This year, British journalist Louis Théroux appeared in a documentary titled The Settlers. The documentary investigates the beliefs of right-wing settlers in the West Bank, including those of Daniella Weiss– who is also known as the “godmother” of the settler movement in Israel. Weiss ‘ ultimate aim is to entirely replace Palestinian populations in the West Bank and Gaza with illegal Israeli settlements, until the region they refer to as “Judea and Samaria” is entirely Israeli-ruled. The documentary captures these sentiments as Théroux follows Weiss across settlements and to meetings. In one scene, a rabbi leads a prayer with Weiss and her supporters for Gaza to be “cleansed” of its “camel-riders” on a hill overlooking the warzone.
It is difficult for Western liberalism and its affinity for international law and human rights not to compartmentalize Weiss and her counterparts as fringe extremists who do not represent the future of Israeli politics. However, the longstanding Western belief that Israel, a formidable Western proxy, is institutionally compatible with such liberal orientations, must be reconsidered in the face of Gazan starvation and unending war. In response, Western states are only just beginning to reckon with the possibility of enforcing a two-state solution, despite the fact that a grander plan for the Palestinian future, headed by the parliament, has already begun to unfold.
On July 23, 2025, the Knesset passed a motion to annex the West Bank. The specific aim of this resolution, which passed 71-13, is to apply Israeli sovereignty to “Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley”. This decision was followed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to take indefinite control of Gaza City. The conditional plans voiced by Western powers like Canada, the UK, and France to recognize Palestinian sovereignty thus stand in strong contrast to Israel’s increasingly less subtle goal of barring any possibility of Palestinian statehood.
Although Netanyahu has not openly voiced an intention to annex Gaza or the West Bank, those in his cabinet have. Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich called for Trump’s administration to support Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank after the US election. He recently voiced his vision for Israel to annex Gaza and “open its gates to voluntary emigration”. Itamar Ben Gvir, Minister of National Security, broke a historic status-quo agreement last week by entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound where he also called for the Israeli government to encourage “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza. Both ministers are Weiss’ strongest political allies, and have played major roles in sponsoring settler violence and expansion that has displaced and killed thousands of Palestinians.
“Enabled” or “voluntary emigration” is a tactic of increasing pressure and intimidation in an area until Palestinians are forced to flee. Over 1800 settler attacks on Palestinians have taken place since October 7, resulting in over a thousand deaths. Aside from state-sanctioned violence, displacement is facilitated by policy. In July, another motion passed for demolitions of Palestinian homes in areas A and B of the West Bank, violating the Oslo Accords that designated them to be under Palestinian control. This week, Israel introduced the E1 plan, which would expand a large illegal settlement to cut through Palestinian communities to East Jerusalem. This will add to the over forty-thousand who have already been displaced this year alone, more than in any year since Israel took control of the region in 1967. The recent resolution for West Bank annexation is thus not as symbolic as it seems, and any new notions of Palestinian statehood are gravely jeopardized.
The recent meeting on a two-state solution, co-hosted by France and Saudi Arabia, was notably boycotted by both Israel and the United States. Unsurprisingly, international appeals for Israel to halt illegal settlement expansion have continued to be ignored. The states making these demands, specifically France and the United Kingdom, once wielded the authority to cleave borders and determine sovereignty in the Middle East, undermining Palestinian statehood through the Sykes-Picot agreement. Almost a century later, amid ethnic cleansing and the threat of total erasure, they entreat a nuclear power to reconsider a scheme that has for years been in rapid motion and is only accelerating.
Returning to the example of The Settlers, Weiss is succinct, “We want to close the option for a Palestinian state, and the world wants to leave the option open. It’s a very simple thing to understand.” This statement exemplifies the plain truth of the Israeli administration’s plan for the Palestinian future. If the international community does not make serious attempts to reverse this impending reality, Palestinian statehood will remain a pawn in negotiations that Israel and the United States do not even attend to.
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