The rapid increase in illegal Israeli settlers, along with Israel-induced economic collapse have brought the occupied West Bank to its knees in the past two years.
How Israel forcibly reshaped the occupied West Bank since October 2023
By Fahya Shalash, Reposted from The New Arab, October 10, 2025
Since the 1967 war, Israel has been attempting to impose a new order on the occupied West Bank, notably aiming to reduce the Palestinian presence there and encourage Israeli settlement expansion.
A significant shift in Israel’s control over the Palestinian territories began after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. Israel divided the territories into Areas A, B, and C, effectively controlling more than 66% of the occupied West Bank.
In 2022, the current right-wing Israeli government was formed, which escalated its measures to promote settlement expansion and seize Palestinian land. This policy accelerated after the declaration of war on Gaza two years ago.
Dangerous and fundamental changes
According to the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, Israel has systematically confiscated 55,000 dunams of Palestinian land over the past two years, including 20,000 dunams under the pretext of modifying the boundaries of nature reserves, and 26,000 dunams through 14 declarations of “state land” in the cities of Jerusalem, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Qalqilya.
Since October 2023, 108 Israeli military orders have been issued to seize 1,756 dunams under the pretext of “military purposes,” aimed at establishing military towers, security roads, and buffer zones around settlements. This is in addition to a campaign to expand bypass roads and build Israeli settler-only roads, to complete the process of connecting settlement blocs and separating the Palestinian presence.
Israel has also established at least 25 buffer zones around settlements, most of which are concentrated in the northern occupied West Bank.
Meanwhile, Israeli planning authorities submitted 355 master plans for the construction of a total of 37,415 settlement units on an area of 38,551 dunams. Of these, 18,801 units were approved.
The rapid increase in illegal Israeli settlement construction is the most significant change witnessed in the occupied West Bank over the past two years.
Suhail Khalilia, Director of the Settlement Monitoring Unit at the Applied Research Institute for Jerusalem (ARIJ), told us that since the beginning of the war, more than 45,000 settlement units have been approved. This staggering number is likely to rise to 55,000 by the end of the year.
He explained that more than 1,200 military barriers, which take various forms, including iron gates, concrete blocks, and earth barriers, have a clear purpose: to isolate cities from each other, and to accustom Palestinians to the idea that traveling between cities in the West Bank is like traveling to another country.
“Since the current Israeli government came to power, 114 settlement outposts have been legalized in various areas of the West Bank, and there are dozens more that have not yet been registered. With the change in laws in favor of settlements, this phenomenon will intensify,” he said.
Attacks on religious sites have also become increasingly worrying. There has been an increase in the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by tens of thousands of settlers over the past two years, an accurate indication of a plan to target it and subject it to the same fate as the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, where Israel issued new laws that led to the seizure of new areas, the expansion of settlement outposts around it, and the separation of its location to connect it to the main settlement road.
“In addition to changing the geography, Israel has deliberately undermined economic life, which has reached its worst point. Tens of thousands of Palestinian workers are unable to reach their workplaces. All of this is aimed at pressuring society, and all of these are worrying matters aimed at reducing the number of Palestinians,” Khalilia added.
All of this happened because of a change in the Civil Administration, which is part of the Israeli military that controls the West Bank. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich assumed control of the Civil Administration after the formation of the current government coalition.
The first thing he did was change the laws governing settlement expansion, reducing the approval process from 17 steps to a quick and streamlined process that can be completed within weeks.
“The most dangerous settlement project that has come to light in these two years is the E1 project, which has existed for three decades but was implemented with the arrival of Smotrich. This is a real disaster,” he explained.
The ‘Cowboy Approach’
Establishing Israeli settler dominance over the occupied West Bank has reached its most prominent level since the beginning of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.
Israeli settlers are no longer simply groups of civilians living on Palestinian land under the protection of the Israeli army. They have become organized armed groups operating in an organized manner with full military and financial support from the Israeli government.
Since October 2023, the Israeli army and settlers have carried out 38,359 attacks, during which settlers killed 33 Palestinians, set 767 fires, and displaced 33 Bedouin communities comprising 2,853 people, from their homes to other locations, according to a report by the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission.
Anti-settlement activist Ayed Ghafari told us that settlers have begun engaging in numerous practices over the past two years. They have started using pastoral settlements to seize land by bringing their cows to graze on Palestinian land, adopting a “cowboy approach” to control every area they reach and preventing Palestinians from accessing it.
The settlers’ audacity in attacking Palestinian communities and committing direct attacks has increased after Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir issued a decision to arm them.
“The settler now can storm a village alone, armed, and if the villagers confront him, he immediately opens fire without hesitation. On top of that, the Israeli soldiers raid the village and begin arresting everyone who participated in confronting the settler. This is how they built a settler state in the West Bank,” Ghafari continued.
Mass arrests and killings
Among the Israeli policies implemented over the past two years has been the large-scale arrest campaigns across the occupied West Bank.
According to observers, the goal of this is to intensify pressure on Palestinians and prevent them from feeling safe, even threatening them at all times with arrest or detention for hours.
The Israeli army has intensified its raids on Palestinian cities and villages and carried out extensive campaigns, during which tens of thousands of Palestinians have been arrested.
According to a statement by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, arrests in the West Bank have escalated at an unprecedented pace. The number of arrests since the beginning of Israel’s war has reached approximately 20,000, including over 1,600 children and 595 women, including those detained and released.
“The arrests in the West Bank are accompanied by unprecedented crimes and violations, including torture and severe beatings, organised acts of terror against detainees and their families, widespread vandalism and destruction of civilian homes, the use of civilians as hostages and human shields, and the implementation of field executions, in addition to the extensive field investigations that have affected thousands since the beginning of the war,” the statement added.
The club described these arrests and the accompanying “systematic crimes” targeting all Palestinians in an unprecedented manner as an act of revenge that falls within the framework of “collective punishment.”
There are currently 11,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, many without charge, the highest number since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, according to local and international human rights organizations.
Furthermore, over the course of these two years, Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 983 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to health ministry figures.
Fayha Shalash is a journalist from Ramallah in the West Bank.
Israel has systematically crippled West Bank economy since 7 Oct
As Israel continues killing with impunity, it is also systematically crippling the economy in the occupied West Bank and preventing any efforts at revival.
Reposted from The New Arab, October 10, 2025
For the two years of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, it has simultaneously waged an economic war in the occupied West Bank, bringing about unprecedented financial collapse in the already strangled territory.
Unemployment has skyrocketed with the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, amid a sharp downturn in trade, industry, and agriculture; as a result, poverty rates have risen sharply.
Ammar Abu Bakr, Secretary of the Federation of Palestinian Chambers of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture, says one of the main factors contributing to the worsening crisis is “the ban on workers entering [Israel]“.
He explains to The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister edition, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, that around 200,000 workers “who used to drive more than 35 percent of the West Bank’s economy” have been prevented from entering Israel for work since 7 October 2023.
For example, in Jenin, Abu Bakr says the closure of the Jalama checkpoint since October 2023 has dealt a severe blow to the local economy.
Around 20,000 vehicles carrying goods worth about 10 million shekels used to cross daily, along with some 25,000 workers, and its closure has resulted in estimated monthly losses of 20 million shekels.
In northern governorates like Tulkarm and Nablus, the proliferation of checkpoints around the cities and the surrounding countryside – and their frequent closure – has restricted movement between cities and villages (there are now over 1,000 checkpoints now across the West Bank).
Abu Bakr noted that the unemployment rate has risen to about 55 percent, while workers’ daily income has fallen, drastically reducing the cash flow circulating in local markets, further stagnating the economy.
West Bank economy paralyzed
Abu Bakr added that the spread of checkpoints has caused huge disruption to university and school attendance for many months, which has had a knock-on effect on the local cafes, shops, and businesses frequented by students and staff, as well as impeding general movement between governorates, and as a result, also reducing income for workers in the transport sector.
The private sector has also incurred heavy losses, amounting to around $1.3 billion by the end of 2024, losses expected to grow in the current year.
According to Abu Bakr, hundreds of businesses have closed due to mounting debts, while elsewhere, like in Tulkarm, Jenin, and in Area C, Israeli forces have destroyed businesses and physically devastated entire areas that once housed industrial and commercial enterprises.
Moreover, key sectors such as tourism, on which the governorates of Bethlehem and Jericho depend, have totally collapsed, with losses of an estimated 90 percent.
Meanwhile, Hebron – considered the largest economic hub in the West Bank – has seen a decline of at least 35 percent in industrial production due to the blockade imposed on Gaza, which used to receive one-third of the city’s local industrial output.
Massive Losses
According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the Palestinian economy has lost more than 300,000 jobs since the war began, resulting in a daily loss of around $25.5 million in workers’ income, most of them employed in the Israeli labor market as well as West Bank workers.
The seizure of clearance revenues (Palestinian tax funds collected by Israeli authorities on goods imported through Israeli ports) has further damaged the Palestinian economy and hamstrung the PA’s ability to attempt any measure to alleviate the current economic crisis.
According to the Ministry of Economy, the Israeli occupation government has seized more than 10 billion shekels (around $3 billion) from Palestinian tax revenues, constituting about 68 percent of the PA’s total public treasury income.
As a result, the PA has been unable to pay the salaries of public sector employees, settle dues to the private sector, or implement any plans or programs, and the budget deficit rose to 9.5 percent of GDP ($1.3) in 2024.
Researcher and economist Professor Tariq Al-Hajj said: “Unemployment rates are extremely high, and poverty is rampant, which has caused a decline in cash flow, and severely weakened commercial activity – thereby affecting large projects, importers, and merchants”.
All of this, Al-Hajj noted, has reduced the PA’s ability to collect taxes regardless of Israel’s actions, further straining the public budget, especially amid frequent military incursions and settlement expansion, which have prevented Palestinians from accessing their lands and farms.
Constant killing, ongoing impunity
At the same time as the economy is being suffocated, and Israeli forces and illegal settlers are continuing to murder Palestinian civilians with impunity. The number of Palestinians killed in settler attacks in the West Bank since October 7, 2023, rose to 34 on Wednesday (October 08), after Jihad Muhammad Ajaj (26) was shot dead by settlers in Deir Jarir, east of Ramallah.
Three other Palestinians were injured by the settlers’ gunfire.
According to OCHA, between 7 October 2023 and 2 October 2025, 999 Palestinians – including at least 212 children – were killed in the occupied West Bank. Of those, 193 Palestinians, including at least 39 children, were killed since the start of 2025.
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