Tag Archives: West Bank

October 7, 2026: When an Ottoman Land Law Could Change the Map of Judea and Samaria

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Everyone knows why October 7, 2023 changed Israel. But an obscure Ottoman law makes another date worth watching: October 7, 2026.

In 1858, the Ottoman Empire enacted a land code under which three consecutive years without cultivation could have consequences for rights to certain agricultural land.

Now, three years after October 7, that old rule may suddenly matter.

The Three-Year Rule

Much of the agricultural land of the Ottoman Empire was classified as miri. The sovereign retained ultimate title (“state land”) while individuals could acquire valuable rights of possession and use, known as tasarruf.

Active use of the land mattered.

Article 68 of the Ottoman Land Code addressed agricultural land left uncultivated for three consecutive years without a valid excuse. The original Ottoman mechanism was more complicated than “three years and the government automatically owns your land,” involving tapu, the status of the holder and opportunities to recover the right.

But the underlying principle was clear: continued cultivation could matter to continued land rights.

Ottoman termMeaningRelevance
MiriState land carrying individual possession/use rightsMuch agricultural land
TasarrufRight of possession and useThe individual’s valuable land right
MahlulLapsed/reverted possessory rightPotential consequence of qualifying non-cultivation
TapuLand registration/title systemDocumentary evidence of rights

This is not merely an Ottoman historical curiosity. It passed on to the British, Jordanians and then Israel with few modifications.

In 2020, Israel’s Supreme Court addressed the rule directly in HCJ 5426/17, Barakat v. Head of the Civil Administration in the West Bank (Nov. 29, 2020). The Court held that under the Jordanian land law still applicable in the territory, an unregistered tasarruf right acquired through cultivation could be extinguished if the land was left uncultivated for three consecutive years, causing the land to revert to the government under Article 68’s mahlul doctrine. By contrast, a tasarruf right that had been formally registered generally was not lost merely because the land subsequently lay fallow.

So the three-year rule remains relevant to unregistered land in Judea and Samaria today.

Goats owned by Bedouins graze in Judea and Samaria (photo: FirstOneThrough)

Then Came October 7

After the October 7 massacre by Gazans, security conditions dramatically changed access to agricultural land across the region. OCHA reported that more than 96,000 dunams of olive-cultivated land went unharvested during the 2023 season following access restrictions and violence. By the 2025 olive harvest, OCHA was reporting that farmers from multiple villages had been completely denied access for the third consecutive year to certain olive groves.

That creates the question: How much unregistered agricultural land has actually gone uncultivated since October 7, 2023?

The Eye in the Sky

There is something unusual about these particular three years.

Israel has had extraordinary security reasons since October 7 to maintain extensive aerial surveillance of Judea and Samaria.

At the same time, the Civil Administration already uses sophisticated geographical information in determining land status. Its Surveying Unit maintains cadastral and mapping information, while its Supervision Unit operates a team whose stated function is examining land through survey procedures “aimed at locating state land in the area, for declaration as such.”

The Civil Administration therefore potentially possesses an extraordinarily detailed record of whether cultivation occurred.

Request For Access

Consider two claimants whose land appears uncultivated in aerial photographs for three years. One produces repeated applications showing: I wanted to cultivate my land. Israel prevented me from reaching it. The other has no comparable record.

Those are materially different factual cases based on the background discussed above.

OCHA reports that Palestinian liaison authorities submit farmers’ access requests to Israeli authorities and tracks approvals, denials and pending requests in particular areas. Those applications coupled with the aerial documentation, may move the land into a different legal category.

Meanwhile, Israel Is Looking for State Land

This is where the 1858 law meets 2026.

The Civil Administration openly maintains a Survey Lands team charged with examining whether land can be declared government property. Its newly published procedures show that potential survey areas are placed on a priority list requiring approval by the head of the Civil Administration and the Defense Minister or an authorized representative.

The State Comptroller describes the same team’s purpose as locating and marking land in Judea and Samaria that can be declared government property.

And Israel has dramatically accelerated state-land declarations.

In February 2026, the Israeli government approved the resumption of systematic land-registration proceedings in Area C, allocating approximately NIS 244 million to the effort—the first such broad registration initiative since Israel suspended the previous settlement-of-title process after 1967.

Peace Now calculates that approximately 27,119 dunams had been declared state land under the current government by June 2026, nearly as much as it says had been declared during the entire period since the Oslo Accords. A Palestinian Authority commission consequently calculates that approximately 29,335 dunams have been included in state-land declarations since October 7, 2023.

And we haven’t yet reached the anniversary when many West Bank Arabs encountered more restrictions on movement due to the war their Gazan brothers waged on Israel.

October 7, 2026

That is what makes the third anniversary different.

Consider the ramifications of Ottoman law to this point in time:

  • 1858: Ottoman law makes three years of non-cultivation legally significant for certain land rights.
  • 2020: Israel’s Supreme Court confirms that the Article 68 mahlul doctrine remains relevant to unregistered tasarruf rights in Judea and Samaria.
  • 2023: October 7 is followed by enormous disruption of access to agricultural land.
  • 2023–2026: Israel accumulates an extraordinary photographic record of what is happening on the ground.
  • 2024–2026: state-land declarations accelerate.
  • 2026: Israel funds a major new land-registration initiative.
  • October 7, 2026: three years have elapsed for when many West Bank Arabs accessed land they had used previously.

Nothing automatically changes ownership at midnight of 10/7. Many questions remain.

How much affected land is actually unregistered miri land? Was it legally “uncultivated”? What constitutes a sufficient excuse? What happens when Israeli security restrictions themselves prevented cultivation? And what evidence exists showing that individual claimants continued asserting their rights?

Those questions will have to be answered parcel by parcel.

But after October 7, something will exist that did not exist before: three complete post-massacre years of evidence.

October 7, 2023 changed the security map of the Middle East. October 7, 2026 may begin changing the actual map of Judea and Samaria as well.

What Is Actually Being Built in E1?

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Israel’s decision to move forward with construction in E1 produced the familiar headlines: settlers, seized Palestinian land, displacement and the death of a Palestinian state.

WAFA reported that Israel issued a tender for 1,234 “settlement units” in E1, presenting it as “one of the most controversial settlement schemes” in a colonial project designed to fragment Palestinian territory.

Before debating E1, start with what is actually being built, where, on whose property and for whom.

An Extension of Ma’ale Adumim

E1 is an approximately 12,000-dunam, or 12-square-kilometer, planning area between Jerusalem and the existing community of Ma’ale Adumim.

It lies in Area C, where the Palestinian Authority and Israel agreed under the Oslo framework would be under Israeli security control and civil administration. Israel is building within the municipal planning jurisdiction of Ma’ale Adumim, not a new area. E1 has not been annexed to Israel.

The current project is E1 South, one part of that larger area. The 1,234 units are in apartment blocks adjacent to the existing city, not isolated houses spread across 12 square kilometers of West Bank hills. The plans contemplate the infrastructure of a normal urban community: elementary schools, kindergartens and daycare, synagogues and a mikveh, community buildings, parks and gardens, commercial facilities, roads and infrastructure.

E1 is not a new project of the current Israeli government. Its planning dates back roughly three decades to the Rabin era. Roads and the Judea and Samaria District police headquarters were built there years ago, even as residential construction remained frozen under international pressure.

Building Does Not Draw the Border

Area C was created under Oslo as an interim administrative arrangement, not a permanent international border. Borders, settlements and Jerusalem were reserved for permanent-status negotiations, and Israel subsequently transferred authority over the major Palestinian population centers to the Palestinian Authority as part of Area A.

E1 South could therefore ultimately remain with Israel, become part of a Palestinian state, or be addressed through a negotiated territorial exchange. Construction changes the facts future negotiators confront; it does not establish sovereignty.

E1 does not make a Palestinian state geographically impossible simply because it creates a narrow connection between northern and southern Palestinian population centers. Israel itself has long existed with a narrow neck across its principal population center, historically only about nine miles wide at its narrowest point. If a narrow neck makes statehood impossible, Israel itself should have been geographically impossible for decades.

Palestinian north-south travel east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49)/ Judea and Samaria already happens and is being made easier. A route already exists east of Ma’ale Adumim, and Israel is constructing additional roads intended to connect current Palestinian Arab communities around E1.

A Land System Older Than Israel

Much of E1 is classified by Israel as state or government land, but Israel did not invent that category in 1967.

The underlying system begins with the Ottoman Land Code of 1858, which established categories of land and rules involving government ownership, registration, possession and cultivation. The Ottomans created the system, the British Mandate retained and amended it, and Jordan continued administering and registering West Bank land under it. Israel inherited that legal structure after 1967 and subsequently administered and modified it through military orders.

Private Palestinian Property Was Excluded

Approximately 775 dunams — about 6.5% of E1 — consist of recognized private Palestinian parcels interspersed through the area.

Israel did not classify those parcels as state land, and they were excluded from the official E1 plans. Bimkom, an Israeli planning organization opposed to E1, notes the importance of continued agricultural cultivation to the status of some private parcels.

Critics argue that surrounding development could make access to some excluded private parcels more difficult. That is a legitimate issue, but does not suddenly turn building these apartments into theft of privately owned Palestinian land.

1.55% of E1

The scale of the current project is considerably smaller than the overall E1 map suggests.

On August 18, 2026, Israel issued Tender 186/2026 for E1 South, Plan 420/4/7: 1,234 apartments divided among seven construction complexes. Bids are due October 19, 2026.

The current development parcels therefore occupy about 22.7% of E1 South and only 1.55% of the entire E1 planning area.

A companion residential plan, 420/4/10, contemplates another 2,173 apartments. The current tender, however, is specifically for the 1,234 units in E1 South.

The Bedouin Question

There is a separate Bedouin issue. Jahalin Bedouin communities live and graze animals throughout the broader Ma’ale Adumim/E1 area, and B’Tselem and OCHA argue that development, roads, demolition orders and restrictions threaten their residence, grazing and movement. Israel has previously considered relocating Jahalin families, including a 2005 plan involving approximately 200 families that was never implemented.

Bedouins in E1 (photo: FirstOneThrough)

Who Owns It — and Who Can Live There?

The seven parcels are being marketed in the tender as government/state land. Developers receive development rights over government property. The precise ultimate leasehold or ownership structure for apartment purchasers depends on the final land agreements.

Tender 186/2026 is a regular public tender, not a direct allocation to a religious or ideological organization. Foreign-controlled developers may face additional governmental approval requirements, but there is no requirement that bidders be Jewish-owned.

Nor do the E1 planning and tender provisions identify a religious or ethnic restriction reserving the apartments for Jews. Israeli Arabs could purchase or develop these apartments.

A Palestinian Arab resident presents a more complicated property-law question because the West Bank retains layers of Jordanian law, including a 1953 Jordanian law restricting certain sales and long-term leases to foreigners. The ability of a Palestinian from Abu Dis or a Jahalin Bedouin to acquire and register the same long-term property interest as an Israeli citizen therefore depends on the applicable land and registration rules. That complication is because of old Jordanian law, not Israeli.

Three Questions, Not One

The E1 controversy really involves three different legal questions: whether privately owned Palestinian property is being taken; whether Israel properly classified government land under the inherited Ottoman-British-Jordanian system; and whether international law permits Israel to use even legitimately public land in Area C for Israeli civilian development.

The first concerns ownership. The second concerns land law. The third concerns the law of occupation and sovereignty.

They are not the same question.

What Does “Palestinian Land” Mean?

That brings the argument back to WAFA’s description of E1 as Israeli construction on “Palestinian land” via “land seizure.”

The phrase can mean property privately owned by a Palestinian, public land geographically located in the West Bank, or territory Palestinians want incorporated into a future Palestinian state.

Those are three very different things.

E1 can be challenged because of its impact on future negotiations, Israel’s interpretation of inherited land law, international law or nearby Bedouin communities. But none of those arguments turns government property into privately owned Palestinian land, an urban extension of Ma’ale Adumim into the destruction of a Palestinian village, or housing without a religious purchaser restriction into “Jewish-only” apartments.

And construction today does not determine where tomorrow’s negotiated border must run.

E1 is controversial enough on the facts. There is no reason to blur them.

Israel Is Surrounded by Failed States – and Failed States in Waiting

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Much of the discussion about Israel’s security focuses on borders, settlements, or ceasefires. Less attention is paid to a more fundamental reality: Israel is surrounded by governments that have failed – or have yet to demonstrate they can function as sovereign states.

To Israel’s north lies Lebanon, a country where the government spent years unable to enforce a monopoly on force within its own territory. While the Lebanese Army wore the national uniform, Hezbollah built an independent army, amassed an enormous missile arsenal, dug tunnels, launched drones, and ultimately dragged the country into war. A sovereign state that cannot control its own territory has surrendered one of the defining responsibilities of statehood.

Lebanese pound to Israeli shekel exchange rate, defaulting on debt in March 2020, enormous explosion in Beirut for stored Hezbollah weapons in August 2020. The bank devalued currency by 90% in February 2023 and again in February 2024

Next to Lebanon is Syria. More than a decade of civil war shattered the country’s institutions, fractured its territory among competing armed groups and foreign militaries, and left millions displaced. Syria has long stood as one of the clearest examples of state failure in the modern Middle East.

Syrian civil war killed nearly 600,000 and dispersed 13 million. It is now ruled by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani who headed ISIS in the region

To Israel’s south lies Gaza. Hamas spent years and billions of dollars to build an underground military fortress instead of a functional society. The result was war after war after war. Destruction and death.

Hamas on October 7, 2023 slaughtered 1,200 people in Israel and brought over 250 people as hostages into Gaza to cheering crowds.

In the West Bank, the picture is different but equally troubling. The Palestinian Authority maintains civil institutions in parts of the territory, yet it has never established a monopoly on force or unified governance. Rival armed factions continue to operate, political legitimacy remains deeply contested, and governance has been divided from Gaza for nearly two decades.

“recent poll shows a majority of Palestinians rejecting moderate leadership, despairing of peaceful change and now favouring armed struggle? That tragic deformity in Palestinian political culture is the result of the continued brutality of the occupation.” – James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute at the United Nations Security Council on June 27, 2023

The collapse of governance in the states surrounding Israel has turned the region into one of the world’s greatest concentrations of terrorist groups. This is the strategic reality Israel faces every day.

Its neighbors are not peaceful democracies with settled borders and accountable institutions. They are governments weakened by civil war, dominated by militias, or unable to establish unified authority. Israel is repeatedly asked to take security risks on the assumption that these entities will prevent terrorism and enforce agreements, even though their recent history demonstrates the opposite.

The tragedy is not only Israel’s. The greatest victims of failed governance are the Lebanese, Syrians, and Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) themselves. They deserve governments that build economies instead of militias, schools instead of tunnels, courts instead of armed factions, and national institutions instead of perpetual conflict.

Peace agreements are negotiated between states because states can make commitments and enforce them. Militias cannot. Failed governments cannot. A failed state in waiting cannot.

Until the governments surrounding Israel control their territory, uphold the rule of law, and prioritize their people over perpetual conflict, Israel’s security challenges will remain the consequence of failed governance, not simply hostile neighbors.

Which Arab Murders Count?

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Some murders become international incidents. Others become statistics.

That is what makes the numbers in Israel and the West Bank so revealing.

As of early May 2026, roughly 98 Israeli Arabs have been murdered this year, overwhelmingly by fellow Arabs in gang violence, organized crime, and clan feuds. In that same period, about 16 Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) in the West Bank were killed by West Bank Jews.

The deaths are a tragedy. In each location.

Among the dead in Israel were a young Arab man and his fiancée in Yarka, shot dead together just weeks before their wedding. They were building a home, planning a life, and in a moment both were gone.

Their murders did not trigger an emergency session at the United Nations Human Rights Council. No international campaign formed around their names. No protests filled campuses demanding justice.

But the ratio matters.

For every SAP killed by a West Bank Jew this year, more than six Israeli Arabs have been killed by fellow Arabs.

Yet only one category reliably commands international attention.

When Jews kill Arabs, the broader human rights ecosystem reacts swiftly. The UN warns of “ethnic cleansing.” Condemnations follow. Activists mobilize.

Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva on March 26, 2024.
Photo: Reuters / Denis Balibouse

When Arabs kill Arabs, the deaths rarely travel beyond the local crime blotter.

If Arab life matters, it should matter regardless of who pulls the trigger.

Israelis protest in Haifa, Israel, against the crime wave impacting their community, on August 31, 2025. An estimated 252 Israeli Arabs were killed by fellow Arabs in 2025. (photo: Kareem Khadder/CNN)

A human rights system that treats one dead Arab as an international crisis and six dead Arabs as a local inconvenience is not organized around human dignity.

It is organized around narrative.

Somewhere in Yarka, two families are mourning a wedding that will never happen.

And the world moved on because no Jew could be blamed.

Names and Narrative: Administered There. Occupied Here.

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The choice of words reveals more than the facts.

In a recent article about Iranian influence among Shiite communities, The New York Times described Kashmir this way:

“Many Shiites live in Indian-administered Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region with cultural ties to Iran that go back centuries.”

Pause for a moment and consider what is happening in that sentence.

The New York Times wrote about Kashmir in a manner totally different than how it writes about the West Bank

Kashmir is not a settled territory. It is one of the longest running territorial disputes in the world. Since 1947, the region has been fought over by India and Pakistan, with both claiming sovereignty and both controlling different portions of the territory.

Yet the phrasing chosen by the Times is calm and almost pastoral. Kashmir is “administered.” The Shiite population is described as having “cultural ties to Iran that go back centuries.” The wording conveys history, continuity, and legitimacy. It sounds organic, even inevitable.

Now compare that language with how the same newspaper routinely describes the territory known historically as Judea and Samaria, today commonly referred to as the West Bank.

There the language changes dramatically.

Israel does not “administer.” Israel “occupies.”

Jewish communities are rarely described as having ancient ties. Instead readers are told that settlements are new and “considered illegal by most countries.”

Notice what disappears in that framing. The region called the “West Bank” only since 1967, contains places that formed the very center of Jewish civilization for more than a millennium. Hebron, Bethlehem, and Shiloh appear throughout the Hebrew Bible and in continuous Jewish historical memory. The kingdoms of ancient Israel and Judah rose and fell in these hills long before modern states existed.

Before Islam existed.

In other words, if the standard applied to Kashmir were applied consistently, readers might encounter sentences like this:

“Many Jews live in Israeli-administered Area C in Judea and Samaria, a region with cultural and historical ties to the Jewish people that go back more than three thousand years.”

But that sentence never appears.

Instead, the history is compressed into the language of illegality and occupation, as if the Jewish connection to the land began in 1967 rather than in antiquity.

This is not merely semantic. Language frames legitimacy. When one disputed territory is described through the lens of administration and centuries-old cultural ties, while another is defined primarily through the vocabulary of occupation and illegality, readers absorb very different impressions of the conflict.

The facts on the ground may be complicated in both cases. Kashmir is disputed. So is the West Bank.

But journalism that claims neutrality should apply the same descriptive standards to both.

Otherwise the language itself becomes the argument.

Passport Hyperbole

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The outrage over the U.S. offering passport services in Efrat, in Area C east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL) as “normalizing annexation” is manufactured.

For many decades, the United States operated a consular office in the western part of Jerusalem on 18 Agron Street, providing passport and visa services to Palestinian Arabs. It was situated in the area that Israel assumed control of in 1949, not 1967 when the “West Bank”/E49AL came under Israeli authority in the country’s defensive war against Transjordan. Still, some countries considered western Jerusalem “disputed” and subject to future negotiations.

Yet when the U.S. ran consular services there, it was treated as routine diplomacy.

Former U.S. office for Palestinian Arabs located in “Western Jerusalem” which has been part of Israel since the end of the 1948-9 War

Now the U.S. offers passport services in Efrat and suddenly it’s a diplomatic crisis.

Why? Because the issue is not passports. It is Jews living beyond the 1967 lines.

The U.S. action is “a dangerous precedent and a blatant alignment with the enemy’s Judaization plans… a practical recognition of the legitimacy of settlements and the enemy’s control over the West Bank.” – HAMAS, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization regarding the passport office in Efrat

Disputed means disputed. It cannot mean “routine” when Palestinians receive services in western Jerusalem but “provocation” when Jews receive services in Area C.

Efrat sits in Area C under the Oslo Accords, territory left for final-status negotiations. It was not designated sovereign Palestinian land, and was a Jewish community before the regional Arabs launched a war to destroy Israel at its founding in 1948. In multiple Israeli peace offers, the Gush Etzion bloc – including Efrat – was to be incorporated fully into Israel through land swaps.

Passport services mean nothing about recognizing sovereignty. The hysteria reveals a double standard: Jewish civilian life in contested areas must remain politically radioactive, even when identical administrative acts for Arabs elsewhere pass without comment.

The U.S. decision is “a clear violation of international law” and “participation in the crime of silent annexation.” – Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization

The controversy is not about diplomacy. It is about delegitimizing the presence of Jews.

And demanding that Jews be barred from living somewhere – anywhere, let alone in their holy land – is plainly antisemitic.

Radical Arab “Settlers”

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Palestinian terrorism has names when it is organized. Hamas. Palestinian Islamic Jihad. There is a long list of U.S.-designated foreign terrorist groups under the Palestinian banner. Yet the most persistent form of Palestinian terrorism over the last two decades carries no collective name at all.

More than a thousand Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) have carried out individual fatal terrorist attacks—stabbings, shootings, vehicle rammings, ambushes at bus stops and junctions. The numbers recur year after year. The pattern holds. The vast majority originate in the land east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL) / “West Bank”.

Monthly tally of attacks by SAPs and Jews in the first four months of 2022, according to the biased United Nations

Calling these attackers “Palestinian lone wolves” obscures reality. Calling them Palestinian residents either creates a country of Palestine or integrates them into a historic landscape. The term “lone wolves” suggests isolation, desperation, a last act. The record shows the opposite. These young attackers are recognized, rewarded, and revered. Their names and faces appear on posters. Schools and streets carry their memory. Their families receive honor and money. The murderers are beatified as “martyrs.”

Civil societies do not ritualize acts they consider shameful or marginal.

Now consider how language works in parallel. Jewish civilians beyond the Green Line are routinely grouped under a single brand: “settlers.” The word does not describe residence; it passes judgment. It frames their presence as inherently illegitimate before any act occurs. When they are attacked, their civilian identity is eclipsed by a political label.

Branding does the moral work in advance.

The empirical comparison is stark. Jewish extremist violence exists and must be prosecuted. Its character is overwhelmingly vandalism and property damage—graffiti, burned fields, slashed tires. Criminal acts that generate repairs, arrests, and charges.

By contrast, the murders committed by individual SAPs, dwarf Jewish extremist killings by orders of magnitude. Funerals versus invoices. Deaths versus damage. Yet language reverses scale: property crimes are collectivized and politicized, while a long ledger of killings is broken into nameless “incidents.”

People killed in West Bank according to United Nations report, over end of 2022 and start of 2023 in which Tor Wennesland vilified Israel and the “settlements”

The cultural backdrop makes this impossible to dismiss as fringe behavior. Polling by Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) consistently shows that SAPs in the West Bank express higher levels of support for violent attacks—including October 7—than Arabs in Gaza.

Polls by PCPSR show West Bank Arabs more in favor than Gazans of killing Jews, the October 7 massacre, and destroying the Jewish State

Repetition is evidence.
Veneration is evidence.
Polling is evidence.
Together they point to a culture of violent jihad in the West Bank, sustained socially even when it is executed individually.

Terror does not require a logo to qualify. It requires intent, repetition, and outcome. What persists in the West Bank is a durable campaign of individual terrorism, encouraged by culture and rewarded by society, while its victims are linguistically transformed into abstractions called “settlers,” not innocent Jewish civilians.

This is absolution via euphemism. Turning Jewish civilians into perpetrators for existing, while shielding Arab murderers under a cloak of topography.

It is plainly wrong. It is evil. It persists.

Two Things To Do Now To Prevent October 7 From the West Bank

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For twenty years, Israel relied on a security barrier to prevent the suicide bombings and shootings of the Second Intifada. It worked. While ninety percent of that barrier was not a concrete wall, but a high-tech fence—cameras, sensors, patrol roads, and layered detection system – it still reduced terror attacks from the West Bank by over 90 percent. Israelis and the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) rebuilt their lives believing that a fence, not a fortress, was enough.

Then came October 7.

SAPs crashing through the fence between Gaza and Israel on October 7, 2023

Hamas gunmen bulldozed, exploded, and burned their way through what was—on paper—one of the most advanced border fences in the world. They murdered, raped, tortured, and kidnapped civilians in a genocidal assault that shattered the central premise of Israel’s security doctrine: that a fence and technology could stop an army of terrorists long enough for the IDF to respond.

That assumption is gone.

If a similar surprise assault were launched from the West Bank near the country’s major population centers—Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the coastal cities—the casualties could be catastrophic. Israel is nine miles wide at its narrowest point. One breach is not a tactical event. It is an existential one.

The Barrier Must Change Because the Threat Has Changed

A fence can be cut, rammed, or climbed. A reinforced, multi-layered wall—physical, electronic, aerial, and subterranean—is a different proposition. The lesson of Gaza is not to abandon the idea of separation, but to upgrade it to match the enemy’s capabilities and intentions.

Israel does not have the luxury of guessing whether future attackers will try to slaughter dozens or thousands. The security architecture must assume the worst case—because the worst case already happened.

In Hashmonaim, Israeli backyards are a stone’s through away from the Security Barrier (photo: First One Through)

Disarming Militias Is Not Just for Gaza

The world is focused on disarming Hamas in Gaza. It must also confront a parallel obligation: militant groups in the West Bank cannot remain armed if there is to be any political horizon, for Palestinian Arabs or Israelis.

If Gaza is demilitarized but the West Bank is not, the threat simply shifts geography. The barrier is not a substitute for disarmament. It is a second line of defense, not the first.

Lasting security requires:

1️⃣ Complete disarmament of organized militant groups seeking Israel’s destruction.
2️⃣ Security control capable of preventing re-armament.
3️⃣ A barrier strong enough to make a surprise attack militarily unachievable.

Without those three components, diplomatic talk of a “future Palestinian state” is not a peace process—it is a gamble with tens of thousands of civilian lives.

A wall is not a symbol of failure. It is the price of survival when the alternative is the erasure of towns near the 1949 Armistice Lines with Jordan.

A move towards coexistence between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs cannot be limited to the threat from Gazans but from West Bank Arabs as well. Disarmament of West Bank Arabs and an upgrade of the security fence must happen now as well.

Peace requires trust. Trust requires time. Time requires security that cannot be breached in seven minutes by men with bulldozers and grenades and genocidal jihadi rage.

Until a day comes when coexistence is real—not chanted, not theorized, not negotiated—Israel must ensure that no armed faction can cross its border. The time to implement that plan is now.

Turkey Seems Ready To Recognize Legality Of Jews In The “West Bank”

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On July 20, 2025, Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan made a remarkable statement, considering his years of rebuke for Israel in the area east of the 1949 Armistice Lines with Jordan (E49AL/ the “West Bank’). He said that “it is time for the international community to come to terms with the facts on the ground” – in regards to Turkey’s presence in northern Cyprus.

Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and maintains 35,000 troops on the island to protect roughly 200,000 Turkish Cypriots. During the invasion, roughly 60,000 Turkish Cypriots moved to the northern Turkish section, while an estimated 150,000 Greek Cypriots moved south. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) declared itself independent in 1983, in an action the entire international community still considers illegal. Turkey has continued to illegally move parts of its population into TRNC, also illegal.

Turkey’s Erdogan stresses “facts on the ground”… for Cyprus

The Turkish Cyprus dynamic is much more severe than between the oft-discussed Israel- West Bank situation.

Ethnic Cleansing

Islamic Turkey ethnically cleansed Orthodox Greeks from northern Cyprus when it invaded. It echoed the actions of 1923 when Turkey and Greece exchanged their religious and ethnic populations, as though Cyprus wasn’t a distinct entity. More harshly, the Arab Muslim Jordanian kingdom ethnically cleansed all Jews from the land of Israel it illegally seized in 1949 and banned Jewish citizenship in 1954. However, in sharp contrast, when Israel took back the West Bank from Jordan in a defensive war in 1967, it did not remove any Arabs from the region.

Colonization

Further, Turkey already had an enormous country. Its colonial arm seizing northern Cyprus was seemingly to make up for the shame of losing the vast Ottoman Empire. That is completely dissimilar to the West Bank which has always been an integral part of the Jewish homeland, and was part of the British Mandate in 1922. Yet people have come up with a distinct term for Israeli Jews in the West Bank, “settlers,” even if they live in established cities (not new settlements).

Legality

No country recognizes Turkey’s illegal seizure of northern Cyprus. Yet several countries recognize Israel’s capital of Jerusalem and consider the West Bank to only be disputed land, especially as many western countries do not recognize a State of Palestine and Jordan abandoned all claims to the land in 1988.

Population and troops

The Arab population in the West Bank has increased dramatically since Israel retook the land in 1967. Israel granted the vast majority of Arabs self determination as part of the Oslo Accords, specifically in Areas A and B of the West Bank. However, there aren’t even any Greeks in TRNC to consider.

Israel has roughly 10,000 troops in the West Bank protecting 450,000 Israelis, in normal circumstances. During periods of conflict, the number of soldiers can double. That ratio is roughly 45 civilians to 1 Israeli soldier, quite different than the one soldier per 5 civilians in TRNC. TRNC is essentially a fort.

Conclusion

While both cases involve territorial disputes and ethnic tensions, the moral, legal, and historical justifications differ greatly. The Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus is a blatant violation of international law, resulting in displacement and ethnic separation. The Jewish presence in E49AL/ the “West Bank” reflects a historic Jewish return, legal ambiguity, and an attempt at coexistence under a negotiated peace process.

Denying Jews the right to live in their ancestral homeland while excusing Erdoğan’s illegal occupation of Cyprus highlights a dangerous double standard: these disputes are really not about land or international law, but appeasing Islamic authoritarianism and ratifying antisemitism.

Related:

Importing Peaceful Ideas to the West Bank (February 2021)

Turkey’s Hajj of Hypocrisy (October 2019)

The Long History of Dictating Where Jews Can Live Continues (December 2015)

Obama’s Friendly Pass to Turkey’s Erdogan (June 2015)

Van Hollen Is Grossly Ignorant About Zionism And The Indignity Of UNSC 2334

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Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) aged 66, questioned a young Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), aged 40, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee vetting process for the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. It’s a short five-minute video and worth watching the entire exchange.

At 1:07, Van Hollen pointed his questions to adhering to UN Security Council resolutions and tied it to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Van Hollen said “long term peace must include security, self-determination and dignity for Israelis and Palestinian alike,” and added that “we should stand up and protect universal human rights and self-determination for all people, including both Israelis and Palestinians.”

He questioned Stefanik’s contention that Jews have a “Biblical right” to the land of Israel, and concluded his remarks at 4:59 by mansplaining that “when it comes to this very difficult issue [Jews living and praying in the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem], if the president is going to succeed at bringing peace and stability to the Middle East, we’re going to have to look at the UN Security Council resolutions – not just the ones on Lebanon, which we should enforce – but other UN Security Council resolutions [implying UNSC 2334], and it’s going to be very difficult to achieve that if you continue to hold the view that you just expressed [that Jews have a right to live and pray in Jerusalem and the West Bank], which is a view that was not held by the founders of the State of Israel who were secular Zionists, not religious Zionists.”

Some education is in order for this senator who airs his ignorance and Palestinian Arabs’ false propaganda so publicly:

  • David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and secular Zionist said to the British authorities in January 1937 before the Peel Commission which discussed limiting Jews to certain areas of Palestine that “Our right to the Land of Israel does not stem from the Mandate and the Balfour Declaration. It precedes those. The Bible is our mandate… I can state in the name of the Jewish People: The Bible is our mandate, the Bible that was written by us in our Hebrew language, and in this land itself, is our mandate. Our historical right has existed since our beginnings as the Jewish People, and the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate recognize and confirm that right.” The secular Zionist Ben Gurion explicitly tied the right of Jews in the land to the Bible.
  • Ben Gurion referenced the original Hebrew language of the Bible, which became and remains the official language of the Jewish State, the only country which speaks in the biblical tongue.
  • When Ben Gurion read Israel’s Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948 which he helped draft, the first lines were “ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew) – The Land of Israel] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.” The “land of Israel” encompasses the entire Jewish Promised Land, not new borders concocted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1947.
David Ben Gurion declaring the State of Israel on May 14, 1948

Further, Van Hollen fails to comprehend that his various statements do not complement each other but CONTRADICT each other. One cannot adhere to every UN Security Council resolution and simultaneously respect the dignity and human rights of Jews.

UNSC 2334, which passed in the waning days of the Obama administration, tramples on basic human rights and dignity of Jews by denying their right to live and pray in their holiest location in the Old City of Jerusalem.

There is NO “inalienable right” for Palestinians to have a state, only self determination, and there IS an “inalienable right” for Jews to pray on the Jewish Temple Mount. Yet the United Nations and Van Hollen pretend otherwise.

If the basic parameters of Palestinian dignity is to deny Jewish dignity, then there is no scenario in which there is “dignity for Israelis and Palestinians alike” which Van Hollen ignores.

The United Nations is deeply broken and amoral, yet Senator Van Hollen seeks to prop it up as something holy, a pagan temple amongst the socialist-jihadi alliance. Rep. Elise Stefanik intends to act like the Jewish patriarch Abraham when she enters the United Nations, who shattered the false idols in his father’s store. She is poised to enter that dark chamber and shed light on its systemic depravity.

Representative Elise Stefanik at her Senate confirmation hearing. (Photo: Tom Brenner for The New York Times)

Abraham’s actions 3,700 years ago launched monotheism. Perhaps the end of the United Nations’ sacred cows will usher in a period when Jews and Judaism will be openly and widely recognized on the Temple Mount and throughout Jerusalem.

ACTION ITEM

Contact Sen. Van Hollen’s office and let him know what you think of his comments. Feel free to send this article. DC phone: (202) 224-4654. Contact your representatives as well.

Related articles:

NO Country Has A Right To Exist. Israel SHOULD Exist (January 2024)

The Green Line Through Jerusalem (May 2020)

Tolerance at the Temple Mount (November 2014)