Last month marked 21 years since the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Less remembered is the fact that, following the removal of the settlements in Gaza, Israel also removed four settlements in the West Bank. Then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon intended to use this as a precursor to expanding the disengagement in the West Bank, including the evacuation of more isolated settlements and about 75,000 settlers — at the time, some 30 percent of the total number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

However, several months after the disengagement, Sharon suffered a severe stroke from which he never recovered and the plan was never implemented. The rest is a history of deepening occupation and relentless settlement expansion that has become an obstacle to a two-state solution.

Under the current government, all four settlements evacuated in the northern West Bank have been resettled in a symbolic act of defiance. Having observed, together with the corps of foreign journalists, both the disengagement from Gaza and then the more limited one in the West Bank, I doubt that any of us could have imagined that any of these settlements would ever be rebuilt.

This Israeli government aspires to maximum friction — or at least makes no genuine effort to avoid it.

Yossi Mekelberg

The logic of the disengagement was to reduce friction with the Palestinian population while keeping the main settlement blocs, where most settlers lived, under Israeli control. These blocs covered a relatively small part of the West Bank and were not located at the heart of the major Palestinian population centers. The objective was to leave some room for a future political solution.

This is not the logic of the Israeli government in 2026. It aspires to maximum friction — or at least makes no genuine effort to avoid it. It allows settler terrorist violence to take place with almost complete impunity. More Palestinian land is being confiscated and legislation passed to ensure that Palestinians are forced to accept who the masters of the occupied territory are. This drive began before Oct. 7, 2023, and has continued with even greater fervor since then.

It can be argued that, over the life of the sixth Netanyahu government, which increasingly feels more like the first — and hopefully the last — Ben Gvir-Smotrich government, the damage inflicted through the establishment of new settlements and the expansion of existing ones is greater than at any point in the previous decades.

The occupied population needs protection from the forces of occupation and the ever-increasing violence of settlers.

Yossi Mekelberg

According to the Israeli human rights organization Peace Now, the number of new settlements approved by the current government is a staggering 104. Of these, 16 were previously existing “neighborhoods” of other settlements that were granted independent settlement status. Others were illegal outposts that the government legalized as independent settlements, in addition to several new settlements.

The trajectory is very clear: to render the possibility of a Palestinian state impossible and to annex the West Bank. But if this were not sinister enough, there is also a deliberate effort to increase friction with the local population in ways that could provoke a reaction, which can then be used as an excuse to impose even more oppressive measures. The aim appears to be to make Palestinian life increasingly difficult, with the hope that the objective of “voluntary migration” will finally put an end to Palestinian aspirations of self-determination.

In this context, the expansion of settlements in the northern West Bank is particularly disturbing and appears to be part of this broader plan. First, in March 2023, the Knesset voted to repeal a section of the Law for the Implementation of the Disengagement Plan of 2005 that prohibited Israelis from entering the evacuated areas of Ganim, Homesh, Kadim and Sa-Nur, the four northern West Bank settlements evacuated that same year.

This was not simply about allowing visits or nostalgic trips. As is so often the case with the settlers, first come the visits, then the mobile homes and, eventually, the government provides the so-called illegal outposts with infrastructure and services. The security forces are inevitably drawn in to protect them.

Establishing settlements in highly populated Palestinian areas close, for instance, to Jenin and Nablus, inevitably brings a greater military presence, roadblocks and checkpoints, preventing farmers from accessing their land; house searches; arrests; and the general use of force to protect settlers from what is portrayed as a hostile local population. Yet the reality on the ground is that it is the occupied population that desperately needs protection from the arbitrary actions of the forces of occupation and the ever-increasing violence of settlers.

In this part of the northern West Bank, where until the last few years barely any Israelis had lived since 2005, the local population was able to enjoy a more normal life in the absence of settlers and, consequently, with less military presence. It is now reported that, in an area where more than 720,000 Palestinians live, the government has approved, in addition to the four rebuilt settlements, a further 14 settlements, including in strategic locations where no Israelis lived previously. This interferes with the possibility of maintaining Palestinian territorial contiguity.

In addition, settlers have established nine outposts that, if the next government resembles the present one, are likely to be legalized and recognized by the Israeli authorities.

To make its presence felt and to send a message that this territory belongs — exclusively — to Israel, the government is investing in developing tourism that emphasizes the Jewish connection to the West Bank, including at the archaeological site of Sebastia, in the vicinity of Nablus, and its confiscation for settlers’ tourism ventures. Similarly, the provocative trips through Palestinian land and urban spaces, which only recently ended in the killing of four Palestinians and two Israelis, were aimed at demonstrating who is in complete control.

There is hardly any further proof needed of the ill intentions of the current Israeli government and the settlers toward the Palestinians, or of their determination to deprive them of their political, human and civil rights. There is an increasingly clear strategic plan to eliminate the possibility of a two-state solution, leading instead to Israeli annexation and the complete submission of the Palestinian population to the will and caprices of those exercising control over them.

It is true that the international agenda is saturated with highly crucial and complex issues. However, what is happening in the West Bank generally and the developments in its northern part in particular are not only morally wrong but also likely to fuel another explosion. If there is anything the international community should have learned from the events of the last three years, it is that allowing a situation like the one in the West Bank to fester can only end in disaster, with an immeasurable human and political price. Acting now could prevent this from becoming yet another catastrophe.

  •  Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the MENA Program at Chatham House. X: @YMekelberg