With focus on Iran and Gaza, Israel is quietly annexing the West Bank

Israel’s new war with Iran coupled with slaughter in the Gaza Strip — where Israeli military operations have killed more than 600 Palestinians since a “ceasefire” supposedly went into effect last October, adding to the tens of thousands killed during the previous two years — has diverted attention from events in the West Bank.

That diversion is fine with those intent on cementing Israeli control there and continuing the subjugation or displacement of the 3.8 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Among the measures that Israel has taken toward that objective during the past few months is legislation in the Knesset making it easier for Israelis to purchase land in the West Bank. More recent actions by the Israeli cabinet have furthered that same goal as well as extending Israeli control over certain holy sites and portions of the West Bank that, according to the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Palestinian Authority is supposed to administer.

At least as significant in creating facts on the ground has been violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian residents. That violence has surged since the beginning of the assault on the Gaza Strip, with the perpetrators evidently taking advantage of the diversion of international attention to Gaza and now Iran. The increase in violence continues. Nearly 700 Palestinians were displaced by settler violence and intimidation this past January — the highest monthly figure since the Gaza offensive began in October 2023.

The Israeli government is an accessory to the settler violence. It has done little to discourage it and more often condones it. Units of the Israeli Defense Forces have even participated in it.

The Israeli activity in the West Bank is illegal and recognized as such by most of the international community. It is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilian populations. By settling its own citizens in Palestinian territory that Israel conquered in a war that it initiated in 1967, it is especially violating Article 49 of that convention, which expressly prohibits the transfer of any of the conquering nation’s civilian population to the territory it occupies.

The United States, through multiple administrations of both parties, has paid lip service to the concept of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while doing little to impede Israeli actions in the West Bank that have been putting that solution out of reach. The Trump administration has carried these tendencies even farther. The administration’s posture is personified by the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, an outspoken Christian Zionist whose statements appear designed less to uphold U.S. interests in the face of Israeli actions than to support religious rationales for Israeli expansionism.

In a further move along this line, the embassy that Huckabee heads announced last week that it will start opening “pop-up” consular offices in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This move can be seen as part of the same policy that during Trump’s first term saw the closing of a U.S. consulate in Jerusalem that had long been one of the chief channels for U.S. relations with the Palestinians.

Notwithstanding the administration’s assertion that last week’s announcement does not represent a policy change, delighted Israeli officials and dismayed Palestinians each saw it as a significant statement that bestows a U.S. stamp of legitimacy on the settlements. It would be difficult to justify the move as merely a matter of administrative convenience. The first settlement to receive one of the pop-up consulates is only eight miles from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, where consular services already are available.

The administration says it opposes Israeli annexation of the West Bank. The White House said so just last month. But that opposition refers only to formal, openly declared annexation. What matters more is the de facto annexation that has been going on for years. The administration policy toward that is not opposition but instead a condoning of it and, as the move regarding the consulates illustrates, active support for it.

Although some of the most extreme Israeli figures, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have called for formal annexation of most of the West Bank, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in no hurry to make such a declaration because it is getting almost everything it wants from the de facto annexation. A formal declaration would make it more difficult for that government to deflect international criticism of its actions in the West Bank. It would no longer be able to string along the international community with the fiction of a possible two-state solution and instead would have to defend its apartheid policies within what it says itself are its national boundaries.

With moves such as the opening of consulates in the settlements, the United States is associating itself ever more closely with the Israeli expansionist project and its inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. This is contrary to U.S interests, partly because it puts the United States ever more conspicuously on the wrong side of legality, morality, and international opinion.

Moreover, oppressed Palestinians will not forever be submissive. The long history of this conflict has already seen two intifadas, which have taken violent as well as nonviolent forms, and there could be more. The conflict will continue to be a prime source of instability in the Middle East. Besides inhibiting any U.S. effort to “pivot” away from the region, the close association of the United States with the oppressive policies of Israel makes the United States more of a target for terrorism or other reprisals.