The violent annexation of the West Bank: From the siege of Qusra to de facto sovereign control

The ongoing, siege of Palestinian homes in the village of Qusra, south of Nablus, shows how Israel’s creeping annexation of the occupied West Bank has shifted into an accelerated, paramilitary phase. Beginning on August 10, 2026, armed extremist settlers surrounded three Palestinian homes on the village outskirts—including the property of Palestinian-American Loui Ridi—blocking doors, severing water and electricity lines, and threatening residents at gunpoint to abandon their land. Rather than arresting the aggressors, the Israeli military responded by declaring the area a  military zone and physically barring Palestinian residents while protecting armed settler encampments. What began as a localized terror campaign against families in their homes—coming just weeks after settlers torched Qusra’s Al-Rahma mosque on July 26, 2026—is not an isolated outburst of vigilante zeal. It is the tactical edge of official state policy, engineered to achieve physical takeover by force. By driving Palestinians off their land, Israel is systematically executing a de facto annexation of the West Bank—subverting the unequivocal ruling of the International Court of Justice, which reaffirmed in July 2024 that the entire Israeli settlement enterprise, administrative regime, and occupation are illegal under international law—a reality recognized by the vast majority of the international community.

What is unfolding on the ground across the West Bank is a deliberate campaign of forced displacement, where violent terror exerted by armed settlers functions as an un-uniformed instrument of state policy.

According to data compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), settler attacks surged to over 3,000 recorded incidents between January 2025 and mid-2026, averaging roughly six violent attacks every single day.

Far from acting as neutral arbiters of law and order, Israeli military and police forces consistently and passively stand by as observers or active protectors of the armed settlers they attack Palestinian families, burn homes, destroy agricultural land, and vandalize mosques. Monitors from Human Rights Watch have repeatedly documented that army units regularly enforce “closed military zones” against Palestinian victims defending their homes, while granting state-backed impunity to the aggressors—the armed settlers. Over the past three years, this systemic dynamic—where state power shields vigilante terror—has displaced thousands of rural Palestinians, effectively executing a de facto annexation of land without the friction of formal legal proceedings. 

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The political apparatus behind these events has moved into lockstep with settler ambitions. On August 14, 2026, Defense Minister Israel Katz instructed the military to draft a plan transferring civilian law enforcement responsibilities in the West Bank directly to the Israel Police. On August 17, 2026, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir—a convicted far-right extremist who lives in an illegal settlement himself, leads the Otzma Yehudit party, and controls the national police force—explicitly hailed the move as a “significant step toward Israeli sovereignty” in the West Bank. Ben-Gvir pushed the mandate even further, demanding full operational command over the Border Police’s West Bank division and demanding that authority over administrative detentions and restrictive orders be stripped from the defense ministry and handed directly to his security portfolio. 

This shift in policy implementation not only grants Ben-Gvir vastly expanded operational freedom over occupied land, but it also solidifies his position as an even stronger, unchecked extremist voice within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition—an administration that unites some of Israel’s most radical far-right figures under an International Criminal Court wanted prime monister.

 Complementing Ben-Gvir’s control over law enforcement is the administrative takeover of West Bank governance—much of which was designated to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords. This is overseen directly by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself an illegal settler. Operating through a newly created dual role within the Ministry of Defense, Smotrich established a civilian Settlement Administration that stripped authority from the military’s Civil Administration over land management, planning, and building code enforcement. This structural realignment bypasses the military as an intermediate occupying authority for Jewish settlers, placing their governance directly under Israeli civil ministries.

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Under Smotrich’s oversight, the Israeli government has declared vast swathes of land as “state land”—including unprecedented seizures between 2024 and 2026—while retroactively legalizing scores of wildcat outposts that serve as launchpads for settler terror. Though illegal even under Israeli law, for lacking official authorization, these outposts continue to expand unabated. By placing civil administration in the hands of far-right ideologues, Israel has built the institutional machinery for permanent, de jure sovereign control—ensuring that the violent displacement of villages like Qusra is fully backed by the administrative power of the state.

While the Israeli government avoids loudly announcing any official plans for partial or full annexation of the West Bank, it is effectively leaving the job to armed settlers operating under the protection of the army and the police.

In places like Qusra, this violent strategy relies on a cruel calculus of attrition: Palestinian families trapped in their besieged homes, cut off from water, electricity, and essential supplies, can only sustain themselves for a limited time. Conversely, the settlers enforcing these blockades are fully supported, provisioned, and supplied, believing time is entirely on their side as they sustain the siege longer than the trapped residents can withstand. Through this proxy campaign of state-backed terror, Israel is executing a quiet, irreversible annexation of Palestinian land.

The latest reports from the ground confirm that Loui Ridi’s house in Qusra remains occupied by armed settlers, while a similar siege unfolds in the neighboring village of Jalud, where armed extremists continue to attack unarmed Palestinian civilians in their own homes.

The Israeli authorities appear to be playing a calculated waiting game—waiting for the media spotlight to fade so this temporary takeover becomes a permanent fixture. Once again, the playbook is clear: Palestinians are forcibly displaced, settlers claim the land, and the international community moves on, only to react anew when the next parcel of Palestinian land is stolen.

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