By Sardar Khan Niazi

As the world’s attention remains fixed on Gaza’s ruins and southern Lebanon’s smoldering borders, another battleground is quietly transforming the tomorrow of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — the West Bank. While it garners fewer headlines, the West Bank is witnessing a slow, relentless struggle for land, identity, and sovereignty. It is an unseen war — not waged by drones or airstrikes, but through bureaucratic control, settler violence, displacement, and deepening occupation. The escalation since October 7 has not spared the West Bank. Violence there has surged dramatically. Israeli military raids have intensified, with daily incursions into Palestinian towns and refugee camps. According to the United Nations, 2023 was already the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank in two decades — and 2024 appeared to be continuing that grim trend. But this is not merely a law-and-order response to Hamas. The Israeli strategy in the West Bank seems to be shifting from containment to quiet annexation. Settlement expansion, long a cornerstone of Israel’s plan, has accelerated under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition. New outposts — illegal even under Israeli law — have mushroomed, and existing settlements are expanding rapidly. Roads, infrastructure, and military zones are being restructured to cement permanent Israeli control. At the same time, settler violence has soared. Armed Israeli settlers, often with tacit or open support from Israeli soldiers, have attacked Palestinian communities, torching homes, uprooting olive groves, and forcing entire villages to flee. In many areas, especially the rural hills of the South Hebron region and the Jordan Valley, Palestinians speak of being choked out of their land — unable to access water, roads, or farmland. What makes this violence particularly alarming is the legal and political cover it is increasingly receiving. Ministers in the current Israeli cabinet, particularly those from the Religious Zionism party and Jewish Power, openly advocate for the formal annexation of Area C — the 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli control. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also oversees parts of the West Bank’s civil administration, has pushed policies that effectively paralyze Palestinian development and greenlight settler expansion. For Palestinians, this represents a form of slow, creeping displacement — one that dismantles the prospects of a viable two-state solution. Unlike Gaza, where Israel disengaged physically in 2005, the West Bank is being absorbed piecemeal. Each new bypass road, each hilltop outpost, and each demolition order is part of a calculated strategy to fragment Palestinian territorial contiguity and entrench permanent control. The international community, including the US and EU, continues to issue statements of deep concern, but these words ring hollow. Without concrete consequences — such as conditioning military aid, banning products from settlements, or recognizing Palestinian statehood — Israel has little reason to alter its course. Meanwhile, Palestinian leadership remains fractured and ineffective. The Palestinian Authority’s grip is weakening, its legitimacy eroding with each passing year. Hamas, while gaining sympathy in the wake of Gaza’s destruction, offers no political horizon for the West Bank. In this vacuum, settlers, generals, and right-wing ideologues — not at negotiation tables, but on the ground– are making the real decisions. The tomorrow of the West Bank is being decided, not through peace talks, but through power. If the world continues to avert its gaze, it may wake up to find the question of Palestine has been answered not with justice or diplomacy, but with annexation and apartheid. The unseen war in the West Bank must not remain invisible. It is time for the international community, and particularly the Global South, to speak with clarity and courage — not for the sake of diplomacy, but for the sake of justice, and the future of peace in the region.