Some Israeli Leaders Want to Annex the West Bank and Gaza

Israel Is Making Life Difficult for West Bank Palestinians

According to Forensic Architecture—a research group at Goldsmith’s, University of London—the IDF forces of Israel are using some of the same tactics in the West Bank in a military campaign called Operation Iron Wall that it uses in the ongoing Gaza war. According to some of Israel’s foremost political leaders, its purpose is to seize control of Palestinian territory in the West Bank and eventually include it with Jewish settlements in a unilateral annexation to Israel. This violent operation is causing some Palestinians to flee the West Bank.

Forensic Architecture published a report about this on Sunday entitled “The Genocide’s Spillover: The Israeli Military Campaign in the West Bank Between January and April 2025.” This research group monitors such Israeli military activity in the West Bank by means of satellite imagery and hundreds of videos. Israel’s purpose seems to be to make life so intolerable for Palestinians living in the West Bank that they leave this occupied territory they have envisioned for over 75 years as the main portion of a future Palestinian state.

How is IDF applying such pressure for Palestinians to leave the country? Forensic Architecture says it’s primarily by increasing checkpoints and roadblocks, destroying Palestinian homes and infrastructure with armored bulldozers, and issuing evacuation orders to Palestinians living there.

Smotrich Calls for Unilateral Annexation of the West Bank

Some of Israel’s political leaders have no shame in declaring such a violent overthrow of the West Bank as in Gaza. For example, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an Orthodox Jew who lives in the West Bank, has said Israel will destroy Palestinian areas in the West Bank just as it has in the Gaza Strip. He said, “Tulkarem and Jenin,” Palestinian cities in the West Bank, “will look like Jabalia and Shujayea” in the Gaza Strip, which are totally destroyed. And he said of the largest cities, “Nablus and Ramallah” in the West Bank “will resemble Rafah and Khan Younis” in the Gaza Strip. Smotrich added, “They will also be turned into uninhabitable ruins, and their residents will be forced to migrate and seek a new life in other countries.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to allow Smotrich into his cabinet to form a coalition government. Netanyahu has never said this, but it seems to be what he’d like to happen.

In my book, Palestine Is Coming: The Revival of Ancient Philistia, published in 1990, I claim that end times Bible prophecy indicates that a Palestinian state will have been created only in the coastal plain as a very expanded Gaza Strip, and Israel will annex all of the West Bank. Obviously, this scenario will be achieved through a negotiated land swap, war, or both. And it requires a transition of populations. And this interpretation becomes a proposal for solving the conflict.

“You Can’t Tell Palestinians to Get Out of the West Bank”?

On October 19, 2002, I met with Middle East analyst Judith Kippur of the elite Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., to discuss my proposal for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The main thing she said to me was, “You can’t tell the Palestinians to get out of the West Bank.” She rightly cited their “historical connection to that land dating back thousands of years.” But what if Israel makes life so intolerable for Palestinians in the West Bank that they want to get of there. That’s what Israel’s strategy is.

I then asked Ms. Kippur if she knew if the solution I was proposing had ever been made before. She answered, “No.” I’ve written about this on my website, entitled “Time Changes Things.” My final question to her was, “What if the Palestinians living in the West Bank were offered a better deal than they have there?”

That’s what I’ve always been saying. A Palestinian state in a very expanded Gaza Strip would be a much better solution to this conflict, and for both peoples, than a state in the two separated territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.