Peace Is Still an Illusion For Palestine

The shocking footage of two unarmed Palestinian men being executed in Jenin on October 23, 2025 has once again pulled back the curtain on a grim reality: Israel’s expanding campaign of unchecked violence in the occupied West Bank.

What the world witnessed on camera is neither an aberration nor an isolated excess. It is part of what rights groups now call a systematic policy of brazen killing -- a pattern increasingly defended by Israeli ministers and embraced by emboldened settler groups operating under military protection.

A War Expanding Beyond Gaza

While global attention has largely centred on the devastation in Gaza, Israel has used the fog of that conflict to intensify operations in the West Bank.

The military’s announcement of plans to demolish thousands of buildings in Jenin and surrounding areas indicates a disturbing shift: The methods used to flatten neighbourhoods in Gaza are now being replicated across the West Bank.

This expansionist push is not accidental. Human rights groups have documented an alarming rise in land seizures, forced evictions, and violent raids within the West Bank.

Following the Israeli Defence Minister’s announcement of 22 Israeli settlements in the West Bank in May 2025 that “prevents establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel”, according to The Guardian, Israel has led brutal takeovers of land from Palestinian settlements.

 Human Rights Watch pointed out that nearly 32,000 Palestinians were forcefully evicted from three refugee camps in the West Bank. What we are seeing is a slow, deliberate strategy of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Settler Violence and State Sanction

Daily raids -- averaging 47 per day -- have escalated since the 2023 Gaza assault, killing more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank. Settlers, protected by military escorts, routinely attack villages, torch farmlands, and intimidate communities with little fear of prosecution.

Even Israel’s own rights monitoring group Yesh Din confirms that only a negligible percentage of complaints against soldiers are ever investigated -- let alone result in convictions.

The UN Committee Against Torture has warned of widespread, organised ill-treatment of Palestinians, intensified since October 7, 2023. The message is clear: Violence is not merely tolerated; it is structurally enabled.

Israeli military destroys fields and homes to drive out Palestinian residents from West Bank taking the poor man’s lamb- 21st Century style.

The Israeli control extends beyond built-up settlements to land-use restrictions, demolition orders, state-land declarations, restricted access zones, infrastructure networks, and military/security control -- which restrict Palestinian mobility, hinders development, and undermine the viability of a contiguous Palestinian state.

60% of the West Bank is now under Israeli control where Israel retains full security and land-management authority, according to the framework of the Oslo Accords.

A Manufactured Exodus

The most telling sign of a coordinated depopulation effort emerged recently when a flight carrying 153 Palestinians -- without documents or travel permits -- landed unexpectedly in South Africa. 

The South African government, bewildered by the sudden arrival, allowed them entry on humanitarian grounds but warned that it would resist any such irregular influx in future.

Analysts suggest that this incident may be part of a broader, covert push to expel Palestinians and disperse them far from their homeland.

Combined with forced evictions, land expropriations and the rising death toll, this movement forms a mosaic of policies designed not merely to control Palestinians -- but to erase them.

A Fragile Truce Built on Unequal Terms

The so-called “Gaza peace deal” has offered little more than temporary relief. President Trump’s dramatic shuttle diplomacy -- flying between Tel Aviv and Sharm el- Sheikh with a coterie of Arab leaders -- generated significant media spectacle.

Palestinians experienced a brief pause in bombardment, and Israel regained hostages and the remains of its soldiers.

Beneath the pomp, the fundamental power imbalance remained untouched. As soon as the cameras turned away, Israeli strikes in Gaza resumed. In Jenin and other West Bank towns, the violence not only continued but escalated. 

 The truce merely paused death, not delivered peace. As one resident of Gaza’s Tuffah neighbourhood lamented, “Life in Gaza is 99 percent dead, and the ceasefire was just 1% of an attempt to revive it.”

For the Israeli government, the occupation and the settlements matter more than human life. The cumulative effect of daily violence, administrative coercion, and demographic engineering is a rapid erosion of the possibility of a viable two-state solution.

Every demolished home, every uprooted olive tree, every forced displacement pushes Palestinian statehood further into abstraction.

The world now confronts a stark question: How long can a peace process survive when one side is systematically stripped of land, rights, and dignity, while the other operates with absolute impunity?

Without accountability, restraint, and a genuine recommitment to Palestinian sovereignty, the truce will remain a mirage -- and peace an illusion.

 Mustafa Kamal Rusho, is a retired Brigadier General who works with Osmani Centre for Peace and Security Studies.