The West Bank is not just another front
Yossi Alpher — August 3, 2026
Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
Q. Why is the West Bank different?
A. Unlike other occupied territories such as across the borders in Syria, Lebanon and even Gaza, Israel is actively settling the West Bank. It is happening on an unprecedented scale. Militant settlers, backed by the Israeli government and the IDF, are harassing and expelling Palestinian residents.
According to Peace Now, there are today over 140 settlements and some 360 “outposts” and “farms” in the West Bank. The more extreme settlers, armed by Israel, initiate near-constant friction with the majority Palestinian population of some three million. When violence occurs, the IDF intervenes, nearly always on the side of the settlers. In extreme instances, militant West Bank settlers attack the IDF itself, or attack Israeli peace activists chronicling settler crimes.
The IDF in the West Bank is under the command of a Central Command general, a Judea and Samaria force commander, and the head of the Shin Bet security service, all of whom are graduates of the same Orthodox National Religious institutions that sponsor the settlers. Presiding over all this is Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also minister in the Defense Ministry with special responsibility for the West Bank. Minister of Defense Yisrael Katz, a political hack and Netanyahu yes-man, consistently backs them up.
Smotrich leads the National Religious political movement. In the past four years alone, he has approved over 100 new settlements. This, then, is a crawling, violent land-grab in the name of an ideological-religious claim. Smotrich’s policies aim to ensure that between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, equal numbers of Jews and Arabs (roughly 7-8 million each) will not be able to sort themselves out into separate national entities. It will all be Israel. Arabs will not have equal rights; they will be tolerated if they behave themselves, meaning submissively. They will be encouraged and even incentivized to leave.
That is Smotrich’s National Religious vision. It is openly supported by the Netanyahu government. Inside Israel, it hits the headlines whenever someone, especially a settler or a soldier, is killed in a clash in the West Bank, as happened some ten days ago in the northern West Bank. The rest of the time, other fronts dominate the headlines. And they present a stark contrast.
Q. Indeed, is peace breaking out on Israel’s wartime fronts in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza?
A. In Lebanon, Israel has reluctantly begun turning over occupied territory to the Lebanese Army in a process supervised by the US. In Syria there is still friction, but there is US pressure to cede territory to the rebuilding Syrian army, and President Ahmed a-Sharaa is talking openly about peace with Israel.
In the Gaza Strip, the Netanyahu government just agreed to allow the Trump-sponsored Peace Council’s technocrat National Committee for the Administration of Gaza to enter. There is tentative agreement to enforce the disarming of Hamas units as the peace mechanism is pledged first to do. Israelis are understandably very skeptical about Hamas intentions, but at least there is a ‘peace dynamic’.
Q. Why the Israeli concessions on these fronts?
A. Because for Netanyahu, strategically, the West Bank takes priority, and politically, with elections nearing, his right-messianic coalition takes priority. Hence the only front not characterized by concessions, or at least quiet, is the West Bank.
Netanyahu is also concerned to placate President Trump and, if possible, US public opinion, which quite understandably blames Netanyahu for everything from Gaza to Iran.
Q. Why is the IDF’s challenge in policing the West Bank different?
A. Because the West Bank — Judea and Samaria, with their deep biblical roots — is claimed ultimately as Israeli sovereign territory by the Israeli mainstream as represented in the Netanyahu government and parliamentary majority.
On a broader and deeper level, what the militant settlers are doing in the West Bank with government backing reflects the direction Israel is moving: displacing and disenfranchising Palestinian Arabs and taking their land, all in the name of militant Jewish nationalism that leaves no room for Jewish pluralism, for human rights or for democracy. A major factor in this emerging extremism is the lingering anger and religious fervor generated by the Hamas attack on the Gaza Periphery on October 7, 2023.
On the West Bank, we are moving into a ‘Balkan’ reality whereby violence will be the routine between hostile populations. The Israeli minority population there, backed by Israel and its monopoly on institutionalized force, is establishing the appropriation of land through violence toward Palestinians as the norm in a constant and permanent war. This struggle is based on a religious-historical mission that overrides all other strategic considerations, conceivably including normalization of relations with Arab countries and repair of Israel’s post-Gaza War relations with the civilized world.
The ragged ‘hill youth’ whose aggression used to — with a wink and a nod — outrage even the settler leadership have matured into the vanguard of a broad, officially sanctioned land-grab movement. Today they have digital communications and a command structure. They comprise settler commando units that liaise with the IDF. With a (relative) ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and settler-inspired unrest in the West Bank, the many IDF units transferred there to keep order are copying wartime tactics honed in Gaza. Accordingly, the IDF can control the West Bank Palestinian population. But it is totally unprepared to control marauding fellow Israeli Jews.
Lest we fail to comprehend the multi-dimensional nature of what is happening on the West Bank — this is not just a land-grab. It is also an emerging intifada, Israel’s third. Unlike its two predecessors, which were initiated by the Palestinian side some 40 and 25 years ago, this intifada is being initiated by Israel. More precisely, by the roughly half of Israel’s Jewish citizenry who subscribe to the ideologies of the National Religious, ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) and right-nationalist parties that make up Netanyahu’s coalition.
Q. Can these movements be defeated in the coming Knesset election? Can this messianic territorial current be reversed?
A. Israel’s National Religious and Haredi demographics are by far the fastest growing in the country. Israeli politics are increasingly, massively right-wing. The outgoing coalition has already moved to emasculate Israel’s judicial branch, constrain human rights, and muzzle the media. Thanks to Netanyahu’s many mistakes and his bluntly egomaniacal drive to stay in power, this election could conceivably stem the tide and blunt this drive.
But the demographic-political outlook for the longer run is not encouraging: messianic religiosity and racism are the trend. Nor, in the event of an electoral victory on October 27 by moderate forces, is militant and violent Jewish nationalism necessarily going to remain confined to the West Bank.
Q. Meanwhile, if and as the Iranian, Iraqi (pro-Iran Shiite militias), Yemeni Houthi, and Lebanese Hezbollah fronts heat up once again, the world’s attention might move farther than ever from the West Bank. So why the concern?
A. The West Bank is where Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state will be determined. Not in Lebanon, Yemen, Iran, or the Persian Gulf.
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer.
