Settlement or Defeat

Writer: Dr. Hassan Abulbada

In summary: The settlement project is no longer content with diligently undermining the chances of a Palestinian state, but is now betting that we will become accustomed to aggression and accept it. Wherever daily assaults turn into fleeting news, and official silence becomes policy, defeat seeps into the depths of our being. Unless the leadership shifts from managing the crisis to confronting it, the equation of the recent past will turn into a harsher equation: settlement or defeat.

I wrote under the title 'Either Settlement or State' at the beginning of September 2026, that what is happening on the ground is a struggle between two projects that cannot coexist in the same geography. However, today, just a few weeks later, I fear that the equation itself has changed; the confrontation is now revolving around preventing the settlement project from imposing helplessness and acquiescence to the status quo. This is a confrontation fought every day on the edges of villages, springs, roads, agricultural lands, hills, and mountains, not in a limited battle. What is frightening about this path is that it does not require an announcement; it is enough for the burning of two houses in Jaloud to be a line in a local bulletin, and for the displacement of an entire Bedouin community to be read like a weather report, until loss becomes a habit. When we, the victims, become accustomed to the scene, the settlement project has won half of its battle without firing an additional bullet.

The System of 'Individual Violations': How is the Future Seized?

The magnitude of the danger is not a literary description. Since the beginning of the year until the end of September 2026, the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission documented 5,287 assaults by settlers, including 798 in July alone. Therefore, such consistent numbers dispel the excuse of 'individual violations' and reveal a complete system of roles, with a right-wing racist minister from the extremist settlers holding civil administration powers since 2023, an army securing incursions, settlers executing them, and a judiciary closing 94% of investigation files into their crimes without charges, according to the organization 'Yesh Din'. This is a precise recipe for organized terrorism, which the occupation calls 'individual violence'.

The more dangerous aspect than the number is the function; violence has become a tool for seizing land, driven by pastoral enclaves. The Settlement Farmers Union published on September 10, 2026, through the Israeli Channel 7, a map showing that its farms extend over more than 1.1 million dunams, which is about one-fifth of the West Bank area, compared to only about 200,000 dunams for built settlements, meaning nearly six dunams of pastoral land for every built dunam. Even if the number is exaggerated for propaganda, it is an acknowledgment from the project owners themselves, accompanied by a clear declaration of the pursuit of another million dunams. As a result, the "OCHA" organization reported the displacement of 130 Palestinian communities either completely or partially by the end of August 2026, with 48 of them completely emptied. In my opinion, this is the practical meaning of dismantling geography: emptying Area C, then creeping towards the edges of cities, where settlers from these enclaves have established control over more than 100,000 dunams in Areas A and B, according to "Peace Now Movement," until Palestinians are squeezed into isolated islands, making the talk of a connected state a political illusion.

The events that took place on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, serve as an intense example of this mechanism. Dozens of settlers gathered at the Jariout roundabout in Beitunia under the protection of the occupation forces, throwing stones at citizens' vehicles in preparation for performing the rituals of the "Feast of Tabernacles" at the Jariout spring, which irrigates the lands of the town. Meanwhile, settlers burned two vehicles and a tent in Al-Mughayer early that same morning, a village whose surrounding outposts have come to control most of its lands. It is important to emphasize that praying at the spring is not an innocent ritual; the seizure of springs begins with a religious "visit" and ends with preventing the landowners from accessing them, as happened with the Al-Auja springs in the Jordan Valley. According to "OCHA," settlers have damaged or seized approximately 160 water and sewage facilities in Palestinian communities since the beginning of the year until July, as water has become, after land, the next arena for piracy and suffocating Palestinian life.

The timing of this escalation is not a coincidence; in my opinion, the war on Gaza has provided the right-wing government with a cover to expedite the resolution in the West Bank, and the Israeli elections scheduled for October 27 make every scene of expansion, takeover, or settler aggression a message to the Israeli voter, even though the elections accelerate an existing project rather than create it.

Where is the leadership and the factions in all of this?

In contrast to a system that operates with such clarity, the position of non-position adopted by the Palestinian leadership raises astonishment, if not questions about its legitimacy. This somewhat applies to the national action factions, which seem to share in the spoils while distancing themselves from the burdens. Any citizen has the right to ask, did they mobilize when the settlers' gangs reached the outskirts of Beitunia? Did they wreak havoc in Qusra, Al-Mughayer, and their sisters? Did the Palestinian embassies around the world take action to raise awareness about what is happening and to gather solidarity and opposing positions against this ongoing aggression? Did they send a single legal team to Qusra, Al-Mughayer, or Ein Jreout? Or will they, as usual, settle for a statement of condemnation that is also delayed? This is the least one can expect, and it alone is a measure of how far we have come.

I do not ignore the stifling constraints on the leadership and the authority, which Israel has engineered in various ways, from withholding clearance funds to cutting off avenues for working in its market, and making dozens of aggressive decisions to suffocate the economy, society, and collective and individual security, drowning it in successive crises. The approach to these constraints is neither effective nor comprehensive nor inclusive, and it is interpreted as a weakness of tools despite the possible availability of will; organizing protection committees does not require permission from Smotrich, and arresting troublemakers and handing them over to their state is stipulated in the agreements, and documenting assaults does not require clearance funds. Therefore, it is the right of the citizen to feel that silence and indifference are approaching the limits of unintentional complicity, because this position and behavior practically inform the occupation that the cost of escalating settlers' actions is negligible. Ironically, King Abdullah II described from the podium of the United Nations on September 22 what is happening in the West Bank as forced displacement, which is a war crime, while our official discourse remains captive to phrases of condemnation and calls for peaceful popular resistance without mobilizing for its practice, and without providing the necessary means, and without involving the factions' cadres to lead popular movements.

And then what?

What is required is not a statement with a stronger tone, but steps that the leadership can be held accountable for implementing:

First, a publicly announced national plan to protect the olive harvest season, which will begin in a few days, as it is the peak of settlers' assaults; in October 2025, 'Yesh Din' documented 264 assaults. What is needed are popular protection committees, local and international legal teams accompanying farmers, and compensation for their losses within weeks, not years, despite the stifling financial crisis.

Secondly, the Sumud program for Bedouin communities and villages threatened with losing their homeland and springs is funded by the private sector and communities through a national fund independent of the budget, similar to the 'National Dignity Fund' which was closed fourteen years ago, so that resilience does not remain hostage to clearance funds.

Thirdly, transforming embassies into operational rooms with specific tools to follow up with countries, parties, and peoples: The advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (July 19, 2024), which confirmed the commitment of states not to provide assistance to sustain the illegal situation arising from the occupation, and the General Assembly's decision granting Israel a twelve-month deadline to end its occupation, which expired in September 2025 without implementation, and the British decision on September 8 to ban the import of settlement goods, along with the announcement by twelve countries on the same day of their intention to restrict trade with it, are strong justifications for encouraging other countries to join this path and invest in diligent daily follow-up. Moreover, every documented assault must be turned into a legal file and an international public opinion case.

Fourthly, urging Arab brothers, the Group of 77+1, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation countries to conduct a serious review of the forms of communication with a government that is openly working to undermine the two-state solution, including the countries of the Abraham Accords, and to align in a unified position that employs existing agreements as a tool for pressure rather than a cover for normalization, to save what can be saved.

Fifthly, opening a serious Palestinian discussion about gradually disengaging from the Oslo Accords, as I detailed in my article 'Towards Breaking Away from Oslo' published on September 15, 2026.

Let us agree that nations are not defeated when they are subjected to aggression, but when they adapt to it, and they do not lose their rights when they confront, but when they become accustomed to retreat/concession, and silence over the confiscation and erosion of rights. The battle today is comprehensive and decisive for all political meanings of the issue, the area of land, and the borders of the anticipated state, and the spread of settlement along with the consumption of land and the security and lives of citizens. Most importantly, the future of our children has been plunged into the furnace of battle, and we have no choice but to cling to our collective will to confront and endure.

Therefore, before the settlement transformation deepens from a project that threatens the state into a reality that consolidates defeat, "knock on the walls of aggression."

Knock on them in the capitals, parliaments, and courts,

And before all that, in the olive fields, mountains, plains, alleys, neighborhoods, and besieged homes,

Before silence envelops what remains of the land, what remains of the dream, and what remains of the homeland.