2025 could be a defining year for the West Bank

The year 2025 promises to be dangerous for the West Bank, where the aftermath of Israel's war on Gaza forced a weakened Palestinian Authority out of its slumber, and the Israeli settler movement, drunk on the prospect of annexing the occupied West Bank, make for a particularly explosive combination.

This piles upon existing trends that predate October 7, 2023. Since around 2022, the West Bank has been on a path to what some have called “Gazification” due to a spike in violence between Israel and armed factions that have taken hold of parts of the northern West Bank. Israel has increasingly used tactics seen in Gaza, including relying on air power and carrying out ground raids using special forces and bulldozers to “clear” Palestinian cities of what it calls terrorist infrastructure.

The destructive whack-a-mole game has been playing out in Jenin even before the Gaza war, with its refugee camp being the target of several Israeli security operations—and even a PA one—forcing displacement and creating a vicious cycle that may be difficult to stop.

At the same time, settler violence has been on the rise, with the most radical part of the settler movement seeing October 7 as an opportunity to lash out, knowing that the world’s focus on Gaza, resentment towards Palestinians in Israel was rising, and the presence of settler figures within the government, would water down any semblance of a response.

The settler movement has grown so emboldened as even to attack Israeli soldiers and figures the (few) times Israeli troops stepped in to intervene. Most recently, just as a ceasefire was reached in Gaza, Israel launched another major security operation dubbed “Iron Wall”. The operation was initially focused on the Jenin camp but has since expanded to other nearby towns.

Read more: With Gaza on backburner, Israel turns its military might on Jenin

This is, in part, a response to the strengthening of armed Palestinian groups who have been able to operate freely in several areas of the Northern West Bank. Refugee camps in Jenin, Nablus, Jericho, and Tulkarm have increasingly fallen outside of the control of the Palestinian Authority. This isn’t new; signs of a slow decline were already there nearly a decade ago. But those trends have now matured, and a myriad of groups—some under the flag of prominent factions like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad but others operating independently—are now able to carry out more sophisticated attacks.

Perhaps more worryingly, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades—a group that has ties to Fatah (the party in control of the Palestinian Authority) and even former members of the Palestinian security forces—have increasingly been involved in attacks, showing a complete loss of control by the Palestinian Authority over groups it should be able to control, further compounding the existing risks.

Not one to miss a strategic opportunity, Iran has jumped to action with the hope of opening a new front against Israel. It has provided these groups with weapons and funds to wage a low-grade insurgency. Through smuggling routes used by drug traffickers, Iran has attempted to deliver weaponry, including anti-personnel mines, more powerful explosives and a slew of assault and handguns to the West Bank.

With much of the attention focused on Gaza, this enduring multi-pronged crisis provides fertile ground for dramatic changes, including by actors whose dream is to break the status quo.

Piecemeal annexation

One of the first Israeli officials to congratulate President Donald Trump was Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. This is not coincidental: The far-right religious settler movement Smotrich represents has been waiting for Trump with almost as much fervour as they wait for the Messiah. In 2020, Smotrich was already one of the leading figures pushing Netanyahu to implement a grand plan to annexe the West Bank, but the Abraham Accords thwarted his efforts at the time.

As the saying goes, not everyone gets a second chance. Smotrich is very well aware of this. The far-right leader views Trump’s return as a golden opportunity to make sure annexation does go through this time. In a post on social media just days after Trump’s election, Smotrich pledged that 2025 would be the “year of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria”, referring to the West Bank by its Biblical name.

At a meeting of Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, the Israeli Finance Minister later made it even clearer: "Trump's victory also brings with it an important opportunity for the State of Israel. We were a step away from applying sovereignty to the settlements in Judea and Samaria, and now the time has come to do it”.

In other words, Smotrich missed his chance in 2020, at a time when he was seated outside of the government, and he does not intend to miss it now that he sits so prominently inside the corridors of power in Israel.

Smotrich knows that, despite Trump’s entry at the White House and Netanyahu’s purported support for annexation, securing actual backing both in Israel and in the US won’t be easy. He knows that if he overplays his hand and pushes for annexation of the whole West Bank, this would likely prompt a push-back.

As a more savvy political operator, he understands that Trump and Netanyahu may well try to go for a replay of 2020, using the threat of annexation to advance normalisation. And even if he had the full backing of the White House and that of Netanyahu himself, he also knows that annexing the whole of the West Bank would raise a host of issues—most notably by forcing Israel to take care of the needs of millions of Palestinians, as well as by raising the question of giving Palestinian voting rights. This could easily turn Smotrich’s “dream” of a 'Greater Israel' into his nightmare: a binational state.

Instead, Smotrich will likely push for a more piecemeal strategy, demanding that Israel annexe only settlement blocs where Jewish residents already are a majority. On the ground, this wouldn’t be a dramatic change, as Israeli law already applies to Israeli settlers.