A recent statement from the U.S. ambassador to Tel Aviv laid bare Washington’s deep ideological alignment with Israel’s colonial project.
Mike Huckabee dismissed the term “West Bank” as “imprecise” and “modern,” insisting the territory should be called “Judea and Samaria”–biblical names used in Israel’s foundational mythology. He further declared Jerusalem to be “the undisputed and indivisible capital of the Jewish state.”
How ‘Judea and Samaria’ became state doctrine
Such remarks are part of a wider strategy adopted by Israel and its western allies to impose new facts on the ground, legitimized through religious and historical narratives to justify the gradual annexation of the occupied West Bank. For years, Tel Aviv has pursued an aggressive expansionist policy built on illegal settlement construction, creeping annexation, and the erasure of the Palestinian land’s geographic and political identity. Most recently, Israeli authorities approved a new settlement project in the heart of Hebron (Al-Khalil), consisting of hundreds of housing units next to the Ibrahimi Mosque, which is now mostly a synagogue under Israeli control.
Israel’s strategy in the occupied West Bank is a complex, multi-layered one that far exceeds the parameters of temporary military administration. It is a long-term blueprint for de facto annexation–what could be termed “creeping annexation.” Through legal warfare, archaeology, settlement expansion, and political engineering, Tel Aviv is redrawing the region’s geography and demography to erase any possibility of Palestinian sovereignty. The aim is to impose irreversible facts on the ground and absorb the territory into the so-called “Biblical Land of Israel”–a supremacist strategy that works toward dismembering the Palestinian national project and the consolidation of permanent Jewish-Israeli control.
At the heart of Israel’s colonization strategy lies the foundational myth that “Judea and Samaria” are the ancient birthright of the Jewish people. This religious-nationalist narrative, central to the Zionist project and championed by settler and far-right factions, is the ideological engine driving Israel’s land theft. In this warped worldview, the seizure of Palestinian territory is seen as a righteous reclamation rather than an occupation, justified as a divinely sanctioned ‘return’ that cloaks a settler-colonial enterprise in biblical language and fabricated heritage.
However, even within Israeli academic circles, this ideological claim faces serious scrutiny. Renowned Israeli archaeologist Professor Rafi Greenberg of Tel Aviv University harshly criticizes what he calls “the weaponization of archaeology.” He notes that the archaeological record in Palestine offers no exclusive evidence of a single group’s historical claim.
On the contrary, it reveals a layered tapestry of civilizations and cultures–Canaanite, Roman, Byzantine, Christian, and Islamic–that have succeeded and coexisted on this land. Greenberg affirms that “Archaeology in its essence does not provide that kind of certainty and purity that ethnocratic right-wing government ministers might want. So they have to invent it.” According to him, the idea of a homogenous culture during any historical period is pure fabrication.
This contradiction exposes the real function of the biblical narrative–an excuse to legitimize a political settlement project. It transforms the conflict from a political struggle over land and resources into an existential battle waged through mythology, history, and memory, allowing Palestinians to be depicted as outsiders with no historical connection or national rights to the land.
The evolution of Israeli control
Israel’s strategy toward the occupied West Bank has evolved through distinct phases in response to political and security developments on the ground.
From 1948 until the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, Israeli policy shifted from cautious observation to direct control, and later to attempts to create a new political reality that secures its long-term security and demographic interests. This trajectory can be broken down into key stages, each with its own strategy and tools.
Following the Nakba in 1948 and the subsequent partition of Palestine, the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem came under Jordanian control. During this period, Israeli strategy toward the area was primarily defensive, driven by security anxieties. Israel viewed the occupied West Bank as a potential launchpad for attacks from the east, and the narrow coastal strip separating the occupied West Bank from the Mediterranean Sea, Israel’s so-called “narrow waist,” was seen as a major strategic vulnerability.
The 1967 war marked a dramatic turning point. With the “Naksa” (Setback), which saw the occupation of the West Bank, Israel suddenly found itself ruling over one million Palestinians, posing a fundamental dilemma regarding how to control the land without fully absorbing its population into the Jewish state while maintaining security.
The architect of Israeli policy at the time was Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who developed a dual strategy known as the “open bridges policy.” This approach aimed for limited intervention or invisible occupation where possible.
Israel allowed the continued movement of people and goods across the Jordan River via the Allenby and Damia bridges. The goal was to prevent the collapse of the Palestinian economy, avoid assuming the burden of managing daily life, and allow Palestinians to maintain familial, social, and economic ties with the Arab world via Jordan. The aim was to normalize life under occupation while quietly encouraging “voluntary” Palestinian emigration as a long-term demographic solution. Parallel to this, a cautious settlement project began, initially focusing on areas of strategic security interest, such as the Jordan Valley and the Jerusalem perimeter, in line with the “Allon Plan,” which called for annexing these regions while returning densely populated areas to Jordan under a future settlement.
Map of the proposed Israeli annexation plan in the occupied West Bank (“Allon Plan”).
With the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Arab League’s recognition of it in 1974 as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, Israel grew increasingly anxious. Its attempts to work with traditional municipal leaders, elected in the 1976 local elections and largely affiliated with the PLO, had failed. In response, the Israeli Likud government under Menachem Begin in the late 1970s adopted a new strategy–the creation of “Village Leagues.” These were local administrative bodies composed of tribal and rural Palestinian figures.
The Palestinian leaders were selected, armed, and supported by Israel’s civil administration to serve as an alternative “moderate” leadership willing to cooperate with Tel Aviv. The idea was to bypass the PLO and its urban nationalist leadership and to promote a limited “self-rule” model proposed under the Camp David Accords, which granted Palestinians civil administrative control while security and land remained under Israeli authority. However, the Village Leagues experiment failed miserably. Most Palestinians saw their members as collaborators and traitors, and the bodies lacked any popular legitimacy before collapsing entirely with the outbreak of the First Intifada in 1987.
The collapse of this strategy, combined with international shifts such as the end of the Cold War and the First Persian Gulf War, pushed both Israeli and Palestinian actors toward secret negotiations in Oslo. The Oslo Accords, signed between 1993 and 1995, marked the culmination of this phase and reflected Israel’s new strategy of separation and redeployment. Rather than exercising direct control over every inch of land and every aspect of Palestinian life, Israel sought to offload the burden of managing Palestinian population centers while retaining comprehensive control over security, borders, settlements, and resources.
Lawfare and bulldozers
The occupied West Bank was divided administratively and security-wise into three zones.
Area A, about 18 percent of the West Bank and encompassing major cities, was placed under full Palestinian civil and security control.
Area B, around 21 percent and covering towns and villages surrounding the cities, came under Palestinian civil control and joint Israeli-Palestinian security oversight, though Israel retained ultimate authority.
Area C, more than 60 percent of the West Bank, included Israeli settlements, border zones such as the Jordan Valley, bypass roads, most agricultural lands, and water resources. This area remained under full Israeli civil and security control.
The Oslo Accords created a new reality. Israel’s focus shifted from managing Palestinian population centers to cementing permanent control over vast swathes of land, especially Area C. To achieve this, Israel began using more legal and scientific means to impose its will and Judaize the territory. Perhaps the most alarming development is Israel’s use of legal instruments to formally extend its sovereignty over the occupied West Bank. This is exemplified by the proposed amendment to the 1978 Antiquities Law introduced by Likud Knesset member Amit Halevi.
The amendment seeks to extend the jurisdiction of the Israel Antiquities Authority to Area C. Though framed as a technical measure, it is a blatant step toward formal annexation and the imposition of Israeli civil law over occupied land, in direct violation of international law, which limits occupying powers to preserving heritage for the benefit of local populations. Israel promotes this law under the pretext of protecting Jewish heritage from alleged systematic destruction, creating a false sense of archaeological emergency. But on the ground, this law becomes a powerful tool for land seizure.
Once a site is declared archaeological, military protection is imposed, barring Palestinians from accessing or using the land, halting development, and forcibly displacing residents, paving the way for land and property confiscation.
This approach is a replica of the Elad model used in Silwan, occupied East Jerusalem, where the Elad settler organization combined house takeovers with archaeological excavations to erase Palestinian presence. This model is now being exported deep into the occupied West Bank, as in the case of Sebastia, north of Nablus, where excavations aim to sever the site from its Palestinian town and convert it into an Israeli national park.
Crushing the alternative: Why the Palestinian Authority was never meant to govern
Land control is incomplete without control, or more precisely, removal, of its population. Israel uses a multi-layered pressure strategy to force Palestinians, especially in Area C, to leave.
In recent months, Israeli military raids have intensified on Palestinian villages, towns, and refugee camps, particularly in the northern occupied West Bank triangle, accompanied by a wide-scale destruction of infrastructure. At the same time, settlers have been unleashed to wreak havoc in Palestinian villages and towns, often under Israeli army protection. This creates a climate of terror designed to make Palestinian life unbearable, and has already led to the displacement of thousands.
The annexation strategy is completed by systematically weakening any unified Palestinian political leadership capable of representing the national project. Israel works to disable the Palestinian Authority (PA) without allowing its total collapse, to avoid having to administer the population directly. This is done by withholding tax revenues to financially cripple the PA, obstructing the movement of its officials, and undermining any semblance of sovereignty, consequently reducing the PA to a subcontractor for security and administrative coordination in isolated Palestinian pockets, devoid of real political authority or territorial control.
In its bid to bypass and dismantle unified Palestinian representation, Israel is revisiting its old strategy of creating local proxy leadership. This includes direct dealings with traditional structures like clan leaders, village councils, and tribal elders, aimed at establishing independent bodies subordinate to the occupation. Reminiscent of the failed Village Leagues project of the 1980s, the goal is to fragment Palestinian society and establish local partners through whom the population can be managed without engaging with a national leadership. Recent proposals, such as the Hebron Emirate or plans to impose warlord-led administrations on Gaza post-war, are experiments in this direction. Israel frames these policies in the occupied West Bank as a series of reactive security measures, when in fact they are they are interlocking components of a deliberate, long-term strategy of creeping annexation.
By weaponizing the law, archaeology, settlements, demographic pressure, political suppression, and social fragmentation, Israel is systematically dismantling the possibility of a viable Palestinian state, at a time of growing momentum for international recognition. The outcome is a one-state reality between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, one not founded on equality or citizenship but on an entrenched system of domination by one group over another. A reality that numerous analysts and human rights organizations, including Israeli ones, have described as apartheid. The near future promises deeper entrenchment of this tragic status quo, rendering the so-called two-state solution practically unworkable amid relentless settlement expansion, land fragmentation, and the transformation of the occupied West Bank into isolated cantons stripped of any semblance of sovereignty.