The Decisive Plan
Benjamin Netanyahu took advantage of his attendance at the funeral of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham to make another visit to the White House, after his allies succeeded in persuading President Donald Trump to receive him. This time, however, the visit came through the political back door, denying him the media triumph he had hoped to capitalize on.
His subsequent television interview reflected the depth of the predicament he now faces. His facial expressions failed to convey the confidence of a victor, revealing instead a strained smile and an air of defiance. Trump, true to his uncompromising temperament, appears unwilling to be associated with a partner who brings him political liabilities rather than gains.
Nevertheless, Netanyahu has shown no willingness to concede failure, or even to acknowledge that it is a possibility. For him, the stakes go far beyond politics, touching directly on his personal and electoral future. Defeat could spell the end of his political career, open the door to legal proceedings, and shatter his ambition to secure his place as the undisputed leader of the State of Israel.
Meanwhile, opposition parties have made the establishment of an official and independent commission of inquiry into the events of October 7 one of their foremost electoral priorities. Their objective is to hold those responsible accountable for the failures that enabled Hamas to carry out its attack and for the unprecedented loss of life that followed, even when compared with many conventional wars. The attack also inflicted a profound collective trauma on Israeli society, whose psychological, political, and security repercussions remain evident to this day.
Yet the electoral battle extends well beyond October 7. The religious parties allied with Netanyahu continue to insist on exempting Haredi yeshiva students from military service, while also demanding gender segregation in certain public spaces. They have threatened to withdraw from the governing coalition if their demands are not met.
These disputes come at a time when the Israeli military is facing an increasingly severe manpower crisis. Recruitment has declined steadily, both among Israeli citizens and foreign volunteers, as the risks associated with military service increasingly outweigh its material or symbolic rewards.
At the same time, Israel’s economic difficulties continue to deepen under the weight of the soaring cost of war, exceptional security expenditures required by a permanent state of alert, and ongoing military operations across multiple fronts, a reality to which Israeli society had not been accustomed for decades.
This political, security, and economic backdrop is essential to understanding what has been unfolding in the West Bank, not only during the past week but throughout the current year. The developments there are not merely a series of isolated security measures. Rather, they form part of a broader effort to reshape both the domestic and regional landscape in ways that serve Benjamin Netanyahu’s political and electoral calculations.
Comprehensive Encroachment
Settler livestock herders in the West Bank have declared that the limits of their authority extend as far as their herds can graze. Armed as individuals and protected by the Israeli military, they have established dozens of pastoral settlement outposts around East Jerusalem and throughout the Jordan Valley. This strategy has deprived Palestinian Bedouin and pastoral communities of most of their land and of their historic rights as the country’s Indigenous inhabitants.
According to United Nations reports issued this year, this systematic policy has also resulted in the demolition of homes and the forced displacement of more than 30,000 members of Bedouin communities. At the same time, livestock numbers have fallen to their lowest level in the West Bank. Large areas of Area C, as defined under the Oslo Accords, have likewise come under expanded Israeli control, despite constituting the vital territorial continuity upon which the concept of a future Palestinian state depends.
In parallel, Israel has expanded its control over surface water resources, having already secured control years ago over the West Bank’s principal groundwater aquifer, the largest source of underground water in historic Palestine.
Throughout this year, media outlets and human rights organizations have documented repeated attacks against Palestinian farmers, particularly during the olive harvest, aimed at preventing them from reaching their lands and olive groves. The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture has recorded the uprooting of 2,559 trees, alongside the leveling of extensive agricultural land. Direct losses resulting from the destruction of wells, irrigation networks, and the confiscation of tractors and other farming equipment have exceeded $100 million. According to estimates by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), nearly 72,000 farming families now require emergency assistance, an unprecedented situation for these communities.
The measures have not been confined to rural areas. They have also extended to cities and refugee camps. During the first half of the year, approximately 3,600 Palestinians were arrested, including 276 children and 107 women. The total number of Palestinian prisoners is now estimated at around 10,000. Meanwhile, the Israeli military has continued to seal off cities with iron gates and checkpoints while conducting large-scale operations targeting several refugee camps. These operations have destroyed significant portions of the camps, displaced tens of thousands of residents, and transformed parts of them into Israeli military positions.
These policies are being implemented openly and in full view of the media. Several ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have openly boasted of the progress made in advancing what they describe as the “Decisive Plan,” championed by the Religious Zionism parties. The plan seeks to extend Israeli sovereignty over all Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, rename them “Judea and Samaria,” and undermine the Palestinian National Authority as the political and institutional framework underpinning the two-state solution.
Within this context, developments in the West Bank appear to constitute a central component of the political and electoral battle being waged by Netanyahu’s government as the anticipated elections draw closer before the end of the year.
The New Has Yet to Be Born
President Trump’s call for Hamas to surrender its weapons did little to embarrass the movement’s leadership, as it offered nothing substantially new beyond what Hamas had already accepted in his twenty-point initiative. The subsequent understandings did not address the individual weapons through which the movement continues to exercise authority inside the Gaza Strip during the transitional period.
The latest round of negotiations in Cairo produced only limited understandings. They allowed the Palestinian Administrative Committee and the first contingents of the international force to enter the Rafah and Khan Younis areas, both of which remain under the full control of the Israeli military. This progress came before, and continued during, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, enabling each side to present it in a manner that served its own political interests.
On the ground, however, little has changed. Humanitarian aid continues to enter only to the extent permitted by the Israeli military command, with no meaningful improvement in the humanitarian catastrophe facing Gaza’s population. Meanwhile, the mediators continue their efforts to preserve Trump’s initiative and prevent its collapse, since its failure would effectively give Israel a free hand in Gaza without any accompanying political horizon.
In East Jerusalem, tensions continue to escalate at a rapid pace. Incursions by Religious Zionist groups into the Al Aqsa Mosque compound are becoming increasingly frequent, while most Palestinians from the West Bank remain barred from accessing the site, with age restrictions imposed on worshippers. At the same time, Israel continues its gradual intervention in the administration and institutional structure of Al Aqsa Mosque, despite the Hashemite custodianship that has historically overseen the holy site.
These measures serve two clearly defined objectives: imposing a temporal and spatial division of Al Aqsa Mosque, similar to the arrangement imposed at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, and entrenching the Israeli narrative of a “united Jerusalem” as the exclusive capital of the State of Israel.
In response to these developments in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and amid a comprehensive political, economic, and security blockade, the Palestinian National Authority has sought to expand its channels of communication with the White House. Its aim is to prevent the implementation of the Israeli project to dismantle the Palestinian statehood and to avert the collapse of the Oslo Accords, which continue to serve as the principal legal reference for the international community’s peace efforts.
Within this context, the local elections held earlier this year, with participation exceeding half of all registered voters, acquired political significance extending well beyond their administrative purpose. Likewise, the announcement of dates for legislative and presidential elections, together with the continued activity of unions, professional associations, and national institutions, including the recent congress of the General Union of Palestinian Students in Beirut, reflects an effort to revitalize Palestinian political life and preserve the legitimacy of its institutions.
These initiatives converge with Arab and international support around a common objective: ensuring that Palestinians remain on their land, preventing forced displacement, and preserving the cohesion of Palestinian society in the face of policies of attrition and fragmentation. So far, Palestinian society, particularly in the West Bank, has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to resist attempts to drag it into a comprehensive confrontation that would serve the Israeli agenda, choosing instead patience, restraint, and stronger social solidarity.
Yet none of this means that the situation has stabilized or that the balance of power has been settled. The region as a whole is passing through a transitional phase in which the old order continues to erode while the contours of a new political order have yet to emerge.
For Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, what is unfolding today is therefore not the end of the conflict, but merely another chapter in its long history. The new has yet to be born.