There are no dreams here’: How Israel’s outgoing government remade the West Bank
Shatha Yaish, Oren Ziv and Basel Adra report in +972 on 26 October 2026:
Over the past four years, the occupied West Bank has undergone a profound transformation at the hands of Israel’s outgoing government. Particularly in the wake of October 7, 2023, Israel has intensified its military operations, expanded settlements and outposts, imposed sweeping restrictions on Palestinian movement, tightened its control over vast areas, and reshaped the territory’s legal status.
What was already a fragmented landscape, divided by checkpoints, settlements, and closed military zones, has become increasingly difficult for Palestinians to navigate, let alone inhabit. Roads that once connected communities are now blocked, villages have become increasingly isolated, and places that had seen little settlement activity for decades are now confronting an expanding Israeli presence. For many Palestinians, the changes have fundamentally altered their relationship with their land, their livelihoods, and their sense of security.
Since the start of 2023, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed at least 1,341 Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. State-backed settler pogroms — which tend to only receive media attention when their victims are internationals — have fully or partially displaced at least 127 Palestinian communities. Ongoing Israeli military operations in three refugee camps in the north of the territory have rendered 30,000 Palestinians homeless, while an additional 3,000 were displaced in recent days amid a new operation in the city of Hebron.
In the same period, the outgoing government has approved at least 103 Jewish settlements, including in the controversial E1 zone, with the stated aim of thwarting any possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state.
But the transformation of the West Bank cannot be measured solely through these numbers. Across the territory, simple routines such as going to school, visiting relatives, tending farmland, or reaching a hospital have become fraught with uncertainty and danger.