Israel’s systemic oppression of the occupied territory is designed to provoke a popular explosion among Palestinians, writes Ramzy Baroud. The breaking point is fast approaching.
Soldiers during the Israeli military’s Operation Iron Wall in Jenin, the occupied West Bank, Jan. 30, 2025. (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0)
By Ramzy Baroud
Politics for the People
Israel is meticulously following a textbook model of instigating unrest in the occupied West Bank.
The latest such provocations consisted of stripping the Palestinian-run Hebron (Al-Khalil) municipality of its administrative powers over the venerable Ibrahimi Mosque.
Worse, according to Israel Hayom, it granted these powers to the religious council of the Kiryat Arba Jewish settlement, an extremist settler body.
Though all Jewish settlers in occupied Palestine can be qualified as extremists, the approximately 7,500 inhabitants of Kiryat Arba represent a more virulent category. This settlement, established in 1972, serves as a strategic foothold to justify subjecting Hebron to stricter military control than virtually any other part of the West Bank.
Kiryat Arba is infamously linked to Baruch Goldstein, the U.S.-Israeli settler who, in February 1994, unleashed a horrific attack. He opened fire at Muslim worshipers kneeling for dawn prayer at the Ibrahimi Mosque, mercilessly killing 29.
This bloodbath was swiftly followed by another, where the Israeli army brutally cracked down on Palestinian protesters in Hebron and across the West Bank, murdering an additional 25 Palestinians.
A civilian injured in the riots around Al-Aqsa in the Old City of Jerusalem that followed Baruch Goldstein’s massacre in Hebron, Feb. 26, 1994. (Gideon Markowiz / Israel Press and Photo Agency, Dan Hadani collection, National Library of Israel /Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
Yet, the Israeli Shamgar Commission, tasked with investigating the massacre, resolved in 1994 that the Palestinian mosque, a site of profound religious significance, was to be grotesquely divided: 63 percent allocated to Jewish worshipers and a mere 37 percent to Palestinian Muslims.
Since that calamitous decision, oppressive restrictions have been systematically imposed. These include pervasive surveillance and, at times, unjustifiable, extended closures of the site, solely for exclusive settler use.
The latest decision, described by Israel Hayom as “historic and unprecedented,” is profoundly dangerous. It places the fate of this historic Palestinian mosque directly into the hands of those fanatically keen on acquiring the holy site in its entirety.
But the Ibrahimi Mosque is merely a microcosm of something far more sinister underway across the West Bank. Israel has exploited its war in Gaza to dramatically escalate its violence, carry out mass arrests, confiscate vast tracts of land, systematically destroy Palestinian farms and orchards, and aggressively expand illegal settlements.
Israeli Border Guard soldiers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in February 2024. (Israel Police, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Though the West Bank, previously largely subdued by joint Israeli military pressures and Palestinian Authority crackdowns, was not a direct party to the Oct. 7, 2023, assault nor the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, it has inexplicably become a major focus for Israeli military measures.
In the first year of the war, over 10,400 Palestinians were detained in Israeli army crackdowns, with thousands held without charge. Furthermore, hundreds of Palestinians have been forcibly ethnically cleansed, largely from the northern West Bank, where entire refugee camps and towns have been systematically destroyed in protracted Israeli military campaigns.
Israel’s overarching aim remains the strangulation of the West Bank. This is achieved by severing communities using ubiquitous military checkpoints, imposing total closures of vast regions and the cruel suspension of work permits for Palestinian laborers, who are almost entirely dependent on the Israeli work market for survival.
This insidious plan also explicitly targeted all Palestinian holy sites, including the revered Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem and the Ibrahimi Mosque. Even when these shrines were nominally accessible, age restrictions and suffocating military checkpoints make it difficult, at times utterly impossible, for Palestinians to worship there.
In August 2024, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that his relentless violent campaign against the West Bank was part of confronting the “broader Iran terror axis.”
Practically, this statement served as a green light for the Israeli army to treat the West Bank as an extension of the ongoing Israeli genocide on Gaza. By mid-July 2025, over 900 Palestinians had been killed by the Israeli army in the West Bank, while at least 15 were murdered by settlers.
Saeed Al Umoor, a victim of Israeli settler violence, describes a rise in brazen and heavily armed attacks against Palestinians, carried out with impunity as both the Israeli government and PA look on. pic.twitter.com/0AwzxtFI03
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 25, 2025
As Palestinians were pushed further against the wall, with no centralized strategy by their leadership to meaningfully resist, Israel exponentially increased its illegal settlement constructions and the brazen legalization of numerous outposts, many built illegally even by Israeli government standards.
Israel’s actions in the West Bank were not a sudden deviation but consistent with a long-standing, insidious scheme. This includes a plan solidified by the Israeli Knesset in 2020 that allowed Israel to officially annex the West Bank. Israel’s ultimate goal has always been to confine the majority of Palestinians into Bantustan-like enclaves, while asserting full control over the vast majority of the region.
In August 2023, extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir articulated this sinister vision:
“My right, the right of my wife and my children to move around Judea and Samaria (the occupied West Bank) is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs.”
More coercive measures swiftly followed, including Knesset laws to significantly curtail the operations of the Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and further legislation to entrench de facto annexation.
Last May, Smotrich audaciously announced 22 more settlements. On July 2, 14 Israeli ministers made a public call on Netanyahu to immediately annex the West Bank.
In fact, every action Israel has undertaken, especially since the commencement of its devastating genocide in Gaza, has been carefully calculated to culminate in the irreversible annexation of the West Bank — a process that would inevitably be followed by declaring native inhabitants persona non grata in their own homeland.
This level of systemic pressure and oppression will ultimately lead to a popular explosion. Though suppressed by the brutality of the Israeli army, the terror of armed settlers, and the suppressive actions of the Palestinian Authority, the breaking point is fast approaching.
Those in the West who preach hollow calls for calm and de-escalation must understand the region is hurtling towards the brink. Neither diplomatic platitudes nor sterile press releases will suffice to avert the catastrophe. They are advised to act decisively against Israel’s destructive policies, and they must act immediately.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out. His other books include My Father was a Freedom Fighter and The Last Earth. Baroud is a non-resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
This article is from the author’s website, Politics for the People.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Uh, yes, the West Bank is on the Brink. But, you left out a couple of important facts. The Knesset just voted to annex the West Bank, and powerful cabinet ministers who always get what they want from Netanyahu are openly saying now is the time to make the West Bank a part of Israel. That’s not a history recital, that’s this week’s news. Although, since what Americans see about Israel is double-censored, first in Israel, then the Israeli-approved ‘news’ is censored a second time for American audiences, I’m not entirely sure that Americans even know that a majority of the legislature in Israel just openly voted to annex all of Palestine.
The “Two-State Solution” was always a Democrat lie from the lying Clintons. Now that lie is being shown in the light as America’s Israeli partners openly annex everything they’ve ever wanted all the way to the suburbs of Damascus, including all of illegally occupied Palestine, in order to make completely clear that there is only one, genocidal state.
The biggest mistake the Palestinians made was to believe Bill Clinton. Although, it does provide humour today to see that the PA was so conned by Bill Clinton that even today they still try to suck up to the Americans even as the Americans order the destruction of Palestine.
“In August 2023, extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir articulated this sinister vision:
“My right, the right of my wife and my children to move around Judea and Samaria (the occupied West Bank) is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs.”
Fucking arrogant bastard! Anyone who wonders why there is a rise in antisemitism is dumber than dirt. The Zionists are sowing the seeds of their own destruction.
Ah, the Fascist view of ‘rights’. My Rights Uber Alles.
This is the opposite from the view of rights from the point of view of democracy and freedom, where all people have rights, and thus society is always a negotiation between various ‘rights’ held by equals. When all people have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, no one person’s pursuit of ‘their rights’ is allowed to trample on the rights of all of those around them.
The Fascist view of “My Rights Uber Alles” is obviously the opposite of democracy and freedom.
Moses and his mythical thing have been murdering forever
Thankyou Cal. I needed that laugh.
Jericho …. Never Again!
Canaan for the Canaanites!
Yeah, but, it’s not just the West Bank that is hurtling towards the brink, we too, here in the wicked West, not just America, but Canada, Britain, France, etc., have lost the capacity for compassion and speaking out. It’s the mid to late 1930s Germany all over again. The then brownshirts are the masked ICE raiders. The media is silent, using words like war when it’s a Genocide. When there’s only one narrative, we know it’s propaganda as with C-19. War(?) against a ragtag group of resisters with rifles and RPG launchers? The German people knew what their Nazis were doing, just as the American and Israeli people know what their Zionists are up to or down at. It will end badly. Gaia will have the last say as the climate crisis chaos ignored is roaring. Four one in a thousand floods in TX, in one week.
Oh yes. It’s happening faster than we realise. Mother nature is fed up with us assaulting her and her critters and flora. And the propaganda relating to the genocide is absolutely astounding. Now europe is gearing up for a war with Russia. They will not be content until we are all annihilated. Their insanity and hubris will guarantee that.
Xxxx://news.am/eng/news/892991.html
Excerpt from linked article:
“Europe’s largest port, Rotterdam, has begun preparing for a possible conflict with Russia. Port authorities are reserving space for ships carrying military cargo and developing plans to redirect commercial traffic in the event of war, Boudewijn Siemons, CEO of the Port of Rotterdam Authority, told the Financial Times, the latter reports.”