Israel's Final Solution
The Gazafication of the West Bank
On July 23, 2025, a significant thing happened in the Israeli Knesset, which has been completely overshadowed by the genocide in Gaza. The Knesset, Israel’s law-making body, voted 71-13 in favor of a non-binding measure calling for “applying Israeli sovereignty to Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley.” Judea and Samaria are not official designations, but are biblical terms for the area known now as the West Bank. So, in other words, they voted overwhelmingly to approve the future annexation of the West Bank.
The reason for this move has been made clear by Netanyahu and his far-right governing coalition. They want to ensure that there is no way for any future Palestinian state to emerge. And while this particular vote was non-binding, it paves the way for future measures that could carry more legal weight.
Some have argued that Israel has already de-facto annexed the West Bank, given how much of the land is under Israeli control— either by the military or by settlers. Even the outdated land loss map shows how very little land is left for Palestinians in the West Bank. As bad as the current situation is, however, the plan approved by the Knesset this summer would be far, far worse.
The plan submitted by Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich would essentially move all the Palestinians in the West Bank into six “reservations” located in the urban centers of Hebron, Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, and Tulkharm. These cities are already overcrowded, as more and more of the countryside is taken over by settlers and/or Israeli military, and people are forced from their land into the urban centers.
In addition, according to this plan, each of these population centers would be isolated and disconnected from one another. Each reservation would become an open-air prison, with hundreds of thousands of residents unable to leave or travel from one city to another. If that sounds familiar, it’s because that’s exactly what Gaza had become since the late 2000’s when Israel cut off most travel for Palestinians inside the Gaza strip.
There’s another way to describe this plan, which is to say that Israel wants to force all Palestinians into six urban ghettos. Isolated, overcrowded ghettos, just like what Gaza had become before the start of the current genocide. Some experts have described this plan as the Gazafication of the West Bank, and are sounding the alarm for what could be next if this plan goes into effect. Before this map was even released, back in March of 2025, UN official Sigrid Kaag stated that “the relentless expansion of Israeli settlements is dramatically altering the landscape and demographics of the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, presenting an existential threat to the prospect of a contiguous, viable, independent Palestinian State.”
This ghettoization is disturbing for yet another, even darker reason. In the not too distant past, there was another example of forcing a minority ethnic group into an urban ghetto. It was called the Warsaw Ghetto, and it was prelude to the holocaust. If history can teach us anything, and if the current atrocities in Gaza are any indication, then we can expect that the West Bank is next in what some are now calling Israel’s “final solution” to the Palestinian problem.
So often, we hear Israeli officials talking about the existential threats they face from Palestinians, from Iran, from the Arab world that surrounds them. But it has become abundantly clear that Israel does not face an existential threat from its neighbors. Israel IS an existential threat TO its neighbors. Palestinians face an existential threat, which I would argue is one of, if not the most urgent human rights catastrophes in our world right now.
I urge everyone who reads this to reach out to their government officials. I know it can feel pointless, but the tide has been turning and our advocacy has been working. There are now nearly 50 congress members who have signed on to the Block the Bombs Act (you can contact your representative about it here). Especially if you have a Democratic representative, your voice can really make a different in this moment. If you have any kind of platform, now is the time to use it. Preach, write, speak, sing, dance, act— do whatever you can to bring attention to Palestine, before it’s gone forever.