Israel Has Lost Control of the West Bank.

What comes to mind when I say the following? We're about to have a discussion of terrorism in the West Bank. Terrorism that was recently and forcefully condemned by the US Ambassador to Israel, as well as politicians across the Israeli political spectrum.

The situation has even reached a point where the Israeli defense forces are reportedly set to deploy extra forces into the zone to try and restore order. Take a moment, reflect on all of your geopolitical knowledge, and take your best guess at the situation we're about to discuss.

If images came to mind of, say, Palestinians clashing with the IDF and the US resolutely backing its ally, we'd definitely see where you were coming from.

That's a well-worn story in the West Bank, after all, following many decades of post-colonial unrest. But this time around, it's Israeli settlers that are at the heart of the violence, targeting Palestinian families with stunning impunity. These attacks aren't exactly new, but they've never been anywhere near this widespread either.

In fact, at this point in the crisis, Israeli military officials are spending more time combating terrorism by the area's Jewish residents than anything else. But the IDF has problems all their own, because the ministers who call the shots in Jerusalem are seen as being increasingly on the side of the settlers, not the army.

And given just how lawless the situation seems to have become, the military is now concerned that it could spark its own crisis should Palestinians in the West Bank decide that enough is enough.

Losing control. At the time of recording in early September, there's a rather unusual scene playing out in the West Bank. An enormous American flag sitting on top of an area that's become the center of global attention.

And no, this hasn't been a case of Donald Trump announcing that he would come in and take over the territory, as he did early in his presidency with Gaza. We would have been surprised exactly if he followed up his attempt at renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America by deciding that the West Bank was now the America Bank.

But our strange timeline has not devolved that far, at least not yet.

Instead, that American flag is sitting on top of a house, one that's home to a Palestinian-American dual citizen by the name of Luai Abu Ridi, who splits his time between Ohio and the small West Bank village of Kusra.

While in the States, Ridi saw his house come under siege from a group of Israeli settlers who had surrounded several of the other homes in his neighborhood. The settler's playbook appears to be the same one they've used many times before.

Force the families out by cutting off power and water, block anyone coming in or out so they run out of food, and then, once the families are gone, move in and take the land for themselves. The first thing Ridi did was fly back to the West Bank from the US to try and prevent his home from being taken by the settlers.

He's managed to pull it off, but only barely.

IDF, coming under increasing pressure from American and Israeli politicians alike, deployed to the area. They declared it to be a closed military zone and ordered the Israeli settlers away, but they ultimately required several attempts and an entire bulldozer to make that happen.

If you thought that would be the end of it, though, think again, because now the settlers are back.

By late August, dozens had reportedly returned to Khusra and surrounded another Palestinian home.

Once there, they threw stones at it, while seven people were inside. the army being present for the whole thing, no arrests have been reported. on that same day, an NBC News crew interviewing a Palestinian woman who said settlers had forced her family from their home was attacked on camera by masked settlers carrying clubs. least five members of the NBC crew

Were injured, and the Palestinian woman they were interviewing, Eda Ahmed Abdullah, was reportedly knocked unconscious. this episode is being recorded, Israeli forces say that they're investigating the situation, but no arrests have taken place so far.

This is not, however, some localized fleeting trend among Israel's settler communities.

Instead, it's part of a much larger pattern in which Israeli security personnel and the IDF themselves only rarely step in and take action against Israeli settlers in the area. Those settlers, meanwhile, increasingly feel that the law is resolutely on their side.

By the first half of 2026, Israeli security officials had recorded some 660 acts of what Jerusalem calls, quote, nationalistic crime by settlers across the West Bank, up 63% from the year before.

That statistic, by the way, means that the territory was averaging more than three incidents each day. Nor was the West Bank's Palestinian population the only group raising the alarm. The IDF was, itself, complaining about these guys being a hell of a headache.

In fact, the situation had gotten so bad that Israel's military leaders reportedly told Netanyahu in person that as much as 80% of all incidents that certain West Bank brigades have to deal with are Jewish terror attacks on Palestinians. None of this, by the way, means that Palestinian terrorism has disappeared from the West Bank.

The IDF reported 57 Palestinian terror attacks in 2025, including stabbings, shootings, and car rammings.

More recently, there are indications that the Palestinian Authority never actually ended its pay-to-slay program, where it pays Palestinians who were imprisoned for attacks against Israelis, including civilians.

So the fact that the IDF has to remain so focused on Jewish perpetrated acts of terror, even despite those concerns, really shows how big of a problem the settler violence has become. One incident in particular that we do want to highlight came last November, when settlers broke into a mosque in Deir Istiyah.

There, they reportedly set fire to the building, burning carpets and Korans alike, and then left behind several messages. Now, contrary to what you might think, these messages were not directed toward the Palestinian residents at all. They were written in Hebrew and directed at Israeli authorities.

Keep on condemning. We will take revenge again. And most memorably, we are not afraid of Avi Bluth, referencing the IDF general responsible for the entire West Bank.

Bluth, by the way, had just publicly condemned settler violence literally a day earlier, so the settlers were sending a crystal-clear message that essentially read, "Yeah, you might condemn us, but what are you going do?" And increasingly, that contempt for Israel's own leadership has started to spill out, metastasizing into direct confrontations with

Israeli forces.

Just yesterday, police raided the Jewish outpost of Mevasa HaShalom to seize a pickup truck that had been allegedly used in the attacks. The settlers didn't exactly welcome the effort.

They surrounded the police team in an effort to block them and began to pelt them with stones. And while incidents like that are not the norm for the West Bank, especially not with attacks against Israeli forces, the fact that this is happening at all has set off alarm bells across the political spectrum.

Former IDF chief Ghadi Eisenkart, who is now a leading figure to replace Netanyahu as Prime Minister next month, argued last week that the problem has been allowed to spiral so far for so long that the country has effectively lost control of the West Bank.

And Eisenkart isn't the only one making that assessment. Shortly after his statement, IDF chief of staff Eil Zemir ordered an expansion of the army's presence in the West Bank.

Again, the overwhelming concern is less the Palestinians would orchestrate an attack and more that the Israeli settlers' aggression could lead to reprisal attacks and then a much more explosive local conflict with organized violence in both directions.

Since then, the West Bank situation has occupied just about every government ministry in Jerusalem, and naturally some of the insider accounts have started to leak.

One military official, who remained anonymous, reportedly complained that outright support for the extremists from parts of the government and local leadership had made enforcement so difficult that commanders on the ground felt that they'd been abandoned by their own Instead, according to these commanders, Jerusalem had sided with the settlers.

So just how could this have escalated so far to the point where the West Bank looks like it's on the brink of outright collapse?

Well, in a moment we're going to answer that question. But before we do, we'd like to pause this episode to tell you about our premium subscriber site. Fronts.co is our outlet for all the stories.

We don't have space to do justice here on the main channel, a place where we can dig deeper and go a lot nerdier than we ever do on YouTube. Every week we upload two exclusive videos, several expert written articles, and a podcast or two, all covering the conflict and geopolit stories that matter most to you.

We host constant coverage of the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, the Sahel, the Indo-Pacific, and elsewhere, not to mention all the conflicts that the rest of the world tends to ignore.

Premium subscribers get full access to our back catalogue here on Warfronts, along with new uploads that you can watch totally ad-free. A subscription to Fronts costs just $5 a month or $50 a year. That's Fronts.co.

Do check it out. And now let's get back to the West Bank. Over the last three decades or so, we've seen numerous attempts by various governments — Israeli, American, and others — trying to get some resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Back in the 90s, in particular, Oslo was supposed to kick off a process that would once and for all put this issue to rest. But the Oslo effort, along with the others that followed, didn't manage to achieve anything of the sort. Why they failed?

That's an episode for another day. But as the years dragged on without resolution, Israel developed real internal political incentives to allow the West Bank tensions to grow out of control.

That was sharp break from Israel's past, when even the governments that had been deeply skeptical of the peace process from the outset at least talked as though they still wanted to make progress.

Nothing ever came of all that talk, but at the very least, it was a sign that Israel was still responsive international pressure on the west bank now if you zoom out and look at the situation as a whole there's actually more overlap between the violence taking place today at jerusalem's policy towards the west bank than initially meets the eye granted the

Actions of these settlers are deeply unpopular in israel but those actions are still the product of many years of political decision making all leading to this moment at the core of the problem rests the belief in some corners of the leadership that jewish control over the west bank is not just something that could continue should it secure enough votes in

The knesset but that it is a right in and of itself for israel to pursue again none of this arose by accident it's not a problem that israeli simply woke up to one morning after benjamin netanyahu returned to office settlement construction has continued under governments across the right center and to some extent even the left for decades unauthorized

Outposts were controversially built before the government approved them sometimes after settlers expelled the palestinian residents and those settlers were rewarded for their efforts when their unauthorized annexations were often legalized retroactively if you look at these outposts on a map they're actually quite tiny individually but when combined over the

Decades they've dramatically changed what control of the west bank really looks like and that change has taught a lot of people in the settler movement a very powerful lesson sometimes it pays to move first and let the government catch up to you it's the geopolitical equivalent if you will of the saying that it's better to ask for forgiveness than ask for

Permission that assumption seems to be at play here when it comes to violence perpetrated by israeli settlers and the settlers aren't wrong to think it'll work the israeli advocacy group yes dean an organization that has spent two decades tracking these exact cases found that nearly 94 of investigations between 2005 and 2025 ended without indictment even if

Cases did go to trial only three percent of the total cases studied ended in conviction in other words even when the israeli government was considerably less sympathetic to the settler movements more extreme members actually getting from somebody attacked a palestinian to somebody went to prison for it was remarkably rare even still the current government

Spent years blowing any pretense of coming after these guys because as the attacks themselves accelerated in particular after the october 7th attacks by hamas from gaza the investigations actually slowed down israeli police reportedly opened 235 cases into settler violence in 2023 which fell to 150 in 2024 and then just 60 last year and once you realize who

Was in charge of those decisions well the dropping number of investigations starts to make a little bit more sense when avishar muhamen the senior police commander responsible for the west bank was investigated over allegations that he had deliberately gone soft on the attacks in order to win brownie points with the national security minister ben gavir

Didn't exactly rush to reassure the public that there was nothing to see instead he defended muhalem for prioritizing palestinian terrorism over whatever the settlers were up to adding that the commander had been quote implementing my policies all that was unfolding while finance minister bezalel smotrich was using his authority to accelerate settlement

Approvals granted that's not the same as condoning violence but given that israel settlements are widely condemned internationally smotrich's consistent financial support sent another strong signal to the settlers keep doing what you're doing and judea and samaria will be ours so when combined with the collapse in investigations the added funds made it

Increasingly easy for extremists to assume that jerusalem would simply look the other way which is exactly what's been happening since a one-state solution so if we zoom out from the scenes playing out in khusra for a moment things are looking unusually fragile in the west bank overall honestly it really says something that in this situation the israeli

Defense forces are hesitating as they try to figure out how to handle acts of mass violence against civilians this is extremely fraught political territory for the military to try and navigate even before the added religious ethnic geopolitical territorial and other compounding factors are added into the mix but we do want to be clear about one thing here

Israel has not somehow become a failed state that's simply incapable of enforcing law in the west bank this is still a country with one of the most sophisticated militaries on earth and if they were given the order the idf could have the situation here buttoned down faster than you can say muzzle tov but the if in that sentence as in if they were given the

Order to act is doing a lot of heavy lifting there that's because even if the idf were to deploy in force right now the settlers know that under the current political apparatus they basically have free reign and to be clear the idf hasn't been given that order the situation is being allowed to fester and a lack of action from jerusalem is just as impactful

As a decisive order to intervene or stand aside of course israel is also staring down an election next month one where netanyahu and his coalition seem unlikely to emerge victorious so if the balance of power in jerusalem is about to shift then all should be back to normal by the year's end right well not so fast the trouble is that curtailing the violence

We're seeing now and putting the west bank back where it was before all of this are two very different objectives the people carrying out these attacks don't represent all settlers but the argument that this is merely a tiny minority has been pretty resolutely debunked at this point more importantly they're operating inside a much larger settlement project

That isn't going anywhere even if the next government does come down on the violent extremist groups like a ton of bricks while predicting the outcome of israeli politics will usually earn you a success rate similar to that of your average middle eastern ceasefire it doesn't take an oracle to see that this situation will be exceedingly messy to resolve

Messier than just replacing a few of netanyahu's more controversial coalition members because of how many political parties exist in israel Any government is inherently going to be in a coalition with at least half a dozen parties besides the election winner, and many of those parties will have little to nothing in common. the current Israeli opposition

Wins, then settlement policy is going to be front and center in debates over the right direction for Israel to move forward. of Israel's most influential opposition politicians, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, originally comes from the Jewish Home Party, where the party's entire shtick was about expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

So we're not exactly holding our breath to figure out where Bennett comes down on that issue. do want to note that Bennett has been sharply critical of the current situation, he's shown little indication that a government under his leadership would reverse the broader settlement project itself. In reality, he would likely accelerate it.

Gadi Eisenkot, who we quoted earlier as saying that Netanyahu's government has effectively lost control of the West Bank, is genuinely less extreme on the issue. His Yashar party, for example, opposes the E-1 project, but even here, his hands are tied because of Israel's coalition system.

Netanyahu himself had to make a number of concessions to Ben-Gavir and Smotrich for them to join his government.

And it's not hard to see Bennett playing a role in a future Eisenkot government while demanding support for settlement expansion. But even Eisenkot isn't that moderate on the matter.

He's been perfectly clear in saying, quote, I very much believe in settlement in Judea and Samaria. also called anyone who still champions a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine after October 7th delusional.

Ultimately, Israel is a democracy, one whose leaders are accountable to their own domestic electorates before anything else. Politics have moved sharply right in the country for years now, in a pattern that long predates October 7th. Back in 2009, for example, roughly 63% of Jewish Israelis supported two-state solution.

By 2022, that was down to just a third. And today, it's cratered to just 16%. In fact, an outright majority would simply prefer annexing the territory, a figure that grows to nearly three quarters of right-wing Jewish Israelis.

Now, this doesn't mean the average Israeli supports mobs descending on Palestinian villages, torching cars, or anything like that. In fact, polling shows that opposition voters overwhelmingly regard this violence as something that has to be stopped.

But it does mean that the ultimate political objective the extremists pushing for has considerable overlap with larger swaths of the Israeli electorate, even if they want to achieve their common goal through methods they can't agree on.

And that is why an IDF deployment to the West Bank is something of an incomplete solution. The problem isn't that the settlers would defeat the IDF. They probably aren't so radical that they would attack the IDF outright.

And even if they do, they'll be cut down to size very quickly. But governments come and governments go. So even if some future Isencott drops the hammer on the settlers, they still have two aces up their sleeves.

Ace number one, the government may continue to retroactively approve settlements built without permission, which would further incentivize more to be set up that way. Ace number two, even if the settlers end up being disappointed with the next government, time has unmistakably been on their side.

If they were able to wait out the entirety of the Oslo negotiations, then one more Knesset term is just nothing at all.

This leaves Israel with a problem that goes way beyond the current violence. Even if a new government restores order in the short term, we have to expect that the situation in the West Bank will continue to deteriorate.

And even though the West Bank has long been less violent than Gaza, the IDF is still warning that these repeated encroachments could lead to mass unrest.

Those warnings would be foolish to ignore.