Annexing the West Bank.. An attempt to undermine the state project

Dr. Amjad Bashkar: What is happening in the West Bank goes beyond violations and infringements to a systematic attempt to re-engineer both geography and the people together.

Khalil Shaheen: Changing the status of the West Bank to a region under Israeli sovereignty means it will become part of "Eretz Israel" with a solution to the population dilemma.

Nizar Nazzal: UNRWA's warnings about the possibility of the West Bank facing a fate similar to Gaza reflect the seriousness of the stage and what is happening is a systematic dismantling of Palestinian life.

Dr. Tamara Haddad: The pursuit of legitimizing annexation reflects Israel's commitment to a sustainable approach to controlling the land and reducing the Palestinian demographic.

Suleiman Basharat: Despite what is happening, positions remain weak and rely on appeals and demands instead of using leverage such as boycotts or halting normalization.

Daoud Kuttab: The current Israeli behavior falls within electoral motives that are no less dangerous than the ideological dimension in dealing with Palestinian territories.

The West Bank is witnessing an unprecedented escalation in Israeli policies aimed at annexation and imposing Israeli sovereignty while changing its geographical, demographic, and political character, through a comprehensive system of measures that begin with land confiscation and drying up resources and end with dismantling the Palestinian social structure, leading to a stage of official annexation and control, all occurring amid a complete international silence.

Writers, political analysts, and specialists agree, in separate conversations with "Y," that what is happening goes beyond the usual field violations and infringements to a systematic attempt to re-engineer both the geography and the Palestinian people together, in the context of "effective annexation" being practiced on the ground without an official declaration, leading to what some circles describe as "noisy annexation" through legislation to impose Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.

According to the writers, analysts, and specialists, the data confirms that the Israeli occupation is moving rapidly towards entrenching a new political reality, in which the status of the West Bank changes from an area under occupation to an area under full Israeli sovereignty, including control over natural resources above and below the ground, and integrating settlements into the legal and administrative structure of the occupying state, indicating that this transformation practically means a comprehensive annexation of Palestinian lands, with the Palestinian population remaining outside the framework of citizenship, amid attempts to classify them as foreign subjects or temporary residents, which opens the door to gradual displacement projects and undermining the actual Palestinian presence.

In contrast, writers, analysts, and specialists warn that international silence regarding these policies constitutes indirect political cover for their continuation, while the effectiveness of international institutions declines in the face of the biased American position, and European and Arab positions vary between verbal condemnation statements and formal stances.

They see that confronting this trajectory requires redefining the national strategy, and unifying political, field, and popular efforts against gradual annexation, before the scene is completed, which threatens to turn the West Bank into a "second Gaza" amid a reality of geographic isolation, economic strangulation, and the practices of settler militias and policies of tightening, demolition, and settlement expansion.

A practical manifestation of a policy of uprooting that has continued since the Nakba.

Political science professor Dr. Amjad Bashkar warns that what is happening in the West Bank today goes beyond incidental violations or legal infringements to a "systematic attempt to re-engineer both the geography and the Palestinian people together," considering that the ongoing operations of confiscating thousands of dunams, displacing camp residents, cutting off water sources, uprooting olive trees, and shooting farmers in their fields represent a practical manifestation of a policy of uprooting that has continued since the Nakba.

Bashkar describes what is happening as "effective annexation, which is the field face of the Zionist project in its new phase," pointing out that the goal is no longer just to Judaize the place, but to destroy the Palestinian existence as a geographic, economic, and psychological entity.

He notes that land confiscation, water drying, and environmental degradation, in addition to the authorities and settlers' efforts to turn farmers into refugees, constitute a system aimed at breaking the backbone of Palestinian society in the West Bank and reproducing a being without land or the ability to communicate geographically or have actual sovereignty.

Bashkar clarifies that the concept of annexation should not be confined to legislative texts, but should be read as a daily colonial behavior practiced "with the shovel, bullet, and bureaucracy simultaneously," noting that UNRWA's warnings about the possibility of the West Bank facing a fate similar to Gaza confirm to experts that Israel