Suleiman Bisharat, a journalist and director of the Yabous Center for Studies in Nablus, said in an interview with France 24 that the recent Israeli decisions regarding the West Bank aim to completely erase the Palestinian presence on Palestinian land and end the dream of establishing the State of Palestine. To achieve this, Bisharat says, Tel Aviv originally worked to promote settlement, dismember the occupied territories, and weaken the political and administrative entity of Palestine, considering that all of this and other factors make it difficult to imagine the map and shape of the state that the Palestinians dream of.

Published on: 02/09/2026 - 17:28

On Sunday, Israel approved a series of new measures aimed at deepening its control over the occupied West Bank, thus opening the door to further settlement expansion in the Palestinian territories.

In this context, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defense Minister Yisrael Katz said: “The Security Ministerial Council today approved a series of decisions... that radically change the legal and civil reality in Judea and Samaria,” using the biblical name for the West Bank.

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While the first stressed that the goal is “deepening our roots in all regions of the Land of Israel and burying the idea of ​​establishing a Palestinian state,” the second said that “Judea and Samaria are the heart of the country, and strengthening them represents a very important security, national, and Zionist interest.”

The measures include lifting long-standing rules that prevent Jews from buying land in the West Bank, and transferring the authority to issue building permits for settlements in parts of Palestinian cities, including Hebron, from the municipal bodies affiliated with the Palestinian Authority, to the Israeli authorities.

On the other hand, the Palestinian Authority condemned this step, considering its goal to "deepen attempts to annex the West Bank." She added that this is "an open Israeli attempt to legitimize settlement, plunder land, and demolish the property of Palestinian citizens, even in areas under Palestinian sovereignty."

Read also: France condemns “in the strongest terms” Israel’s approval of a settlement project that “seriously undermines the two-state solution”

Since 1967, Israel has occupied the West Bank, which is supposed to constitute the largest part of any future Palestinian state, but the religious right and settlers consider it Israeli land. The Palestinian Authority exercises varying control over areas that have become practically geographically disconnected in the West Bank.

As for Gaza, satellite images published by Al Jazeera revealed that Israeli forces recently built new bases that include military vehicles and facilities for soldiers surrounded by dirt berms, in Khan Yunis, south of the Strip, near the Yellow Line. The Qatari channel said that the photos were taken after February 1.

To understand the repercussions of the recent Israeli decision regarding the West Bank, the Israeli deployment in Gaza, and the shape of the current map of Palestine that could form the desired state that the Palestinians dream of, we interviewed Suleiman Bisharat, a journalist and director of the Yabous Center for Studies in Nablus.

France 24: How do you read the latest Israeli decision regarding the West Bank?

Suleiman Bisharat: What is striking is the Israeli talk yesterday (Sunday), specifically from the head of the settlement bloc in the West Bank, regarding the decisions taken in the Israeli cabinet returning the land to its original Jewish owners. This means a denial of the right of the Palestinian presence on the Palestinian land. This is not only an erasure of the Palestinian existential history and the future of Palestinian political existence, but it is also an eradication of the legal dimension that was approved at international levels and platforms to a very large extent.

So we are talking about the fact that Israel worked to build a new reality that clearly and clearly paves the way for ending the dream of establishing a Palestinian state, in exchange for the existence of a Jewish state that dominates and controls the majority of Palestinian land and everything related to the Palestinian presence in Palestine and the West Bank.

How do such decisions affect the future of the Palestinian state?

In my belief, there are a set of basic aspects that Israel has already established, in everything related to killing the future of establishing a Palestinian state on Palestinian land.

First: With regard to enhancing settlement, we are now talking about a settlement presence on the demographic level, with approximately one million Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem. We are talking about lands classified as C according to the Oslo Accords, which are more than 61 percent of the territory of the West Bank and are controlled by Israel, in addition to lands classified as B.

The same applies to the legislation and decisions that were approved yesterday (Sunday) in the mini-ministerial council, which means that there could be demolitions (of Palestinian buildings), confiscation of property, and permission to purchase real estate in areas classified as A. So we are talking about almost complete control over the Palestinian land and geography in the West Bank.

On the demographic level, and perhaps this is the most important point, the Palestinian population presence is being restricted and confined to very narrow clusters and isolated areas, where there are more than a thousand Israeli military gates and barriers working to completely divide the West Bank, and this is the first basis in the Israeli perspective.

The second basis is the weakening of the Palestinian political and administrative entity, represented by its main title: the Palestinian National Authority. By detaining, confiscating and pirating Palestinian clearing funds over a period of two or three years or more, Israel has weakened the main and central financial resource for the management of official Palestinian institutions, and thus there is almost complete paralysis of the official institutional administrative system. In addition, there is a process of closing a political horizon regarding the nature of the Palestinian relationship, the Palestinian presence and its future. Not to mention that, I note a very important point, which is now the process of reformulating the Palestinian relationship with the land.

What does the map of the desired Palestinian state look like?

Historical Palestine has a familiar and well-known map, but now in terms of the form and nature of Israeli division and control, there is no longer an integrated map, but rather separate clusters from each other. When we talk about the governorates in the West Bank, that is, Nablus, Jericho, the Jordan Valley, Jenin, Tulkarem, Hebron, Bethlehem, and Qalqilya, they have become scattered and dispersed islands separated by barriers, settlement blocs, and lands that were confiscated by the Israeli occupation.

This reality is close to the idea of ​​what happened in the Gaza Strip, where we now see a new map, with the yellow and red lines. It is part of the process of reshaping the geography in the Gaza Strip. In the West Bank, since 2000, Israel has also worked to build the apartheid wall, which also worked to transform the West Bank into isolated areas in many parts and areas. Because of all these factors and circumstances, it is very difficult to limit the concept of the map of Palestine to a fixed map in light of the Israeli occupation’s operations of control and land confiscation.

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