.
In 2022, the current right-wing Israeli government was formed, which escalated its measures to promote settlement expansion and seize Palestinian land. This policy accelerated after the declaration of war on Gaza two years ago.
Dangerous and fundamental changes
According to the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, Israel has systematically confiscated 55,000 dunams of Palestinian land over the past two years, including 20,000 dunams under the pretext of modifying the boundaries of nature reserves, and 26,000 dunams through 14 declarations of "state land" in the cities of Jerusalem, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Qalqilya.
Since October 2023, 108 Israeli military orders have been issued to seize 1,756 dunams under the pretext of "military purposes," aimed at establishing military towers, security roads, and buffer zones around settlements. This is in addition to a campaign to expand bypass roads and build Israeli settler-only roads, to complete the process of connecting settlement blocs and separating the Palestinian presence.
Israel has also established at least 25 buffer zones around settlements, most of which are concentrated in the northern occupied West Bank.
Meanwhile, Israeli planning authorities submitted 355 master plans for the construction of a total of 37,415 settlement units on an area of 38,551 dunams. Of these, 18,801 units were approved.
The rapid increase in illegal Israeli settlement construction is the most significant change witnessed in the occupied West Bank over the past two years.
Suhail Khalilia, Director of the Settlement Monitoring Unit at the Applied Research Institute for Jerusalem (ARIJ), told us that since the beginning of the war, more than 45,000 settlement units have been approved. This staggering number is likely to rise to 55,000 by the end of the year.
He explained that more than 1,200 military barriers, which take various forms, including iron gates, concrete blocks, and earth barriers, have a clear purpose: to isolate cities from each other, and to accustom Palestinians to the idea that travelling between cities in the West Bank is like travelling to another country.
"Since the current Israeli government came to power, 114 settlement outposts have been legalised in various areas of the West Bank, and there are dozens more that have not yet been registered. With the change in laws in favour of settlements, this phenomenon will intensify," he said.
Attacks on religious sites have also become increasingly worrying. There has been an increase in the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by tens of thousands of settlers over the past two years, an accurate indication of a plan to target it and subject it to the same fate as the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, where Israel issued new laws that led to the seizure of new areas, the expansion of settlement outposts around it, and the separation of its location to connect it to the main settlement road.
"In addition to changing the geography, Israel has deliberately undermined economic life, which has reached its worst point. Tens of thousands of Palestinian workers are unable to reach their workplaces. All of this is aimed at pressuring society, and all of these are worrying matters aimed at reducing the number of Palestinians," Khalilia added.
All of this happened because of a change in the Civil Administration, which is part of the Israeli military that controls the West Bank. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich assumed control of the Civil Administration after the formation of the current government coalition.
The first thing he did was change the laws governing settlement expansion, reducing the approval process from 17 steps to a quick and streamlined process that can be completed within weeks.
"The most dangerous settlement project that has come to light in these two years is the E1 project, which has existed for three decades but was implemented with the arrival of Smotrich. This is a real disaster," he explained.
The 'Cowboy Approach'
Establishing Israeli settler dominance over the occupied West Bank has reached its most prominent level since the beginning of Israel's war on the Gaza Strip.
Israeli settlers are no longer simply groups of civilians living on Palestinian land under the protection of the Israeli army. They have become organised armed groups operating in an organised manner with full military and financial support from the Israeli government.
Since October 2023, the Israeli army and settlers have carried out 38,359 attacks, during which settlers killed 33 Palestinians, set 767 fires, and displaced 33 Bedouin communities comprising 2,853 people, from their homes to other locations, according to a report by the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission.
Anti-settlement activist Ayed Ghafari told us that settlers have begun engaging in numerous practices over the past two years. They have started using pastoral settlements to seize land by bringing their cows to graze on Palestinian land, adopting a "cowboy approach" to control every area they reach and preventing Palestinians from accessing it.
The settlers' audacity in attacking Palestinian communities and committing direct attacks has increased after Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir issued a decision to arm them.
"The settler now can storm a village alone, armed, and if the villagers confront him, he immediately opens fire without hesitation. On top of that, the Israeli soldiers raid the village and begin arresting everyone who participated in confronting the settler. This is how they built a settler state in the West Bank," Ghafari continued.
Mass arrests and killings
Among the Israeli policies implemented over the past two years has been the large-scale arrest campaigns across the occupied West Bank.
According to observers, the goal of this is to intensify pressure on Palestinians and prevent them from feeling safe, even threatening them at all times with arrest or detention for hours.
The Israeli army has intensified its raids on Palestinian cities and villages and carried out extensive campaigns, during which tens of thousands of Palestinians have been arrested.
According to a statement by the Palestinian Prisoners' Club, arrests in the West Bank have escalated at an unprecedented pace. The number of arrests since the beginning of Israel's war has reached approximately 20,000, including over 1,600 children and 595 women, including those detained and released.
"The arrests in the West Bank are accompanied by unprecedented crimes and violations, including torture and severe beatings, organised acts of terror against detainees and their families, widespread vandalism and destruction of civilian homes, the use of civilians as hostages and human shields, and the implementation of field executions, in addition to the extensive field investigations that have affected thousands since the beginning of the war," the statement added.
The club described these arrests and the accompanying "systematic crimes" targeting all Palestinians in an unprecedented manner as an act of revenge that falls within the framework of "collective punishment."
There are currently 11,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, many without charge, the highest number since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 according to local and international human rights organisations.
Furthermore, over the course of these two years, Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 983 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to health ministry figures.