A Reading in the Logic of Displacement: How Does Israel Try to Resolve the Demographic Dilemma in the West Bank?

In an analysis published by Haaretz newspaper, Israeli writer Hagai El-Ad presented a deep critical insight into the ongoing events in the West Bank, emphasizing that the escalating settler violence and systematic displacement operations are not merely isolated incidents or temporary breakdowns. El-Ad believes that these practices represent the core of the Zionist logic, which has sought since its inception to subjugate Palestinians and resolve the conflict over land through force, especially given the inability to achieve a decisive numerical superiority through political means alone.

The analysis indicates that over decades, Israel has managed to impose almost absolute dominance in military, economic, and political fields, and has tightened its control over natural resources and water. However, the demographic concern and the population balance between Palestinians and Jews in the area between the sea and the river remain the challenge that troubles the Israeli establishment, pushing all state agencies, including the army, judiciary, and legislature, to work on reducing the Palestinian presence by all available means.

The article outlines two paths, and no third, for the current Israeli predicament. The first is to recognize the reality of a binational state and the resulting full civil and political equality, an option rejected by Zionism. The second path is to continue the policies of displacement and ethnic cleansing to complete what the Zionist project began in previous stages, leading to a demographic resolution equivalent to the military resolution already achieved on the ground.

In a historical context, El-Ad recalls the Deir Yassin massacre not as an archival event, but as a continuous model linking the commission of massacres with the achievement of forced displacement of populations. He bases this on David Ben-Gurion's speeches in 1949, which revealed the impossibility of combining the idea of 'the complete Land of Israel' and a Jewish state without resorting to forced demographic changes to ensure a clear Jewish majority, which was imposed by force of arms during the Nakba of 1948.

The writer believes that the 1967 war created a new dilemma, as Israel controlled vast areas of Palestinian land without being able to achieve a demographic resolution similar to what happened in the Nakba. This failure to change the demographic balance kept the 'knot' in place, and made current regional wars, whether with Iran or on the northern fronts, mere secondary events that do not touch the essence of the conflict, which is the Palestinian presence within historical Palestine.

El-Ad describes what is happening today in the West Bank, including settler attacks, killings, and destruction of camps, as 'small massacres' aimed at practicing internal ethnic cleansing. This policy relies on uprooting Palestinians from their homes, destroying their livelihoods, and confining them to narrow enclaves, awaiting a political moment or a wartime circumstance that allows this internal displacement to be transformed into a comprehensive mass expulsion across borders, as clearly shown in the destruction policies implemented in the Gaza Strip.

The analysis concludes that Israel is currently not choosing between democracy and binationalism, but rather is engaged in continuous management of a demographic dilemma whose tools range from an apartheid system to explicit ethnic cleansing. El-Ad asserts that 'Deir Yassin' has not ended as an idea, but is the operational name for an Israeli logic that still governs the present, even if the names and technical means used in carrying out displacement operations have changed.

The issue is not a choice between a democratic Jewish state and binationalism, but rather the management of a demographic dilemma that begins with apartheid and ends with ethnic cleansing.