Israel is waging three wars, in differing forms and degrees of military and security operations and with differing formulations of a justificatory political discourse, particularly given the total dominance of the logic of the hardline religious and strategic right in Israeli political life, in government and outside it.
In Gaza, Israeli conditions continue to obstruct efforts to consolidate the calm and to move in practice to implementing the road map overseen by the Board of Peace formed for that purpose. The obstructing Israeli veto carries the heading of the complete disarmament of Hamas before entering upon that track.
In Lebanon, military operations continue, however geographically circumscribed they remain for now, under a heading whose substance is negotiating on the ground in order to secure Israeli conditions or more precisely, Israeli priorities in negotiating around the table.
In the West Bank, the course of Judaization has been launched with force, and particularly since this past July: The Judaization of geography and demography through seizing land, building roads and physical barriers, and cutting off water in order to strangle the Palestinian economy and intensify the conditions that press upon Palestinians and drive them from their land.
This is Judaization by violent and, of course, unlawful means, falling entirely within doctrinal and strategic aims under the heading of establishing a Greater Israel. It is a policy of expanding settlement by establishing new outposts or enlarging existing ones and empowering settlers by arming them, on various pretexts, so as to tighten their control over new areas - and all of it under an official governmental discourse and measures on the ground that justify, indeed encourage, the settlers in completing their "sacred" mission.
The statements of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir come as further confirmation of the large and open shift toward accelerating the annexation of the West Bank. We have seen before, and see today, what Israel is doing in the same vein in East Jerusalem.
It is worth recalling that the population of the West Bank, according to data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics for 2024, is around 5.3 million, of whom roughly half a million are settlers.
A clear and active Israeli policy is met by international positions that, where they exist at all, are muted or limited and in any case few. It is also a policy aimed at killing off the possibility of reaching a comprehensive, permanent, and just settlement founded on the two-state solution.
It is worth noting that despite the immense Israeli difficulties and obstacles placed before this solution, as we have indicated, it remains the only legitimate, lawful, and realistic basis for the settlement that is sought and required.
The relevant international resolutions and the growing international recognition of the two-state solution both affirm this. What is needed today rather than tomorrow is effective Arab and international movement to halt this Israeli policy, which is growing more active on the eve of the coming parliamentary elections as a central card in the game of competition among the principal Israeli political parties, all of which agree on the same objective.
It goes without saying that the influential international parties and powers concerned with stability in the region are able, should they wish, to use the many effective instruments of pressure they possess — among them their various relationships with Israel, from security to politics to the economy — resting also on the relevant international resolutions, as noted above, in order to impose a complete halt to the policy of Judaizing the West Bank and expelling its people as part of completing the establishment of a Greater Israel.
Confining themselves to a bashful condemnation or appeal and remaining in the position of spectator will indirectly help Israel to create the new situation it is aiming at, one to be deployed in the strategy of a Greater Israel.
That situation will have grave repercussions and reverberations for neighboring states, for the whole region, and for the interests of the international powers concerned - as noted - even if their priorities differ as to how they benefit from the regional stability that is required, at a stage in which the Middle Eastern region is undergoing transformations that carry great challenges.
In sum, continuing to stand by as a spectator will undoubtedly contribute to escalating tensions in the region due to the interconnectedness of ongoing crises and the direct and indirect ways in which they are leveraged against one another.
This serves extremism and the absence of stability, and reinforces the emergence of a chaotic regional order whose price everyone will pay, at different times and in different forms.
There is an international responsibility, first of all, and with it, beyond doubt, an Arab responsibility, to work to halt this march toward what is unknown and yet fully known.
