103 new settlements later, the two-state solution is a fantasy

• Israel’s West Bank settlement expansion has rendered the two-state solution “dead in everything but name,” with more than 730,000 settlers entrenched and 70% of Gaza under Israeli control.
• Settlement approvals have nearly doubled under Israel’s current government, with 103 new settlements and more than 300 additional outposts in legalization stages since 2023.
• Strategic settlement placement aims to fragment Palestinian land, with seven new settlements located in military firing zones closed to Palestinians.
• $6.6 billion in Israeli government funding has fueled infrastructure and housing for settlements, with analysts deeming reversal increasingly unlikely.
• U.S. military aid and policy integration continue to support Israel’s expansion, despite Netanyahu’s public criticism of American “welfare.”

Israel’s West Bank settlement expansion since 2023 provides jarring evidence that the “two-state solution” the world’s diplomats keep invoking is dead in everything but name. Writer Norman Solomon of Antiwar.com argues the phrase has become a political placebo that lets American politicians dodge an uncomfortable reality: with 730,000 Israeli settlers now entrenched in the West Bank and Israel’s military controlling roughly 70% of a devastated Gaza, there is no remaining territory for a viable Palestinian state to occupy.

Settlements have nearly doubled under the current government

Since Israel’s current government took office, the security cabinet has approved 103 new settlements — nearly matching the 127 established and legalized in the entire 56 years between 1967 and the government’s formation, according to a Haaretz investigation. More than 300 additional outposts are in various stages of legalization. Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi told Solomon that without ending settlement construction and occupation, any “two-state” framework is “not a state — it’s some reshuffling of a status quo of colonization and occupation.”

Expansion is designed to fragment Palestinian land

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has been straightforward about the strategy, declaring that the Palestinian state “is being erased from the table, not with slogans but with actions.” Peace Now’s Hagit Ofran, whose organization tracks settlement activity, says the new settlements are strategically placed to sever Palestinian territorial contiguity and warns that “the situation in the West Bank is that Israelis have rights and Palestinians do not.” Seven of the 103 approved settlements sit in military firing zones normally closed to civilians — enforcement that applies to Palestinians but not settlers.

Billions in shekels are funding an irreversible reality

Peace Now estimates the Israeli government has invested at least 19.8 billion shekels ($6.6 billion) in settlement development and infrastructure, with more than 60,000 housing units now approved in the West Bank. Analysts disagree on whether the trend can be reversed.

Dr. Shaul Arieli argues a two-state solution “still allows for separation,” since land swaps covering just 4% of the territory could keep 80% of settlers under Israeli sovereignty, but he concedes that public belief a political solution is impossible amounts to “a cognitive victory for the settlers.” Dror Etkes of Kerem Navot is blunter: undoing three and a half years of settlement growth, he says, “will require the state to exert authority and violence that have never been used against settlers in the West Bank, not even during the disengagement.”

Washington keeps writing the checks

None of this has slowed the flow of American support. Even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talks of weaning Israel off U.S. aid — telling Israeli television “I want to stop American aid, it’s like welfare” — he’s simultaneously pushing Congress to deepen military integration between the two countries, including provisions in the pending National Defense Authorization Act that Human Rights Watch warns would embed Israeli technology into U.S. weapons systems with unprecedented permanence.

It’s a familiar pattern: Washington keeps bankrolling a foreign government’s expansionist ambitions while American infrastructure crumbles and border security goes underfunded at home. If Netanyahu is so eager to go it alone, Washington should let him.

Sources for this article include:

Original.Antiwar.com

Haaretz.com

AsiaTimes.com