The unprecedented acceleration in settlement activity, the escalation of settler violence, and the displacement of Palestinian communities in the West Bank today cannot be understood if treated merely as traditional settlement expansion. What is happening goes beyond building a new settlement or legalizing an outpost; it reflects an integrated political strategy aimed at redrawing Palestinian geography and imposing a new reality from which it becomes increasingly difficult to revert over time.
To understand this strategy, one must look back at the political mind driving it. For years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has adopted a vision that the Palestinian issue is not a problem to be solved, but rather an issue to be managed. In this view, time does not pose a threat to Israel, but rather an opportunity to consolidate its gains. The longer the conflict drags on, the more settlements expand, and the deeper Israeli control over the West Bank becomes, the more complicated the possibility of returning to any settlement based on withdrawal or the establishment of a Palestinian state becomes.
Netanyahu does not view the West Bank merely as a disputed territory, but as a security and strategic depth, as well as part of the historical and religious narrative adopted by the Israeli right. Therefore, he rejects withdrawing from it or accepting the establishment of a fully sovereign Palestinian state. However, he also realizes that official and full annexation might impose political, legal, and diplomatic costs on Israel that he is unwilling to bear, especially given international and regional balances.
Hence came Netanyahu's preferred equation: avoiding the declaration of legal annexation while achieving its substance on the ground. Sovereignty is not always imposed by a law passed by the Knesset; it can be built gradually through settlements, road networks, infrastructure, control over natural resources, preventing Palestinian urban expansion, and displacing residents from targeted areas. It is a policy of creeping annexation, which achieves the same result without provoking a direct confrontation with the international community.
This approach found an exceptional opportunity under the administration of US President Donald Trump, which granted the Israeli government wide leeway to act in the West Bank and showed great tolerance for settlement expansion and the reshaping of the reality on the ground. However, this leeway did not extend to adopting official and comprehensive annexation of the West Bank, which reflects an American understanding that imposing legal sovereignty might open the door to political, diplomatic, and regional crises that would be difficult to contain.
However, not supporting official annexation does not necessarily mean opposing its results on the ground. The approach that prevailed during that period allowed Israel to continue imposing facts on the ground and left ample space for the settlement movement to expand, making it act as if it had an undeclared mandate to redraw the map of the West Bank. In this sense, American policy did not need to declare support for every settlement step, as it was sufficient to provide the political environment that allowed its continuation.
In light of this, the current behavior of the settlement movement can be understood. It realizes that political opportunities are not permanent, and that power balances may change with any new American administration or any regional and international shifts. Therefore, it seems to be racing against time, investing every day in establishing a settlement, legalizing an outpost, confiscating land, paving a settlement road, or displacing a Palestinian community, before political reality imposes new restrictions on its project.
Hence, the settler violence that has escalated remarkably in recent months cannot be read as a phenomenon separate from the settlement project; rather, it represents one of its tools. Attacking Palestinian villages, terrorizing farmers, preventing access to lands, and forcing residents to leave are all means to empty the land of its owners and transform temporary military control into permanent civilian and settlement control.
What is happening today is very much like an attempt to capitalize on "stoppage time." The settlement movement realizes that official annexation may remain deferred, but it believes that actual annexation is being achieved every day on the ground. It is betting that politics will later legitimize a reality that already exists, not create it anew.
Herein lies the danger of this stage. History confirms that negotiations do not begin from legal texts or old maps, but from the realities that have become entrenched when they begin. Therefore, the real gamble of the settlement movement is not in declaring sovereignty today, but in ensuring that any future political settlement, if it returns to the forefront, will start from where settlement expansion ended, not from the June 4, 1967 borders, nor from the references upon which the peace process was based.
Conversely, Palestinians face a challenge that goes beyond merely resisting settlement expansion. The battle is no longer just over land ownership, but over defining the starting point for any future political solution. Every dunam that remains under Palestinian control, every community that stands firm on its land, and every development project that strengthens the Palestinian presence, essentially represents a protection of the references for a solution before new realities turn into political facts that are difficult to overcome.
Therefore, the question is no longer: Will settlement continue? The answer has been clear for years. Rather, the real question is: To what extent will the settlement project succeed in transforming temporary realities into permanent political borders? The conflict today is no longer about declaring annexation or deferring it, but about who has the right to draw the map from which any future settlement will begin. And it seems that the settlement movement, supported by the Israeli right, and benefiting from the political margins provided by the American administration, is betting that whoever draws the map today will determine the borders of peace—if it comes—tomorrow.
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Trump and West Bank Settlements... Deferred Annexation and the Race to Draw the Borders of the Next Settlement