The West Bank:
From Settlements to Annexation?

Sep 29, 2025

This article is translated from the September 26, issue #2982 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded when French President Emmanuel Macron and other Western leaders theatrically recognized the Palestinian state. He accused them of giving “a huge reward to terrorism.” He added, “It will not happen. A Palestinian state will not be established west of the Jordan River.”

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir immediately called for the immediate annexation of the West Bank. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich agreed: “The only response to this anti-Israeli move is the annexation of the Jewish people’s homeland in Judea and Samaria [the biblical name that settlers/colonialists use for the West Bank] and the definitive abandonment of the absurd idea of a Palestinian state.”

These speeches are nothing new from representatives of the extreme right who run the Israeli government. These themes have been repeated nonstop, along with the pretext of “eradicating Hamas,” the official justification for the incessant bombings and massacres committed in Gaza for nearly two years. After the brief ceasefire this past January, the intensification of military operations and settlement-building in the West Bank was one of the war aims stated by Israel’s general staff. Netanyahu’s decision in March to break the ceasefire led to redoubled calls for the establishment of new settlements. Meanwhile, the Israeli army increasingly covered up atrocities and attacks by settlers against Palestinian villagers who were driven from their lands and were defending themselves at the cost of their lives.

The West Bank has been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War in 1967. It is home to approximately 3.2 million Palestinians, and now includes half a million Jewish Israelis living in more than 130 settlements recognized and encouraged by successive Israeli governments. The Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 did lead to the establishment of a Palestinian Authority, which was supposed to govern the affairs of the people of the West Bank and Gaza. But Israel’s political leaders have done everything possible to strip it of any real power.

Will Israel finally annex the West Bank and Gaza? If it has not done so yet, it is because there is an obstacle. In a unified Israeli state the Arab population would be as numerous as the Jewish population. Palestinians would hold sway—unless a system of apartheid is officially established.

Israel’s far right is tempted instead to find a “final solution” to the problem posed by the Palestinians: to exterminate or at least expel them. But the fact is that for nearly 80 years, Palestinians have stubbornly refused to disappear. All of Netanyahu’s pomp is powerless.