Israels

Israel has expanded its military occupation in the Gaza Strip in violation of a United States-brokered ‘ceasefire’, forcing Palestinians into an ever-smaller share of the besieged territory, devastated by Israel’s ongoing genocidal war.

Nearly two-thirds of Gaza is now under Israeli military control or subject to access restrictions.

The original ‘Yellow Line’, established under US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war, marked the area to which Israeli forces initially withdrew. They were expected to make further withdrawals gradually, but instead, they have seized more territory.

On Sunday, Israeli forces moved yellow concrete blocks dozens of metres west in Shujayea, a neighbourhood in southeastern Gaza City, forcing Palestinian families to flee and bringing more of the neighbourhood under Israeli military control.

“It’s not simply about where the ‘Yellow Line’ is today but where it can move next,” Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili said, reporting from Gaza City. “For families who have been repeatedly displaced in the past three years, the situation remains dire, and they have to make the impossible decision of where they can go.”

More than 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.1 million population has been forcibly displaced by Israel’s war, launched on October 7, 2023, after Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel.

Using maps, Al Jazeera shows how much of Gaza Israel has grabbed since the ‘ceasefire’.

Gaza before the war

Before the war, Palestinians were spread across the Gaza Strip, a 365sq km (141sq-mile) territory roughly 41km (25 miles) long and from 6km to 12km (4 to 7 miles) wide.

That made it one of the most densely populated places on Earth with about 6,000 people per square kilometre, similar to Nairobi or London. Each person had, on average, about 160sq metres (1,722sq ft) of land.

Even then, not all of Gaza’s land was accessible. Israel enforced a buffer zone along the fence with Israel, and Palestinians who approached it risked being shot. In 2010, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that the restricted area covered 17 percent of Gaza’s land and 35 percent of its farmland.

Gaza has been under an Israeli land, air and sea blockade since 2007.

Gaza at the ‘ceasefire’

Under the first phase of the “ceasefire”, Israeli forces were to withdraw to the “Yellow Line” within 24 hours, after which a 72-hour period began for the handover of Israeli captives held in Gaza. Trump first published a map of the line on his Truth Social platform.

The line left Israel in control of 53 percent of the Strip, mostly farmland and border areas in the east, and confined Palestinians to the remaining 47 percent, about 172sq km (66sq miles).

By October 2025, two years of war had killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, and tens of thousands more had left the territory, reducing Gaza’s population to about 2.1 million.

Pushed into less than half of Gaza’s territory under the “ceasefire”, its density doubled to about 12,000 people per square kilometre, comparable to New York City. Each person was left with about 82sq metres (883sq ft).

Gaza today

Since the “ceasefire”, Israeli forces have repeatedly moved the yellow concrete blocks marking the “Yellow Line” farther west, sometimes overnight, expanding the areas under their control. Satellite imagery has also documented continued demolitions in areas held by Israeli forces.

The research group Forensic Architecture estimated that Israel controlled 58 percent of Gaza by December. In March, the Israeli military sent aid agencies maps of a new “orange line”, a restricted zone beyond the “Yellow Line” where humanitarian movements must be coordinated with the army.

According to OCHA, restrictions now cover 65 percent of Gaza. Israel itself said it controls about 70 percent of the territory, a UN official told the Security Council in June.

That leaves 2.1 million people in about 35 percent of the Strip, roughly 128sq km (49sq miles). The population density has nearly tripled since before the war to about 16,000 people per square kilometre, close to central Tokyo.

Each person now has about 61sq metres (657sq ft) of land for everything: shelter, roads, schools, hospitals and farmland.

Unlike Tokyo, Gaza has little space left to house its people. The UN Satellite Centre, UNOSAT, found 82 percent of structures in the Strip are damaged or destroyed. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says only 3 percent of Gaza’s cropland is both undamaged and accessible.

OCHA says the remaining 35 percent of Gaza is “already overcrowded” and access restrictions are a key obstacle as aid groups try to relocate families before the rainy season. More than 950,000 people live in displacement sites at risk of flooding, according to the UN, most of them in tents and makeshift shelters, as seen in the satellite image below.

Approaching the ‘Yellow Line” can be deadly. Israel treats areas beyond it as a free-fire zone, and Palestinians who come near it have been shot. Nearly 1,500 people have been killed across Gaza since the ceasefire was announced.

As Israel entered the final month before its October 27 election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a chilling warning to share.

Israel’s enemies, he said on September 29, were plotting an attack on the country before the vote. Without providing any evidence, he then quickly referred to continuing attacks by Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip, where he said they had killed more than 100 “terrorists” in recent weeks.

That link drawn by Netanyahu – between the genocidal war on Gaza that began after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks, the upcoming elections, and Israel’s national security – was not coincidental, say analysts.

Netanyahu’s insistence that he alone can secure Israelis from a range of threats they face from across the country’s borders, they say, lies at the heart of his re-election campaign, even as his alleged failures during the attack three years ago and in securing the quick release of captives have offered his opponents ammunition.

When a Flydubai flight packed with Israeli passengers on their way from Dubai to Tel Aviv a day after his recent warning nearly crashed after a co-pilot attacked his pilot with an axe in the cockpit, Netanyahu was quick to seize on the incident to argue that he is still man for the country’s top job.

Polls suggest that he faces a stiff test in what is the first general vote since the 2023 attacks, which led to the killing of 1,139 people in Israel and triggered the genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, where Israeli have attacks have since killed more than 74,000 Palestinians.

Three years later, the war has become inseparable from the domestic debate over Israel’s direction while also accelerating a political shift to the right – with once-fringe positions on Palestinians now very much the mainstream view.

Few embody this transformation more than Israel’s far-right financial Minister Bezalel Smotrich, sanctioned by a number of Western countries and known for his incendiary and racist language and policies towards Palestinians.

In one of his characteristically inflammatory statements, Smotrich told Israeli outlet Ynet late last month that the Israeli army should “go to war” in the occupied West Bank and “do there what we did in Gaza”.

Less than two weeks later, Smotrich’s electoral ally Moshe Feiglin added fuel to the fire.

“The enemy is Gaza, not Hamas”, he told the Jerusalem Post, calling for the annexation of the besieged territory after the election. “The baby that will be born tomorrow in Gaza will do exactly the same,” he said, in reference to the 2023 attacks.

Palestinian political analyst Ahmed Najar said these are not “stray comments” from marginal figures but an electoral message from power-seeking politicians aimed at portraying Palestinians as “not a people with rights, but a demographic and security problem to be expelled, conquered or destroyed”.

He added: “The frightening reality is that the coming election risks becoming a competition not over whether Palestinian life should be protected, but over who can promise to erase it most aggressively.”

‘This is madness’

Following October 7, the younger generation in particular slid rightwards, said Ahron Bregman, an Israeli security analyst and senior teaching fellow at King’s College London.

He said the forces driving Israel to the right had been gathering for decades.

“The trend toward the right began after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, but it has intensified dramatically since October 7,” Bregman told Al Jazeera, referring to the bloody 19-day October War, or the 1973 Arab-Israeli War – a conflict between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria.

More recently, the far right has been emboldened through electoral politics as part of Netanyahu’s government since 2022 – the most right-wing government in Israeli history.

Another outspoken cabinet member alongside Smotrich is Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right provocateur who has previously been convicted of inciting racism and of supporting a terrorist organisation.

“Netanyahu’s greatest mistake – among many – was bringing figures like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich into his coalition,” said Bergman. “By doing so, he legitimised them as influential forces in Israeli politics.”

Ben-Gvir has been so cemented into Israel’s political system, he has hopes pinned on becoming the next Israeli defence minister, the analyst pointed out.

“This is madness. But that’s contemporary Israel,” said Bergman.

Analysts also pointed out that several parties running, including ones that are currently in power and a number that are challenging the current coalition, all advocate for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, as one of the examples of the shift to the right.

Omar Baddar, director of Palthink for Strategic Studies, said the messaging from across the Israeli political and military spectrum in the lead-up to the election shows that there is “a consensus” to continue the attacks on Gaza, where nearly 1,500 have been killed since a “ceasefire” last year.

“They’re using the threats to get more votes,” he said, pointing out to what he described as the radicalisation of the society.

With the election approaching, added Baddar, Israeli leaders are seeking to undo one another: “Who[ever]’s more radical is more likely to get more votes.”

As Ehab Jabareen, a Palestinian political analyst and researcher from inside Israel, writes, “what it means to be ‘right-wing’ in Israel today is above all to take a harder line on Palestinian national claims, security and territorial control.”

He adds: “On security and the Palestinians, a large part of Jewish Israeli politics already works from assumptions that would have been treated as right-wing a generation ago: Deep suspicion of a sovereign Palestinian state, a high tolerance for prolonged military control, and a stronger insistence on Jewish sovereignty as the starting point rather than one value among others.”

Observers and rights groups say the disparity is even evident in the electoral process. A prominent politician and Palestinian citizen of Israel, Sami Abu Shehadeh, has been forced to withdraw from the election over his remarks about the Gaza war, while Israeli far-right leaders have remained untouched despite their violent rhetoric against Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s security credentials endure

Recent polling indicates that the events of October 7 are top of mind for Israelis, who also have questions about who was responsible for the security failures of that day.

Just last month, reports surfaced indicating that Netanyahu had received two separate warnings about an imminent Hamas attack in 2023, from Egypt’s intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, and United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Netanyahu’s two main rivals in the race for prime minister have cited the alleged warnings to call the prime minister “unfit” to remain at the helm of the country.

But Netanyahu has denied suggestions that he had been forewarned about the attack, and the reports do not appear to have had a significant effect on opinion polls.

While October 7 represents a profound rupture in Israelis’ sense of security, public trust in the Netanyahu government had already been badly shaken by its controversial judicial overhaul, introduced when the prime minister’s current coalition first came to power, said Mairav Zonszein, an Israel-Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group based in Tel Aviv.

Despite these breaches of trust, the Israeli leader retains support.

“Israelis in general still see Netanyahu as kind of the guy on security. And more to the point, they don’t really see an alternative,” Zonszein told Al Jazeera.

A June survey by Mitvim – the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies found that the Israeli public supports its government’s military and security solutions, and rejects resolving the Palestinian issue and ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. This is the case even while it has been concerned about international isolation and the decline of Israel’s international standing since the beginning of the genocidal war on Gaza, the survey reported.

Yet Israelis are also increasingly war-weary, even as they back the use of more force. Its troops – stretched between six fronts of war in the last few years – are bearing the brunt of this fatigue in Israeli society.

Israel’s Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday that nearly 30,000 soldiers and security personnel are facing psychological trauma since the war.

The ministry said its rehabilitation department’s budget has increased by 88 percent over the past three years to 10 billion shekels ($3.3m), with the majority supporting treatment for mental health conditions and post-traumatic stress disorder.

As Israel expands, the two-state solution fades

Still, Israel in recent months has been more and more vocal about its expansionist vision, with officials brazenly stating the goal of “Greater Israel”. The claim for the conquest is based on a biblical verse (Genesis 15:18-21).

For decades, Israel has ignored international law in its continuous occupation of Palestinian and Syrian land, and has shown little respect for its neighbours’ sovereignty, occupying more land in Syria, as well as in Lebanon in more recent years.

According to Najar, the political economist, the “complete dehumanisation” of Palestinians as evidenced during the campaign reveal that Gaza “is being presented to Israeli voters not as a catastrophe or a crime for which there must be accountability, but as a blueprint to be repeated elsewhere”.

In southern Lebanon, where Israel has been carrying out near daily attacks and and has occupied large swathes of land, residents have told Al Jazeera they expect little to change even if Netanyahu is defeated in the election.

Netanyahu’s main political challenger, Gadi Eisenkot – head of the Yashar party and former army chief of staff – is the father of the so-called Dahiyeh Doctrine, and is just as hawkish about expansion. That doctrine, since Israel’s war with the Lebanese group Hezbollah in 2006, calls for the use of huge force, even against civilian infrastructure, as a deterrent against enemies and was deployed in Israel’s recent wars, particularly in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

If it were up to Eisenkot, the Lebanon front of war would have never scaled down: He has accused Netanyahu of bowing to US pressure to halt operations in Beirut, and has insisted that the military should be able to attack Hezbollah anywhere in Lebanon.

For Israelis still reeling from the events of October 7, Eisenkot could fill the security void many are feeling, said Zonszein.

“They really … see the world as kind of very hostile towards them, the world not understanding what they went through on October 7, and [therefore why] the need to have these security buffer zones in Lebanon, in Syria, and Gaza,” she said.

A two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is therefore out of the question, said the analysts – and has not even made a blip of an appearance in campaigning before the election.

The idea first emerged during the Oslo Accords more than 30 years ago, which set out a negotiating process aimed at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, predicated on the belief that the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel was imperative to forge peace.

But since the Oslo process began in 1993, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank has ballooned from about 260,000 to more than 700,000, embedded deep inside West Bank areas that would be needed for a contiguous Palestinian state.

“The concept of a two-state solution is currently irrelevant and likely will remain so for another decade or two, if not longer,” said Bergman. “It is unlikely to become a reality in the foreseeable future, as no Israeli leader can propose it to the Israeli public after the events of October 7.”

The only way it could regain prominence is if there is substantial international pressure, including severe sanctions on Israel, and a non-violent intifada, or an uprising by Palestinians, he said.

The outright rejection of Palestinian statehood has simply become much more “acceptable”, said Zonszein.

“There’s several parties who advocate these views, whereas there isn’t a single Jewish Zionist Party that puts the need for a two-state solution or a Palestinian political process at the forefront,” she said.

Taken all together, Israel’s election appears less a demand for change than a further entrenchment of the jingoism that surged after October 7, 2023.

“[There’s] more and more movement towards more military force, more need for pushing the borders … out of a lot of fear that another October 7 could happen,” said Zonszein.

Thursday marks 30 days since Israel’s foreign minister ordered the closure of the UK consulate in occupied East Jerusalem.

Workers at the UK consulate in occupied East Jerusalem have removed its signage as the Israeli shutdown deadline arrives, further damaging strained ties between allies.

Journalists from the Reuters news agency saw ‌workers remove a plaque reading “British Consulate General” from the building on Thursday, as well as another sign for its consular section. The UK flag was still flying over the building.

Thursday marks 30 days since Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar ordered the closure of the consulate in occupied East Jerusalem. The move was in response to the UK’s wave of sanctions on illegal Israeli settlements, including a ban on importing goods made there.

The United Nations and most countries consider the settlements illegal under international law. Israel disputes this.

The United Kingdom threatened to expel 27 Israeli diplomats if Israel proceeded to close the consulate in occupied East Jerusalem, according to unverified Israeli media reports.

The consulate has not responded to an immediate request for comment.

Israel has been adamant the consulate will close even as the UK has sought to keep it open, including sending the country’s top national security adviser to Israel last week for talks.

The UK’s presence in the city dates back almost 200 years, long before the state of Israel was established in 1948. The closure order does not affect the UK’s embassy in Tel Aviv, which handles diplomatic relations with Israel’s government.

The consulate, in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem, handles the UK’s relations with Palestinians in Jerusalem, as well as in ‌the occupied West ⁠Bank and Gaza. It also provides consular services to Palestinians.

The UK Foreign Office on Wednesday declined to comment when asked whether the consulate was still operating or if diplomats working there had returned to the UK.

Despite the current strains, the ⁠UK and Israel are close economic, security and intelligence partners.

London, United Kingdom – Claire, 52, lives in the Scottish countryside, not far from Edinburgh.

She describes her work as “low-level administration” and does not use social media. She lives a quiet life with her dog, reading and baking in her spare time. Until three years ago, she did not consider herself political.

Now, she faces 14 years in prison for her suspected show of support for Palestine Action.

Claire, who requested Al Jazeera withhold her surname, is one of the many people in the United Kingdom who, until three years ago, did not consider themselves activists.

But as the genocide in Gaza was livestreamed, many have rallied around the cause of Palestinian solidarity.

Organisations like Defend Our Juries, Artists for Free Palestine, Workers for Free Palestine, and virtually every other insert-profession-here for Palestine have cropped up across the UK.

In the summer of 2023, Claire read I Shall Not Hate by Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian physician in Gaza who lost his three daughters to Israeli tank fire. Not long after finishing the book, Claire watched the aftermath of October 7 unfold online.

“For me, there wasn’t a delay between ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ and then lies,” she told Al Jazeera.

She went to a pro-Palestine rally on Armistice Day, calling for a ceasefire, and “was horrified” by then Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who called the protests “hate marches”.

“I was determined not to ignore [Palestine],” she says.

She continued to march, writing letters to lawmakers and fundraising for various Palestinian aid programmes.

In August 2025, she began publicly protesting against the proscription of Palestine Action with Defend Our Juries, the group behind a campaign of civil disobedience aimed at lifting the ban. To date, more than 3,000 people have been arrested for showing support for the pressure group that was banned in 2025.

Earlier this year, police arrived at her door to arrest Claire under Sections 11 and 12 of the Terrorism Act: “Being a member of a proscribed organisation and encouraging others to join a proscribed organisation.”

“I’ve never been in trouble before,” she says. “I’m not backing down.”

Marji, 70, lives in Colchester and had a similar feeling after hearing Braverman’s words.

“I had never been to a protest in my life,” she says, until she carried a “Ceasefire Now” sign at an Armistice Day march in 2023.

“I knew it wasn’t a ‘hate march’.”

Marji’s father served in the British Army, and her father-in-law was in the Royal Air Force and taken as a prisoner-of-war in Japan during World War II.

“Our parents’ generation fought fascism,” she says. “Now Britain is breaking British law.”

Marji, who also requested to be identified only by her first name, had a successful career in financial services, while her husband held an executive-level role.

They are now retired grandparents.

In July, they were arrested in Westminster under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act and are now waiting to see if charges will be laid.

“We’ve had to decide … is it safe to have grandchildren here? When the police could come to the door?”

Her children remain supportive.

“I think they’re proud of us, even if there’s been fear on their part.”

Across sectors, from the arts to railways, financial services and administration, Britons have risked professional and legal repercussions for the sake of Palestinian solidarity.

Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets to protest against Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and what they see as the UK’s role in the conflict. They have urged the UK government to cease all arms sales to Israel and cut diplomatic and trade ties as the genocide goes on in Gaza and violence escalates in the occupied West Bank.

This week, tensions have flared again as the Metropolitan Police warned pro-Palestine protesters against rallying on the three-year anniversary of October 7. The force said on Wednesday that five people were arrested outside the Board of Deputies of British Jews in north London for “inciting racial hatred, involving allegedly shouting or chanting slogans calling for Intifada”.

Israel’s latest war on the Gaza Strip – it has waged several since 1948 – began after Hamas, the group that governs Gaza, attacked southern Israel. About 1,200 people were killed that day, while more than 240 were taken captive, including Israeli soldiers, citizens and some foreign nationals.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s relentless bombardment has killed more than 74,000 people and  devastated Gaza, making life for survivors nearly impossible. The small territory is now home to the largest group of child amputees in modern history.

“The narrative that we had grown up with was wrong – that the people who were there and living peacefully have been cast as ‘terrorists’, when they have suffered terrorism,” Marji says.

Both Marji and Claire spoke about their belief that the UK government is “complicit” in the genocide.

“The government participation, complicity, and their lies. Their gaslighting makes people more determined,” says Claire.

As the legal dangers and rhetorical backlash mount against pro-Palestine protesters, Marji, whose maternal grandmother was Jewish, is only more resolved: “We knew that saying ‘stop the genocide’ doesn’t mean you’re an anti-Semite. We’re not stupid, we can differentiate between Jewish people and people who support illegal occupation.”

Workers for Free Palestine, which includes a range of trade unions, formed in late 2023 and soon began holding protests.

“Many people oppose how their labour is used to prop up an apartheid state, but have been told there is nothing they can do as individuals,” a spokesperson told Al Jazeera.

Many workers are nervous to speak out against their workplace’s role in producing weapons, their investments in Israel, or other ways of enabling Israel’s war.

“Many are unfamiliar with their rights as workers and are afraid of the repercussions of speaking up – and these repercussions can be very real,” the spokesperson said.

Still, for some, there is not just resolve but optimism.

“Doing nothing makes us feel sick, angry and powerless,” says Marji. “I hope people will wake up and see how our own civil liberties … are being eroded to protect the interests of Israel.”

Al-Awsaj, occupied West Bank – On September 23, weeks before Israel’s parliamentary elections, ministers and lawmakers gathered on an occupied West Bank hilltop to inaugurate a new settlement, Metzoke Eretz, illegal under international law. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich used the ceremony to salute the settler outpost that made the eventual settlement possible.

“The first pioneering settlers who were here on the farm… we will lift them up as our greatest joy,” Smotrich said. “It shows that the method works: establish a farm, seize the land, prepare it, turn it into a community, move to the next point. There are many, many such heroes – those who prove they are not doing real estate. They are doing Zionism.”

Metzoke Eretz was previously an outpost – the name given to the Jewish settlements illegal even under Israeli law – called Netzah Harel, established in 2023 in the middle of al-Muarrajat, a Bedouin community on private Palestinian land east of Ramallah. Alia Mleihat, 29, and others from the community remember those settlers well. “Of course, this outpost played a major role in displacing the Palestinian Bedouin communities in al-Muarrajat and the areas east of Ramallah,” said Alia, now living in a tent in al-Awsaj, a few kilometres away, after her forced displacement in July 2025. “[The Netzah Harel settlers] took part in every attack the settlers carried out on families, and confiscated sheep, under the protection of the Israeli police and army.”

Dror Etkes, founder of Israeli NGO Kerem Navot, said Smotrich’s description of his “method” was spot-on – except for one omission. “The political discourse skips the [Palestinian] expulsion chapter,” said Etkes, suggesting Smotrich and other politicians avoid doing so explicitly to avoid potential scrutiny from international criminal courts. “They want it to happen, and they know that it happens, and they let it happen.”

Haaretz reported that Metzoke Eretz is one of 19 outposts legalised by the Netanyahu government after nearby Palestinians were violently expelled.

‘Not a single moment of joy’

Jamal Mleihat, Alia’s 45-year-old uncle, sits with eight relatives nestled inside a bare concrete-block house on the ridge in al-Awsaj, with his daughter Sewar hanging off his lap.

Below the ridge, rows of young trees climb a cultivated slope towards a factory at the foot of the hills. The ridge itself is rock and dust, now home to about 25 families from al-Muarrajat, among others forcibly displaced in the past three years.

“Before October 7 [2023 Hamas attack on Israel, and Israel’s subsequent genocidal war on Gaza], we were in the pastures – no harassment, we moved around freely,” said Jamal, a father of seven. “We had healthcare. We had a school. We had water in the same encampment. Life was a million times better than this.”

Since October 7, the Israeli government has stepped up its raids on the occupied West Bank, while settlers have largely been given free rein to pursue a pogrom against Palestinians, with little pushback from within Israel.

Just below Jamal’s shelter, alone on a slope, Muhammad Ghawanmeh lives with his wife and seven children. His toilet does not work; he relies on water tanks and has almost no electricity. The rocky track to the Mleihats’ area is too steep to drive. He built a fence around the house after recent settler attacks, and now faces constant drone surveillance from Israeli settlers.

Ghawanmeh is from Ras Ein al-Auja, which had been the largest Bedouin community in the central Jordan Valley – so robust that humanitarian coordinators told Al Jazeera in October 2023 that the village’s displacement was unlikely. Instead, its more than 600 Palestinian inhabitants experienced the largest single-community expulsion of Bedouins in the last three years, after repeated attacks by settlers from four surrounding outposts.

“From my childhood, the land was open. The water was open. We were living happily. We’d graze 10 kilometres, 15 kilometres with the sheep, and come back,” he said. “Today we can’t go 500 metres from the house.”

His flock has shrunk from about 300 to roughly 100 physically thinning sheep, which he now must buy fodder for, instead of letting them graze on the land, which he now says is largely forbidden by Israeli settlers and the army.

‘Nothing was left except this’

A few hundred metres beyond Ghawanmeh’s fence, a white trailer and a few containers mark an Israeli outpost, established about six months ago on a hill overlooking Highway 90 and the displaced families along the ridge. Two months ago, Ghawanmeh said, soldiers came to his house and told him he could no longer pass to the highway. The settlers, he said, “are with the army”.

“You leave this place, go to another one, and it follows you – the same problem, unsolved,” Ghawanmeh said. “Every three months, there’s a displacement operation.”

Al-Awsaj barely existed as an inhabited place before, but Bedouin from different depopulated communities have now converged on this barren ridge, overlooking land largely declared – again – off-limits to grazing.

Allegra Pacheco, head of the West Bank Protection Consortium, calls al-Awsaj “basically a refugee camp, an internally displaced camp, that we see in other countries. But here, there’s no safe space. Wherever people like in al-Awsaj go, they’re chased by settlers or their tents are demolished by the Israelis.”

“It’s been very painful to get the authorities, the Palestinian authorities, the international leaders, to recognise that this is a mass displacement happening in front of us, and people have nowhere to go,” she said.

Project of forced transfer

In the West Bank, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) counts at least 130 Palestinian communities fully or partly displaced by settler attacks and related restrictions since January 2023, and more than 6,400 people uprooted. According to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, since October 7, 2023 there have been almost 15,000 attacks by settlers, with 66 Palestinians killed by settlers. OCHA says the rate of settler attacks increased from about three a day before October 7, 2023, to almost seven per day this year.

The increase in displacement after October 2023 can also be seen in the numbers for that year. Nearly 80 percent of all Palestinians displaced by settler violence in 2023 were uprooted after October 7.

A report by Peace Now and Kerem Navot found that Israeli farm outposts had seized roughly 18 percent of the West Bank by the end of 2025. “We’re talking about a land area bigger than the size of the Gaza Strip altogether,” Pacheco said.

“What we’re seeing is a continuous, sustained project of forced transfer and mass destruction,” she said. “Israeli authority demolitions and destructions by the Israeli army, and Israeli civilians – armed groups – carrying out destructions and sowing fear to push people out.”

Israeli NGO B’Tselem’s September report, “The Elimination Project”, links this to Smotrich’s 2017 “Decisive Plan”, which offers Palestinians three choices: live under Jewish supremacy, leave, or face violent repression.

“The Smotrich Plan has been implemented,” Pacheco said. “He laid out exactly what is going on now, and he’s very proud of his success. He now wants to transfer that success to [other areas of the West Bank], and also in the Galilee [an area in Israel with a large population of Palestinian citizens of Israel]. Wherever there are Palestinians living, he wants to make life so difficult that they will leave.”

With Smotrich exercising broad powers over the West Bank through the Settlement Administration within the Ministry of Defence, and leaders in the Israeli West Bank military command increasingly coming from far-right, settler backgrounds themselves, Palestinians across the West Bank describe a deepening symbiosis of military, police, administration and settlers in exacting Palestinian dispossession. “They all work together, like a cell, one completing the other,” said Jamal Mleihat. “The army, the police, the settlers – they’re the ones who displace, they’re the ones who establish the settlement, they’re the ones who take part in the thefts, in everything. And the army covers for them.”

Al Jazeera has reached out to the Israeli authorities for comment on this piece, but has yet to receive a response.

Worse future

Smotrich has withheld part or all of the tax revenues Israel collects for the Palestinian Authority – roughly 60 percent of its income – for much of the past three years. The PA now struggles to provide the most basic of services. In al-Awsaj and elsewhere, that means classrooms that do not open. “The government school is shut down today, no salaries,” Ghawanmeh said.

There is no school bus; families pay for private transport, and “one day they study, one day they don’t, depending on the mood of the driver,” Jamal said. It has left the displaced alone on an inhospitable patch of rock.

“Palestinians have no protection in the West Bank,” said Pacheco. “They are completely vulnerable to assault, attempted murder, arson, invasion of their homes. The Israeli army is supposed to protect them and doesn’t. The Palestinian Authority can’t come in, and the international community is not protecting them.”

“We started to feel there’s no safety anywhere,” Ghawanmeh said. “Fear. Terror. Persecution. Ethnic cleansing. That’s what we feel.”

Amid the dispossession, Ghawanmeh looks out at the unwelcoming land he knows will not be his family’s refuge – only another transient stop. He sees his own brother now only once every month and a half or two. “The threats to Bedouin life have almost become extinction,” he said. “We now live in enclaves, separated.”

“For three years now, the day that’s passing is better than the one that’s coming,” Ghawanmeh said. “Yesterday is better than today. Today is better than tomorrow.”