Netanyahu’s Political Survival and Annexation of West Bank

Under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz, the Israeli military, security forces and illegal settlers have flooded the occupied West Bank after a recent attack by settlers on a Palestinian village that martyred four Palestinians and killed two Israelis. 

Given the Israeli military’s repeated complaints about manpower shortages due to the exemption of large numbers of ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service, the units previously assigned to operations in Gaza and Lebanon have been redirected to the West Bank, raising the number of armed forces there to its highest level since 1967. 

Under the Oslo framework, the West Bank was divided into three administrative categories. Area A, comprising the principal Palestinian cities, was placed under Palestinian civil and security authority. Area B was placed under Palestinian civil administration, with security responsibilities shared between the Palestinian and Israeli authorities. Area C, representing approximately 60 percent of the West Bank, remained under extensive Israeli control, particularly in matters of security, planning and construction.

Although these divisions exist on paper, Israel has progressively violated the framework in practice. Israeli military incursions, arrests, closures and settlement expansion increasingly extend across the entire Palestinian territory, including Area A. The recent operation in Tal, a village under Palestinian administrative and security control where Israeli civilians are officially prohibited from entering, showed how far the operational reality has moved beyond what was agreed in Oslo.

Israel has presented the latest deployment as a counterterrorism measure. Yet the West Bank does not contain military infrastructure that exists in Gaza or Lebanon. There are no tunnels, training camps or armed battalions. The confrontation in Tal itself did not begin as an operation by an organised Palestinian armed formation. Armed Israeli settlers attempted to enter village homes, prompting Palestinian residents to confront them. The settlers pushed and struck Palestinian residents with rifles before one Palestinian was forced to seize a weapon during the struggle to defend himself in his own home. The subsequent exchange of fire martyred four Palestinian cousins and killed an Israeli army major and a security guard from a nearby settlement. 

The Israeli government immediately classified the incident as a terrorist attack and responded with measures extending far beyond the individuals involved. Netanyahu and Katz ordered an intensified military operation around Nablus, the confiscation of weapons, the revocation of Palestinian work permits and the demolition of the family home of one of the Palestinians accused of involvement. Israeli forces encircled Nablus, blocked roads, imposed restrictions on movement and conducted raids and mass interrogations in Tal and elsewhere. The government also directed the authorities to accelerate the establishment of new settlement outposts and the legalisation, under Israeli law, of existing ones, even though Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law.

The escalation coincides with Netanyahu’s election campaign. National elections are scheduled for 27 October, and recent polling has consistently placed Netanyahu’s bloc below the seats required for a parliamentary majority. One survey indicated that an opposition bloc led by former army chief Gadi Eisenkot could secure a majority. Netanyahu’s continuation in office is far from assured.

Against this backdrop, a forceful campaign in the West Bank offers Netanyahu an opportunity to consolidate the fragmented Israeli right, appeal to the aggressive settler constituency and redirect the political debate towards security. This is his violent attempt to portray himself as the indispensable defender of Israel at a time when his opponents continue to hold him responsible for the security failures surrounding the attacks of October 2023.

The West Bank may appear to Netanyahu to be a more politically manageable arena than Gaza or Lebanon. Operations there face fewer military constraints, while the settler movement and far-right members of his coalition actively demand a more aggressive policy. His annexation project displaces attention from his government’s continuous failures on every other front.

Moreover, the domestic pressures on Netanyahu are worsened by the corruption trial he faces, in which he denies charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, and by his government’s renewed confrontation with the judiciary. It is clear to Netanyahu’s opponents that his national security decisions are informed by his personal need for political survival, and that this new incursion in the West Bank is his latest bid to distract from his failures and to potentially secure short-term political wins.

The crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz has also created a wider strategic opening for the Israeli government. Gaza has largely disappeared from international attention, giving Israel greater freedom of action on the ground. Israeli forces have continued to expand their control across the territory, bringing at least 70 percent of the Gaza Strip under direct military occupation. At the same time, the killing has continued without any clearly defined military objective. Israel has also maintained severe restrictions on the entry of agreed humanitarian assistance, subjecting Gaza’s population to deepening deprivation, the spread of disease and the loss of even the most basic necessities of life.

In the West Bank, Israel is exploiting this diversion to intensify military operations, settlement expansion and administrative control in the West Bank with reduced diplomatic scrutiny. These measures form part of a longer process of transforming occupation into permanent Israeli sovereignty while making a viable Palestinian state geographically and politically impossible. The turmoil over Iran and Hormuz therefore provides Israel political cover for accelerating the annexation of the West Bank and burying the idea of a Palestinian state.

At the same time, Netanyahu’s annexation project is having unintended effects. Years of settler impunity and escalating reprisals have already turned the West Bank into a potential powder keg. The combination of military closures, armed settler attacks and collective punitive measures risks transforming a local confrontation into a broader Palestinian uprising.

The escalation also occurred immediately before Netanyahu’s visit to Washington. Netanyahu had earlier requested a meeting with President Donald Trump but did not initially receive an appointment; the meeting was arranged only later. Israeli security officials considered postponing the most extensive phase of the West Bank operation until after the visit, partly to prevent the Palestinian issue from dominating discussions that they wanted to focus on Iran, Lebanon and Gaza.

Netanyahu’s escalation in the West Bank will inevitably follow him to Washington, where he may use it as leverage in broader regional discussions. The more important question is not simply why he opened another front, but whether the West Bank will become yet another arena in which his strategy produces neither control nor victory.
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The writer is Ambassador of Palestine to Bangladesh