Opinion: Israel lost the war on the West Bank before it even began

 What is happening in the occupied West Bank is a war on the very idea of a Palestinian state. It is a war of Judaisation and settlement expansion; a war on resistance, on the Palestinian Authority, on the land, and on the people.

But another goal might surpass them all in importance: it is a war on the outcome of the Gaza conflict.

Israel wants to create a different reality in the occupied West Bank - one that erases 7 October 2023 and the war that followed from the forefront of the Palestinian consciousness.

It is trying to forcibly displace the Palestinian population, an aim central to the Zionist doctrine of settler-colonial expansion. This goal has not yet been achieved in Gaza. 

Israel is waging war on the same resistance that undermined the state’s security doctrine and awakened its existential fears, as a relatively small and modestly armed group of Hamas fighters were able to swiftly overwhelm Israel’s defences on 7 October.

Read more: Israel lost the war on the West Bank before it even began