https://arab.news/6h3n4
Since Oct. 7, 2023, international attention has understandably centered on Israel’s devastating war on Gaza. The details of the genocide are horrific and call for intervention. But away from the cameras and headlines, Israel has launched a parallel offensive — less visible but still transformative — across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Under the cover of war, Israel is accelerating a long-standing agenda of de facto annexation, systematically reshaping Palestinian life and geography without international consequences.
As it is bombing Gaza, Israel has permitted settler violence and land seizures, while intensifying its movement restrictions and economic suffocation in the West Bank. This is not coincidental or reactive. Rather, it appears to be a calculated effort to exploit the global focus on Gaza to advance long-standing maximalist objectives.
This became even more clear at the end of August with the approval of the E1 settlement plan. This is a key bloc of construction that will fill the last open areas of the West Bank, foreclosing contiguity between northern and southern Palestinian communities and sealing the fate of the failed Palestinian state.
