Press Release: Veritas Press C.I.C.
Author: Kamran Faqir
Article Date Published: 26 July 2025 at 11:07 GMT
Category: Middle East | Palestine-Gaza | US-Israel At War
Source(s): Veritas Press C.I.C. | Multi News Agencies
JERICHO/BETHLEHEM — While the world’s gaze remains transfixed on the devastation in Gaza, a parallel campaign of systemic violence, displacement, and de facto annexation is intensifying in the occupied West Bank. Led by a convergence of armed settlers and Israeli military forces, and emboldened by far-right Israeli ministers openly calling for permanent sovereignty over the territory, the West Bank is being subjected to what rights groups and analysts describe as an accelerated blueprint for ethnic cleansing and apartheid.
This past week alone, Israeli settlers stormed the Bedouin village of Shallal al-Auja near Jericho, grazing livestock on private Palestinian farmland while attempting to seize access to crucial water resources. “They came with guns and dogs, accompanied by soldiers,” said Abu Sami, a local herder, in testimony to Wafa. “We’re treated like intruders on our own land.”
Meanwhile, in Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers killed 31-year-old Khaled al-Azzeh in an overnight raid. His body has been withheld by Israeli authorities. “The army enters like a conquering force,” said Yusra Mahfouz, a community activist. “They kill and take bodies, as if to send a message: You have no right to live here.”
On July 26, two Palestinian teenagers, Ahmad al-Salah (15) and Muhammad Issa (17), were shot dead by Israeli forces in al-Khader. Locals say they were unarmed. Their bodies were also seized. “They don’t just kill, they disappear them,” said a relative of one of the boys, who asked not to be named out of fear of reprisal.
“We Are Building Sovereignty, Not Just Settlements”
These acts of violence are not isolated. They are the predictable consequence of a state-backed strategy to displace Palestinians and entrench irreversible Israeli control.
At the centre of this strategy is Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister and the de facto governor of the West Bank through his control of the Civil Administration. In a May cabinet meeting, Smotrich declared:
“We are building sovereignty, not just settlements. The goal is clear: no more talk of a Palestinian state. Eretz Yisrael belongs to the Jewish people, exclusively.”
Smotrich has repeatedly boasted that his policies aim to “thwart the Palestinian vision” and promote the establishment of one million Jewish settlers in the West Bank. In a 2024 interview with Israel Hayom, he stated bluntly:
“We are here to kill the Oslo dream, and we’ll do it with roads, with outposts, with facts on the ground.”
Alongside Smotrich is Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s national security minister and a former follower of the late Meir Kahane, a U.S.-designated terrorist. Ben Gvir has led a systematic hollowing out of law enforcement against settlers, shielding the far-right “Hilltop Youth” from investigation and prosecution. He has publicly urged soldiers and police to “act with zero tolerance” toward Palestinians.
In a fiery Knesset speech this month, Ben Gvir declared:
“This is our land, Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] are not occupied, they are liberated. Every olive tree cut down, every hilltop taken is another victory in reclaiming our Biblical heartland.”
Ben Gvir has also repeatedly called for arming settlers and expanding the so-called “security perimeter” around settlements, which often serves as a pretext for confiscating additional Palestinian land.
“Ben Gvir is openly encouraging settlers to behave as a parallel army,” said Yossi Gurvitz, an Israeli journalist who monitors settler activity. “He’s not just tolerating violence, he’s fuelling it.”
The Numbers Behind The Nightmare:
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), since October 7, 2023:
- 948 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, including 204 children
- Over 36,000 Palestinians have been displaced
- 2,200+ settler attacks have occurred, with over 5,200 injuries
- 49 new settlements approved since October 2023
- 112 new outposts created since early 2023, nearly half called “grazing farms”
“The data shows a pattern: expanding control, reducing the native population, and bypassing the law,” said Jessica Montell, Executive Director of HaMoked. “It’s displacement by design.”
From Violence To Annexation: “We Don’t Need Permission.”
The Knesset’s recent symbolic vote, 71 to 13 in favour of annexing the West Bank and Jordan Valley, was dismissed as merely declarative by Israeli officials. But Palestinian leaders warn it reflects real policy intent. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called it “a colonial and racist declaration of war,” while the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement said it represented “a green light for land theft and expulsion.”
Palestinian analyst Diana Buttu said the vote was more than symbolic:
“This government is not hiding its intentions. They want to make the occupation permanent, and they’re doing it through violence, bureaucracy, and bulldozers.”
Smotrich has been explicit on this point: “We don’t need the world’s permission to apply sovereignty,” he told a West Bank settler conference in June. “We need courage, and we have it.”
Ben Gvir, echoing the sentiment, said at a July rally in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc:
“No more apologising. Annexation is not a dirty word; it’s justice.”
The implications are profound. Annexation would not only cement apartheid, rights groups warn, but also provoke regional backlash and potentially explode the fragile normalisation process initiated under the Abraham Accords.
Washington’s Silence, Regional Alarm:
Following the July 10 killing of American citizen Saifullah Musallet during a settler rampage in Sinjil, the U.S. embassy called for an investigation. No suspects have been arrested. “This case will go the way of all the others, into oblivion,” said Adalah, a legal centre for Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The suspected arson attack on a historic Byzantine church in Taybeh days later further alarmed regional Christian leaders. “There is a climate of lawlessness and religious intolerance,” said the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem during a solidarity visit. “This government is incapable, or unwilling, to control its own extremists.”
Jordan, long a key interlocutor on Jerusalem and the West Bank, warned last week that annexation would “violate international law and the peace treaty with Israel.” Even the United Arab Emirates, a recent signatory to the Abraham Accords, condemned “settler provocations and the failure of Israel to uphold its obligations under international law.”
Yet, in Washington, the Biden administration has remained largely muted. With the Trump campaign openly backing further normalisation and pushing to expand the Abraham Accords, experts warn that ignoring the West Bank could prove disastrous.
“If the U.S. continues to treat Gaza and the West Bank as separate conflicts, it will fail on both fronts,” said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. peace negotiator. “Annexation and apartheid cannot be normalized.”
A Powder Keg Ready To Blow:
Military experts are now warning that the West Bank may become the next major flashpoint. With 21 IDF battalions, including 11 reserve units, deployed across the territory, and settler factions emboldened by ministerial backing, the risk of wide-scale confrontation is growing.
“The fuse is burning,” said Tareq Baconi, president of Al-Shabaka. “When Gaza cools, the West Bank may explode.”
Former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar put it bluntly in a recent briefing leaked to Yedioth Ahronoth:
“If we continue like this, we won’t have a security crisis; we’ll have an internal collapse.”
INVESTIGATIVE SUMMARY (as of July 26, 2025):
- 948 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since October 2023
- 204 children among the dead
- 36,000 forcibly displaced due to violence, demolitions, and raids
- 2,200+ settler attacks since January 2024
- 49 new settlements, including 22 approved in May alone
- 112 illegal outposts created, many as state-funded grazing farms
- Zero indictments for recent settler killings
- Open calls for annexation from Ben Gvir and Smotrich, with Knesset symbolic approval
Conclusion: From De Facto to De Jure Annexation, Another Front in Israel’s Arsenal of Mass Displacement.
What is unfolding across the West Bank is not a random eruption of chaos; it is a deliberate, state-engineered project of ethnic restructuring. Far from being rogue actors, armed settlers are operating as an extension of Israeli state policy, emboldened by explicit ministerial support, military coordination, and judicial impunity. The killing of unarmed civilians, the torching of villages, the destruction of homes, and the theft of farmland are not side effects of conflict; they are the mechanisms of conquest.
This is yet another process in Israel’s expanding arsenal designed for mass displacement. Whether through aerial bombardment in Gaza, home demolitions in Jerusalem, or settler rampages in the West Bank, the objective remains the same: to erase the Palestinian presence from the land and replace it with irreversible “facts on the ground.”
Ministers like Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have abandoned any diplomatic façade. They openly declare their desire for annexation, exclusivity, and Jewish supremacy, and are rapidly operationalising that vision with the full apparatus of state power. When Smotrich boasts of “building sovereignty,” and Ben Gvir demands that soldiers show “zero tolerance” toward Palestinians, they are describing not abstract ideology but a live blueprint for apartheid and colonial entrenchment.
Human rights organisations including Al-Haq, B’Tselem, and Human Rights Watch have documented how settler expansion, military raids, and legal coercion work in tandem to dispossess and fragment Palestinian life. The figures speak for themselves: nearly 1,000 Palestinians killed, tens of thousands displaced, and dozens of new illegal outposts greenlit since October 2023. These are not anomalies; they are policy outcomes.
And yet, the global response remains muted, if not complicit. The United States continues to arm and shield Israel diplomatically, while the UK and the European governments issue symbolic condemnations devoid of consequences. The international community’s refusal to impose real accountability, through sanctions, arms embargoes, or legal prosecutions, has made it a silent partner to a historic injustice.
This is the final stage of annexation. Not by peace treaties or Knesset declarations, but by bullets, bulldozers, and bureaucratic strangulation. It is the institutionalisation of apartheid, the normalisation of settler terror, and the death knell of the so-called two-state solution. If the world continues to look away, Israel will not just consolidate occupation, it will complete a decades-long project of demographic engineering, one that leaves no space, no rights, and no future for an entire people.
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