The eyes of the world are on Gaza, where the war between Israel and Hamas has now dragged on for over 600 days, with no end in sight. Another attempt by the U.S. to pressure Hamas into accepting the terms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a temporary cease-fire appears to have failed. And, despite growing international pressure to end the war, the situation on the ground remains as hopeless as it is dire.
Meanwhile, just a few dozen kilometers east of Gaza, in the hills of the West Bank, another significant development is quietly taking shape. There, the Netanyahu government has accelerated a de facto annexation process – one that began before the October 7 attacks, continued under the guise of war and gained even more momentum following President Trump’s victory last November.
Short of a formal annexation declaration, the government is doing everything possible to signal that it intends to absorb this territory – home to more than two million Palestinians – into the State of Israel. That includes the announcement of 22 new settlements; the effort to legalize isolated outposts that are illegal even under Israeli law; and the expansion of roads that cut through the West Bank and entrench Israeli control. These moves are happening in parallel and are all part of a larger, unified strategy.
This strategy does not include offering the Palestinians in these areas Israeli citizenship, civil rights or the right to vote. Instead, the government relies on the weakened and corrupt Palestinian Authority – still led by the aging autocrat Mahmoud Abbas – to sidestep the obvious question: if Israel is effectively annexing the land, what will it do about the people who live there?
Even this automatic deflection – that Palestinians are under the control of the Palestinian Authority and therefore outside Israel’s responsibility – is growing less and less convincing by the day. Take, for example, Netanyahu’s recent decision to block a visit by the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to the Palestinian Authority’s headquarters in Ramallah.
This visit, intended to support a renewed regional push for a two-state solution, is led by governments that are, by most measures, friendly toward Israel. Until recently, Israeli governments saw the two-state façade as something that still serves Israeli interests, helping to deflect criticism of its permanent military presence in the West Bank. But not this government, where policy is shaped by the ambitions and fantasies of the most extreme and messianic elements in Israeli politics. This government is openly pushing for annexation, and is not interested in preserving diplomatic appearances to disguise it.
This direction is all but guaranteed to provoke a clash with other governments – in Europe, in the Arab world and beyond – who will find it increasingly difficult to maintain normal working relations with Israel under the leadership of Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. It also threatens to undermine President Trump’s signature foreign policy achievement from his first term – the Abraham Accords – making further expansion of those agreements far less likely.
The question is when, if ever, Trump or someone close to him will recognize this reality and take the necessary steps to address it.