An Israeli ministerial committee began discussions this week on a bill that allows Israelis to easily purchase land in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank. The bill seeks to replace a Jordanian law from 1953 that limits who can buy land in the West Bank.

Although the Israeli government had previously issued directives to circumvent this law, enabling Israelis to purchase Palestinian land, the new bill seeks to nullify the Jordanian law altogether and remove existing requirements that have to pass through the Palestinian Authority (PA).

If the bill is passed, Israeli settlers, who are the main driver behind the draft law, will have the upper hand in determining the fate of the West Bank.

The two-state solution that envisions a future Palestinian State in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem as its capital has been the only diplomatic solution accepted by the international community to end the 76-year-old conflict.

But since the launch of the 1993 Oslo Accords, illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which has been under Israeli occupation since 1967, have only expanded in size. The UN and its principle legal organ the International Court of Justice (ICJ) consider all land occupied by Israel in 1967 to be illegally occupied and in violation of international law.

The West Bank, which is home to almost three million Palestinians, is the biggest land area of the would-be Palestinian state. Illegal Israeli settlement expansion, mounting land grab offensives, and rising attacks against Palestinians by armed settlers under the protection of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have all surged in recent years, provoking, among much else, the Hamas-led 7 October cross-border operation into Israel last year.

Since Israel launched its war on Gaza, armed settler attacks have surged in the West Bank as global attention has been focused on the genocide carried out by Israel in the Strip.

Last week, Israel’s far right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that he had instructed his department to “prepare the necessary infrastructure for applying sovereignty” to annex the West Bank.

According to the UN, at least 1,600 incidents of settler violence in the Occupied West Bank have taken place since then.

The IOF has stepped up raids and arrests in the West Bank, while also ordering the cessation of the construction of 14 Palestinian houses and facilities in the Hammamat Al-Malih area in the northern Jordan Valley, triggering clashes with Palestinians.

At least 785 Palestinians have since been killed and over 6,300 others injured by Israeli army fire in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Approximately 700,000 Israeli settlers are living in at least 250 settlements and outposts in the West Bank and Occupied East Jerusalem. Earlier this year, Israel approved the construction of about 3,500 new housing units, ​​adding to nearly 20,000 approved in 2023.

In 2017, Israel passed a law on retroactively legalising about 4,000 settler homes built on privately owned Palestinian land in the Occupied West Bank.

The new Israeli bill would give Israelis the right to purchase land in the West Bank directly, bypassing institutions and moving Israeli control into civilian hands permanently and thwarting the premises of Palestinian statehood.

US President Joe Biden has done little to stop the Israeli encroachment on the West Bank beyond imposing some sanctions against groups and individuals involved in illegal settlement activity.

The sanctions could be reversed under the Trump administration, which takes office in January.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for US ambassador to Israel is former governor of Arkansas Christian Evangelical Mike Huckabee, who was filmed in 2015 telling Israeli settlers that “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian.”

In 2017, he announced his rejection of the term “West Bank,” insisting instead on the biblical Jewish names of “Judea and Samaria.” Huckabee, who identifies as a “Christian Zionist,” denies that there is an occupation in the West Bank and describes the two-state solution as “nonsense.”

Elis Stefanik, United Nations ambassador-designate, has vowed to unconditionally back Israel. Her views are aligned with the Israeli right wing government’s policies to ban the only UN agency that provides relief and assistance to Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which she has called “a hive of anti-Semitism” operating in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Fox news host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s choice for secretary of defence, has advocated for Israel’s war on Gaza, calling it a “real war stacking the bodies of dead people.” Marco Rubio, who will serve as secretary of state, considers Israel’s war on Gaza as the Western world’s civilisational defence against “radical apocalyptic Islam.”

Earlier this week, over 50 Israeli settler terrorists stormed the Palestinian village of Beit Furik in Nablus on the West Bank, torching homes and vehicles and injuring two elderly residents while Palestinians defended themselves with stones.

Armed Israeli settlers have been systemically intimidating Palestinian farmers, restricting access to their land and making this olive season the most dangerous ever, in the words of the UN special rapporteur on the Right to Food.

Last year, Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, faced the highest level of Israeli settler violence ever, including settlers physically assaulting Palestinians, setting fire or damaging their property and crops, stealing sheep, blocking them from accessing their land, water and grazing areas, and causing a record number of Palestinians to be displaced after being forced to leave their homes and lands.

Last year, Israel also seized more Palestinian land than in any year over the past 30 years, the UN rapporteur’s report said.

In July, the Australian government imposed sanctions on Israeli settlers. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese cited both the illegality of the settlements and their obstruction of the two-state solution as the reason for his government’s decision.

Last week, an extraordinary Islamic-Arab Summit meeting held in Saudi Arabia demanded an immediate ceasefire to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and raised the alarm over Israeli advances towards annexing the West Bank.

The summit’s final communique called on the international community to designate Israeli settlers and Jewish settler movements as “terrorist” groups  and organisations.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 21 November, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the title: Pogroms in the West Bank