It also means the odds are lower that the Middle East will ever know a durable peace, because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict fuels so many grievances in the region. That includes anger toward a U.S. seen as biased in favor of Israel, even though American officials — Biden included — say the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel is the only real way to solve the long-running feud.
“The indicators are all running really negative,” a senior Biden administration official acknowledged to me. I granted the official, and others, anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic candidly.
Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack from Gaza that launched the current war, Israeli security forces have largely locked down the West Bank, adding numerous checkpoints, gates and other obstacles that limit Palestinians’ ability to get around and access basic services. Israel has suspended the work permits of tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians who used to work in Israel. The Israelis also have launched hundreds of raids across the territory to counter what they say is stepped up Palestinian militancy, often severely damaging its infrastructure. More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Some of Israel’s far-right government ministers are trying to economically punish the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank. They’ve at times held back tens of millions in funds owed to the PA. The far-right ministers also have threatened to bar Israeli banks from engaging with Palestinian banks, a move that could crush the West Bank’s economy. Such figures have been open about their desire to incorporate the West Bank into a “Greater Israel” that even includes Jordan.
For Israelis traumatized by the Hamas attacks, the West Bank is full of potential threats they cannot ignore. They remember abandoning their settlements in Gaza two decades ago, only to see it turn into a haven for Hamas militants.
An Israeli official familiar with the situation in the West Bank spoke of growing Iran-related weapons smuggling into the territory.
“We were able to block a few serious car bombs, where we found explosives. We’d never seen those kinds of explosives in Judea and Samaria before,” said the official, using the historical names many Israelis prefer to use for the West Bank.
Israeli officials also lay much of the blame for dysfunction in the West Bank on the Palestinian Authority, a deeply unpopular institution known for its corruption.
The PA’s defenders point out that it is undergoing reforms, although it has yet to change its notorious “pay for slay” program. They also say Israel should help strengthen the PA into a reliable partner, not weaken it further.
For Palestinians, the West Bank and Gaza are inseparable parts of a future state. But Gaza is now a pile of rubble, and some form of Israeli occupation there is almost certain. The deepening Israeli occupation in the West Bank means more anguish — and defiance.
“We feel frustrated, but not defeated,” said Xavier Abu Eid, a former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, who lives in the West Bank. “We are indigenous people in the land. The Israelis may succeed in boycotting the two-state solution, but they will not erase us.”
What’s especially striking about some of the trends in the West Bank is that they existed long before Oct. 7, 2023.
Israeli settler violence has been rising for years. Israeli settlements have been growing for decades. The Israeli military has been ever-present and active. Far-right Israeli ministers were threatening the Palestinian Authority’s funding before the war began. Some critics argued that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank had become a de facto annexation; others went further and called it apartheid.
Israel felt it had a freer hand in the West Bank in part because of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Among other pro-Israel steps, Trump largely cut off U.S. funds to and relations with the Palestinians. His secretary of State reversed a long-standing U.S. position by declaring that America no longer viewed Israeli settlements in the West Bank as being inconsistent with international law.
When Biden took office, he and his team could have brought more of an equilibrium to the situation, truly distinguishing themselves from Trump.
They barely tried. They didn’t even switch back the position on settlements in those early years.
Some Biden officials urged a more active approach. They sought to impose sanctions on violent Israeli settlers as early as 2021; such sanctions freeze the U.S.-held financial assets of the targeted settlers and hamper their ability to engage in business globally, especially with Americans.
But those American officials’ voices were drowned out by colleagues who warned that moving against the settlers could destabilize Israel’s coalition government or rally Israelis around their extremists, two current U.S. officials and one former U.S. official familiar with the discussions told me.
“Paralysis by analysis” seemed to set in, as did general bureaucratic malaise. What also didn’t help was that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict just wasn’t a Biden priority.
“We just couldn’t get anyone to fucking care at a senior level,” one of the U.S. officials said.
In some conversations, I’ve resorted to asking U.S. officials whether they ever considered penalizing violent settlers simply because it was the right thing to do. They look at me as if I am silly and explain that that is not how policymaking works.
But let’s say the administration had targeted such settlers sooner. Maybe it would have put Israeli leaders on notice that the United States, under Biden, is serious about the need for a Palestinian state. Perhaps it could have given some hope to the Palestinians. It may not have prevented Hamas’ attacks last October, but a stronger U.S. stance against Israeli extremism could have undermined Israel’s far right to the point where maybe they wouldn’t be in its current government.
But by the time Biden acted, starting with visa bans on extremist settlers late last year and sanctions in February, most Israelis were so angry over the Hamas attack that they cared little about U.S. opinion and could not fathom allowing a Palestinian state. It’s also not lost on Palestinians that Biden, then running for reelection, imposed the sanctions when it was clear he could lose a slew of pro-Palestinian votes in swing states.
At the Aspen Security Forum this summer, I asked White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan why the Biden administration didn’t impose the West Bank sanctions years earlier. Sullivan said he took the question as a “compliment” and a sign his team was doing the right thing.
“The fact is we did it, and no one else had done it before,” he said.
Senior Biden administration officials assure me that more settler sanctions are coming, and that Israel’s far-right government ministers may not be immune from them.
But I also hear criticism from Palestinians and rights activists that the administration is moving so slowly, so incrementally, that potential targets are likely already shifting their financial assets in ways that could protect them from sanctions.
So the administration may not only be late, it may still be doing too little.
Nahal Toosi is POLITICO’s senior foreign affairs correspondent. She has reported on war, genocide and political chaos in a career that has taken her around the world. Her reported column, Compass, delves into the decision-making of the global national security and foreign policy establishment — and the fallout that comes from it.
In 2019, Toosi was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in reporting for her story on the plight of Rohingya Muslims in Bangladesh and Myanmar. Toosi joined POLITICO from The Associated Press, where she reported from and/or served as an editor in New York, Islamabad, Kabul and London. She was one of the first foreign correspondents to reach Abbottabad, Pakistan, after the killing of Osama bin Laden. Prior to joining the AP, Toosi worked for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where she mostly covered higher education but also managed to report from Iraq during the U.S. invasion in 2003, as well as several other countries. Toosi is a proud graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she spent most of her time at the college paper, The Daily Tar Heel.
