The most rightwing government in Israel’s history has exploited international complicity and inaction in Gaza to achieve what would have been inconceivable a few years ago—ethnically cleansing the territory of its indigenous Palestinian population and advancing the “vision” of “Greater Israel”.

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was building a ruling coalition government following elections in 2022, the issue of annexation of the West Bank became a critical negotiating point. 

The agreement that was reached and signed by Netanyahu’s Likud party and the Religious Zionism party, headed by the self-professed fascist Bezalel Smotrich, included an annex of unprecedented specificity that reflected the level of work plans already in place to take over the West Bank.

According to the annex, the government would increase budget allocations to facilitate annexation as well as installing a new de facto governor of the occupied West Bank within the ministry of defense. His role would oversee settlement expansion, land grab, and other issues. Accordingly, Smotrich became the Finance Minister and also assumed the newly created post within the Ministry of Defense, becoming the de facto governor of the West Bank. 

As soon as the genocide began, Israel placed the West Bank under lockdown, gutting the territory into hundreds of isolated Palestinian communities that were left helpless and defenseless from increased Israeli military raids, home demolitions, and unhinged Israeli settler attacks. Unleashing this unprecedented level of violence upended the lives of over three million Palestinians who live there. By July 1, 2025, Israeli occupation forces and armed settler militias had killed over 1,000 Palestinians, including a number of Palestinian Americans whose killers are still at large. The numbers pale in comparison with Gaza but they break records of the past two-and-a-half decades. 

Since October 2023 and the genocide in Gaza, Israel has fast-tracked its program of steady erasure and replacement by employing settler colonial expansion and terrorism, establishing 900 military checkpoints, restricting the movement of Palestinians and other policies of economic strangulation.

Systemic Erasure

A closer look at the terror inflicted on communities in the West Bank further demonstrates its deliberate and systematic nature, designed to ethnically cleanse entire communities and clear more Palestinian land for Israeli grab. Israeli settler attacks spread across the occupied West Bank and they occur under the protection of Israeli occupation forces. 

According to UN records, since 2023, armed Israeli settlers have launched hundreds of attacks, displacing nine communities in the Jordan valley and wider Ramallah area. The number of Palestinians injured in these attacks has also been steadily increasing, averaging about 100 civilians in June and July 2025, compared to 49 between January and May of this year and 30 per month in 2024. Settler attacks in 2024 prohibited half of the Palestinian farmers from harvesting their olive orchards, dealing a heavy blow to an economy already choked by Israeli measures. In July 2025, Israeli settler attacks disrupted water supply to over 100,000 Palestinians in the Ramallah area. 

Parallel to this campaign, Israeli occupation forces continue to demolish Palestinian homes in record numbers, predominantly in rural areas, referred to as Area C under the Oslo Accord, which account for 60% of the West Bank and where almost all of Israel’s illegal settlements are located. Since 2023, Israeli forces have demolished over 4,100 Palestinian homes and displaced over 7,000 Palestinians. 

Since January 2025, the drive to demolish and demographically reengineer entire communities has taken a new and mortifying turn. Israeli forces launched the largest scale military assault on refugee camps in Jenin then Tulkarem starting in January of this year. The onslaught has displaced upwards of 40,000 Palestinian refugees who have not been allowed back in the camps. Israeli forces proceeded to demolish and burn Palestinian homes in the Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nour Shams refugee camps, permanently changing the geography of those communities and putting into practice the “lessons” of Gaza as the Israeli minister of defense said at the time. The United Nations estimates that Israeli forces destroyed or totally leveled 43% of the Jenin camp, 14% of the Tulkarem camp, and 35% of the Nour Shams refugee camp. According to UN data, 700,000 Palestinians in the West Bank required food assistance in 2024 because of these practices, a 100% increase from the preceding year.  

More recently, Israel said it would withdraw from the ruins of these camps on the condition that the following be met: banning the UN agency for Palestine refugees UNRWA from its operations there, turning what remains of the camp into neighborhoods of Jenin and Tulkarem, and allowing only half of the Palestinian displaced residents back to the camp after Israeli screening and clearance. 

According to reports, this formalization of the displacement of the camp’s residents and the demographic reengineering of the camps were agreed upon with the Trump administration. 

While this violent reality is cemented through a dichotomy of Israeli violence perpetrated by the army and settler militias, the Israeli government and legislature are undertaking other, even more strategic steps to serve land grab and ethnic cleansing. In 2023, Israel advanced measures to construct over 30,000 housing units in new and existing illegal Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The year after that, the government approved slightly less housing units but took strategic steps to offset the deficit by stripping the Palestinian government of its planning and zoning powers in what remains of the occupied West Bank, and transferring the administration of the territory to the civilian branches of the Israeli government. This is not a symbolic measure. Rather, it was evidence of the ongoing annexation of the West Bank by way of administrative integration. 

In the course of the past two years, Israeli legislators convened or attended several conferences on the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, including one held in the Knesset itself dedicated to the annexation of Gaza and the expulsion of its Palestinian population. To that end, Smotrich recently approved plans to construct the E-1 settlement in Jerusalem to “bury the idea” of a Palestinian state. The plan would cut the West Bank in two separate parts and would complement earlier approvals of unprecedented land grabs that strip major Palestinian cities of any land around them, including Bethlehem and Ramallah. 

These unprecedented measures are happening with U.S. approval. Recently, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee told Israeli army radio that his administration did not oppose what he called “massive development” in the E-1 settlement, referring to it as part of Israel. But while he has condemned some settler attacks, Huckabee said the situation between Israel and Palestine was a “spiritual war”, one between good and evil, which Israel must win. 

The Endgame: Greater Israel, with Western Backing

In a recent interview with the Israeli channel i24, the Israeli Prime Minister said he was very attached to the vision of Greater Israel, which includes all of historical Palestine as well as parts of Jordan and Egypt. 

The Israeli body politic is taking practical steps to materialize this colonial expansion and perpetual state of military aggression in historical Palestine and beyond. 

In Lebanon, for example, Israeli forces now occupy part of that country’s south with the tacit approval of the Trump administration, under the pretext of “demilitarizing” the area. In Syria, Israel seized even more territory immediately after the fall of the Assad regime. Instead of compelling it to respect Syrian sovereignty, the Trump administration has supported Israel’s imposition of a demilitarized south in the country, where Israeli settlers have already attempted to create their first outpost. 

This annexation drive on steroids is not a surprise. Western governments, which continue to provide military assistance and sell advanced weaponry to Israel while providing it with preferential trade treatment and political cover for its prolific crimes, are partners in this agenda of colonial expansion and ethnic cleansing. In the first year of the genocide alone, the United States is estimated to have gifted israel with 22.76 billion dollars in military assistance. In 2024, Israeli arms exports broke records for the fourth consecutive year, reaching $14.8 billion. Europe accounted for 54% of those sales, up from 35% in 2023. Arms sales to Israel by the UK, Serbia and others have also grown exponentially while military “cooperation” with countries like Greece are worth billions of dollars. 

Over the decades, Israel’s trade partners and allies have not held Israel accountable for its land grab and settlement expansion, both of which are glaring violations of international law. On their watch, Israel has nearly tripled the number of Israeli settlers living illegally in hundreds of settlements and outposts in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. In 1993, there were 250,000 thousand Israeli settlers living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. By the year 2023, that number was estimated at well over 700,000 and growing. 

This complicity has provoked legal challenges from the European public and human rights organizations. In the UK for example, several human rights organizations, including OXFAM, have sued the current Labor government for continuing the Conservative party’s sale of U.S.-made F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel. 

The lawsuit was preceded by a similar case successfully filed against the Dutch government in February 2024 where the Court ordered the government to stop the sale of F-35 fighter jet parts because such a sale risks violating the Netherlands’ obligations under the Genocide Convention. And in March 2024, Nicaragua initiated action against Germany, which is the second largest arms exporter to Israel after the United States, at the International Court of Justice for complicity in Genocide.

Sanctions Must Be Imposed

Under public pressure, some Western governments have recently expressed outrage at the Israeli government’s settlement expansionism and sanctioning of settler attacks. Some countries even took nominal measures, including banning the entry of extreme right ministers like Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir. Others have opted for more concrete steps. Spain is working to legislate an arms embargo while Slovenia has formalized its embergo—and along with Ireland—has banned the import of Israeli settlement products. Calls by these states and others to suspend the EU-Israel Association Trade Agreement have failed to produce any collective European response due to fierce opposition from a handful of members, including Germany and Hungary. This derailment of a unified European response happened despite the EU’s own reports that accuse Israel of committing grave international law violations like starvation and apartheid.

Overall, there is a persisting international failure to hold Israel accountable for its crimes even when the facts on the ground, and the International Court of Justice’s ruling a year ago, indicate Israel’s presence in and control of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, is illegal and must end. 

The UK, France, Australia, and other states have announced their intention to recognize Palestine during the upcoming UN General Assembly plenary in September. The announcements were met with fierce Israeli and U.S. belligerence, with the Trump administration canceling and revoking visas of the Palestinian delegation that was due to attend the meeting in New York. The Israeli Prime Minister, building on the precedent of international inaction, is considering the formal annexation of parts of the West Bank in response to this recognition drive. 

It remains a sad fact that Israel’s ethnic cleansing and erasure of Palestine will not stop without extreme political, economic, and other sanctions. 

Recently, Belgium and Norway have offered examples of concrete measures of sanctions that other states can follow. Belgium, for example, imposed 12 measures, including a review of public procurement policies with Israeli companies, restricting consular services for nationals residing in Israeli settlements and examining ways to deny long-stay visas to Israelis living there. The measures include investigating criminal liability of Belgian nationals implicated in human rights violations, and banning the import of illegal Israeli settlement products. Meanwhile, Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund has divested from Israeli companies as well as the U.S. company Caterpillar due to its involvement in the demolition of Palestinian homes. The decision has irked the Trump administration but threats of countermeasures have not affected Norway’s decision. 

These sanctions are in line with obligations all states have under international law and translate recognition of Palestinian statehood into tangible outcomes for the Palestinians. They are effective and proven ways to exact a price for crimes and would apply enough cumulative pressure to compel Israel to end its colonial expansion, apartheid and genocide policies. Anything short of that buys time for genocide and ethnic cleansing.