The dramatic and swift fall of President Bashar Al-Assad of Syria has all but delinked Iran from its proxy, Hezbollah, in Lebanon, since Syria was Iran’s conduit to Hezbollah. The ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon has all but delinked Hezbollah, weakened both militarily and politically in Lebanon, from a besieged war-ravaged Gaza. Iran’s wings have been severely clipped and the so-called axis of resistance is disintegrating. The regional power equations have been redrawn. Hamas is on its last legs in Gaza.
With prospects for a Gaza ceasefire brightening, what Israel plans to do with its reassertion of regional dominance is crucial to the future of West Asia’s peace and security. While their focus will now turn to effect regime change in Iran and how Gaza can be “secured” for Israel, Israeli activities in the occupied West Bank will be the litmus test for what is in store for the future of West Asia.
The West Bank is the prize that Israel wants. Dominating Gaza is necessary to make sure that it stops being a launchpad to threaten Israeli security. But West Bank annexation is necessary to complete the dream of Eretz Israel.
Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, an ultra-right political partner in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, has already declared 2025 as the year of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria — the biblical name for West Bank, after ancient Israeli kingdoms. Israel wants to annex it, in effect annexing occupied territory and erasing the 1967 borders. We have already seen that the “New Middle East” map presented to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly (UNGA) by Netanyahu had no West Bank or Gaza. What was earlier Hamas’s slogan — from the river to the sea — has now become Israel’s rallying cry.
More than 750 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 7, 2023, including 165 children. There has been a huge spurt in airstrikes on Palestinian cities in the West Bank such as Tulkarem, Jenin, and Nablus under the guise of fighting Islamic radical groups. Palestinians are being arrested and their homes and livelihoods destroyed, with or without help from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
There are more than 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, up from 520,000 in 2012, changing the demographics of the West Bank. Housing units for settlers are being sanctioned by the thousands. Israeli settlements have been declared “illegal” by UN Security Council Resolutions and by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Further, as per the Fourth Geneva Convention, the transfer by an occupying power of its civilian population into occupied territory is a war crime. But displacement of Palestinians goes on.
I remember when I lived in Gaza in 1996-98, more than 25% of this sliver of land was still occupied by Israeli settlements, slicing Gaza into two and draining Gaza of land, water and other resources backed by a strong IDF presence. West Bank is facing that prospect.
Israel received a shot in the arm with the election of Donald Trump in the United States since he had, in his first term, “legitimised” Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The Joe Biden administration, which has usually paid lip service to the illegality of settlements, recently imposed sanctions against Amana, an Israeli settlement development organization, for perpetrating violence in the West Bank. A case of “too little, too late”. Trump 2.0 will have no such punishments.
However, the Gulf States have been embarrassed or ought to be embarrassed. The fig leaf for signing the Abraham Accords to normalize relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco was Netanyahu’s assurance that Israel would not annex the West Bank. Now, even that fig leaf is gone. But the Gulf States have opted to watch Israel stymie Iran’s threat in the region since diminishing dismantling Iran’s axis not only suits them but also they need the US and Israel as partners to free the region from the “shackles” of history and geography.
Creating new realities in the West Bank is taking place even as the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity involving murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts and war crimes of starvation. While Israel is not an ICC member, the ICC exercised territorial jurisdiction since Palestine were admitted in 2015.
The issue of arrest warrants has sent shockwaves across the US and even Europe. For the first time, the leader of a country “defending Western civilization” has been charged by the ICC. Earlier, then Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta and deputy president (and current president) William Ruto were also charged. Russian President Vladimir Putin is, of course, not from the West either. Neither is senior general Min Aung Hlaing of Myanmar against whom an ICC arrest warrant has been requested.
This comes soon after the ICJ pronounced in July 2024 — for the first time — that Israel’s occupation of Palestine was illegal under international law. It stripped Israel of any “legal ambiguity” on its occupation and called for immediate and total withdrawal of Israeli settlers from the occupied territories. In effect, it held the 1967 border as the State of Palestine. Promptly, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, voted to reject a Palestinian State with 68 voting in favour, including so-called moderate and centrist opposition parties, and nine against. On the other hand, on December 3, the UNGA voted by an overwhelming majority for a two-State solution, including ceasing all settlement activities and evacuating settlers, with India voting for the resolution.
Will Israel use recent geopolitical developments to find a political solution for Palestine or merely as a green signal to annex the West Bank? It seems highly unlikely that, given that the tide has decisively turned in favor of Israel on the battlefield, it will seek a political solution. The defeat of Hamas is becoming synonymous with the defeat of a Palestinian State. If indeed Israel decides to annex West Bank, the apprehension is that the Palestinian State — if at all it comes about — can at best be a thinned-out Gaza sans West Bank, with regional powers acquiescing. History can be unforgiving to those who “stand and wait.”
TS Tirumurti is a former ambassador and Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations. The views expressed are personal
