While Israel embarked on a massive military campaign in Gaza in response to October 7, 2023 attack into its territory by Hamas, Israel's territorial ambitions were being systematically implemented on the sidelines of the war in West Bank. Israel's far right coalition government since the beginning of Gaza military campaign unleashed a creeping mission of annexing West Bank by emasculating the governing institutions and mechanisms of West Bank which became rather more stubborn as the military campaign slowed down in Gaza.

The more intriguing imperialist designs in the forms of expanding Israeli settlements in West Bank bypassed more focused international attention and pressures in the background of larger devastating military campaign in Gaza.

In the guise of administrative necessity and security, Israel is legitimizing unauthorized outposts, bifurcating territory under Palestinian Authority's (PA) control, launching new housing projects and making the governmental apparatus such as security, intelligence and judicial institutions helpful for the settlers in order to legitimize their stay and perpetration of violence by them. The far right leaders of Israel’s coalition government announced to legalize 140 outposts in West Bank.

Trump administration's 20 point peace programme for Gaza and Arab states' pledges of financial assistance to reconstruction of Gaza hinge on reforming and empowering the PA to govern Gaza. However, Israel is hollowing out the governing capabilities of PA to end any future territorial claim of Palestine for statehood. These developments portend more political instabilities and turbulence in the Middle East.

Israel's far right has systematically reconstituted and pervaded its constituencies of support among voters, bureaucrats, lobby groups and parties which increasingly endorse Tel Aviv's such actions in West Bank.

Creeping Territorial Acquisitions Turning Flamboyant

Of late, the Israeli government through its policy declarations has converted the previously unauthorized settlements into legal ones. The cabinet has also declared to make land sales to settlers easier and it will decide how the land will be used by the settlers instead of PA. These developments fall squarely with far right coalition regime's agenda which is to engender irreversible realities on the ground that would make the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict further messy and intractable. In 2025 alone, Israel approved far more housing units for Israeli settlers compared to previous years taken together. The strategy is to inflate the number of Israelis living in West Bank and expand Israel's jurisdiction through construction of roads and linking infrastructure between the settlements. On the other side, approval for Palestinian construction projects has been halted.

While Israel's previous regimes harbored the desire to expand their jurisdiction into West Bank, there was sustained international pressure preventing such actions. October 7, 2023 attack of Hamas into Israel, however, provided the much needed opening to Tel Aviv to extend its sway in guise of security.

PA has been an active security partner of Israel in stemming terror attacks and disrupting militant networks in West Bank. Now, for its own territorial ambitions Israel is weakening PA and extending its own footprint in West Bank turning it into a permanent insurgency zone. Unauthorized outposts are being rebranded as "security farms" by the government in order to legalize them and turn them into strategic assets for Israel. Violence perpetrated by settlers take various forms such as arson attacks, acts of vandalism and physical attacks which spiked prominently between 2024 and 2025 with hardly any initiative at enforcement of laws and investigations by Israeli government. According to a report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) dated January 19, 2026. In the period between October 7, 2023 and January 2026, "Around 4,037 Palestinians have been displaced due to settler violence across the West Bank.” According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, in the same period, at least 870 Palestinians, including 177 children, were killed by settlers and the Israeli forces".

By denting the governing capabilities of PA, Israel raises serious long-term questions as to who would provide health, education, basic administration including salaries and security to the people of West Bank. Israel's policies make postwar settlement far more difficult and it would destabilize the Middle East. The Paris Protocol on Economic Relations signed in 1994 provided for Israel's control over collection and transfer of Palestinian tax revenues. In contentious times, Israel used this economic dependence as a leverage and deprived the legitimate Palestinian governing institutions of resources. For instance, the Israeli government stopped transferring customs and tax revenue to the PA in order to expand its own jurisdiction within West Bank.

It is true that the legitimacy of PA has shrunk to a large extent from the perspective of international observers and Palestinians due to endemic corruption and opaque governance but it has started reforming itself and its governance processes as per the requirements of the peace process with the oversight of international observers. Admittedly, there is no alternative representative body available for Palestinians. Peace in the Middle East heavily revolves around reforming and strengthening PA pairing with Israel’s withdrawal not merely from territorial incursions into West Bank but from encroaching and populating its land as well. If the Israeli government pursues the policy uncritically that its finance minister Bezalel Smotrich  announced “to kill the idea of a Palestinian state”, peace in Middle East will remain a chimera and instability a buzzword.