Sukey Wolf
August 2026
With complete disregard for international law, Israeli settlements proliferate in the West Bank. Both the United Nations and the International Criminal Court have ruled the settlements illegal. Still, Zionist residents and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) continue to ramp up their brutal efforts to drive the Palestinians from their homes and land.
Enforced poverty
The West Bank is blocked with walls and IDF checkpoints, creating a virtual maze and preventing the free movement of Palestinian residents. The checkpoints prevent day laborers from accessing their jobs in Israel. Although the West Bank technically belongs to Palestine, the aftermath of the 1995 Oslo Accords placed the vast majority of the occupied area under Israeli control. (See map at end of article.)
There are almost a million refugees living in the West Bank. Many of them were forced into camps thinking that they would soon be able to return to their land.
West Bank residents are under constant threat of attack. Settlers frequently steal their livestock and bombard their homes in the middle of the night with ear-splitting music and searchlights. Their water lines are regularly damaged and soldiers burn down their homes. Many villagers have been forced to leave the area without any way to support themselves.
Groups of settlers, often youth, set fire to homes, cars and villages. Olive groves, representing generations of cultivation, can be hundreds of years old. Regardless, they are burned down or ripped out from the roots, guaranteeing their permanent destruction. Roads are blocked during the harvest so the trees can’t be reached by their owners.
Murder with impunity
Since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has been responsible for over a thousand Palestinians deaths in the West Bank. This includes 250 children. Oxfam, a British relief organization, reports that more civilians have been killed in the occupied region in the last three years than in the previous 17 years. This shows how the atrocities committed in the West Bank are an extension of the genocide in Gaza.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli Minister of Finance, who lives in a settlement in the West Bank, calls for the IDF to “shoot to kill” youngsters who throw stones at them. He also says the Zionist government needs to “flood” the area with settlements so that Palestinians will “realize they only have three choices — subjugation under Israeli rule, emigration or martyrdom.” This view is typical of Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing cabinet.
The consequences of resistance to the Israeli occupation in the West Bank are dire. Non-Jews are terrorized daily, beaten and sexually abused, imprisoned without charges, tortured and killed with impunity. Amnesty International documents these atrocities, clearly describing official Israeli policy as apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
Palestinians retain a fierce determination. Rafaat Alareer was a professor and poet who lived in Gaza. He wrote “Submitting to the occupation is a betrayal to humanity and to all struggles around the world.” Alarer and many of his family members were killed in 2023 by an Israeli bomb.
Worldwide awareness continues to grow. Popular opinion is rapidly turning against Israel as the magnitude of its crimes leads ordinary people to consider it a pariah state. Additionally, there are dozens of Palestinian-Israeli groups that condemn the hard-right Zionist government, calling for peace between Arabs and Jews.
Uncle Sam’s tax dollars are funding the Israeli carnage in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. It is imperative to pressure the U.S. government to withdraw support. As stated in the Freedom Socialist Organiser, “What is needed is the political defeat of Zionism, which would enable a new secular state to come into existence. One in which Palestinians, Christians, Jews and atheists can once again live side by side.”
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Dividing up the West Bank in 1995
The 1995 Oslo Accords unjustly divided control of the occupied West Bank.
Signed by the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel, the Accords were a disaster for Palestinians. Agreements of Israeli troop withdrawal never happened. Instead, the Zionist government backed expansion of illegal settlements and outposts, further dispossessing Palestinians by taking their land.
Left to right: Palestinian control (18%); Joint Palestinian-Israeli control (22%); Israeli control (60%).
Source: OCHA
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