West Bank faces renewed Israeli brutality after Trump green light

US President Donald Trump might have opened the floodgates for a renewed wave of Israeli violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, barely hours after the dust began to settle in Gaza after 471 days of a genocidal war.

Though the ceasefire has brought a sense of relief to Palestinians in the besieged enclave reduced to a dystopian wasteland, their brethren in the occupied West Bank are bracing for an Israeli onslaught apparently greenlighted by Trump.

Immediately after taking the oath of office on January 20, President Trump signed an executive order to end sanctions on far-right Israeli settler groups and individuals in the occupied West Bank, an area stretching across the eastern border of Israel that Tel Aviv occupied along with East Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 war.

The sanctions were imposed by the Biden administration in eight separate rounds throughout 2024 on Israeli settlers and entities for committing “extremist settler violence in the [occupied] West Bank”.

On the same day when Trump announced the reversal of sanctions, Israeli Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi instructed the army to “prepare for large-scale attacks” in the occupied West Bank to “pre-empt Palestinian fighters”.

Subsequently, Israeli security forces launched an offensive that it calls the “Iron Wall” in the West Bank city of Jenin, killing at least 10 Palestinians, including a child, ostensibly to “eradicate terrorism”.

Experts say the sanctions removal by the US coupled with the large-scale attacks being planned and executed by Israel may lead to a worsening situation in the occupied West Bank in the coming days.

Though Gaza bore the brunt of Israeli aggression since October 7, 2023, the occupied West Bank also saw increased settler attacks and military incursions, leaving hundreds of people dead and injured.

Experts say the situation is only going to get worse.

“The removal of sanctions could legitimise settlement activities and increase illegal construction on Palestinian land,” says Fida Shehada, a Palestinian Israeli activist who previously served as a municipal council member in Lod, a city near Tel Aviv with a sizeable Muslim population.

“For Palestinians, this could result in the expansion of settlements and an increased likelihood of land confiscation, making it more difficult for them to retain their land and develop economically,” she tells TRT World.

Despite the on-again-off-again peace process over many years, successive Israeli governments have allowed for the expansion of settlements. The number of settlers in the occupied West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, increased from approximately 110,000 in 1993 to more than half a million in 2023.

A number of Israeli entities have used violence as a tool to strengthen settlers’ presence in the occupied territories.

Rabid nationalist and settler icon, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, has hailed Trump’s decision, saying the sanctions were a “severe and blatant foreign intervention”.

The Biden administration had sanctioned a total of 17 individuals and 16 entities in Israel last year for causing intense human suffering among Palestinians. The sanctions restricted their ability to transact through formal banking channels.

“This process (of lifting sanctions) could exacerbate tensions and conflicts in the region, as Palestinians view it as a violation of their rights and a threat to the possibility of establishing an independent Palestinian state,” says Shehada.

Israel has used these settlements as an excuse to delay the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state. About three million Palestinians live in the occupied West Bank under Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Fatah-controlled government body, exercising limited control in population centres.

The presence of Israeli settlements and the accompanying infrastructure, such as settler-only roads and military checkpoints, restricts the movement of Palestinians, thus reducing employment opportunities and hindering trade and commerce.

One of the entities that the Biden administration sanctioned was Hashomer Yosh, an Israeli NGO.

In January 2024, the group forced all 250 Palestinians to vacate Khirbet Zanuta and then “fenced off the village” to prevent the residents from returning, the US Department of State said in a now-deleted press statement.

Similarly, the Biden administration sanctioned Yitzhak Levi Filant, a civilian security coordinator of the Yitzhar settlement in the occupied West Bank. The US government said he engaged in “malign activities” outside his authority as a law enforcement officer.

In February 2024, the so-called civilian security coordinator led a group of armed settlers to set up roadblocks and conduct patrols to attack Palestinians in their lands and forcefully expel them from their lands, the Biden administration said.

Mustafa Yetim of Eskisehir Osmangazi University says Trump considers territories occupied by illegal settlers as “integral to the state of Israel”.

“His approach undermines the two-state solution, reducing a potential Palestinian state to a fragmented entity under Israeli occupation,” he tells TRT World.

Elise Stefanik, Trump’s envoy to the United Nations, said at her Senate confirmation hearing on January 21 that Israel has a “biblical right” to the “entire West Bank” – a position that puts the US at odds with the UN view of the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Associated Press reported that dozens of masked men, believed to be settlers, marauded through at least two Palestinian villages and attacked homes and businesses on January 20 as Trump took the oath of office.

Secret assurance from the US?

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has documented a surge in Israeli settler attacks and access restrictions imposed against Palestinians near seven newly established settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank’s Area B, which is one of the three administrative divisions established by the 1995 Oslo Accords.

These are the first settlement outposts established in Area B, as all illegal settlements until now were located in Area C, which comprises 60 percent of the occupied West Bank and remains under full Israeli civil, administrative and security control.

In the first 13 days of 2025, Israeli forces killed nine Palestinians, including four children. In 2024, OCHA recorded as many as 1,432 Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank that resulted in casualties or property damage.

About 14 percent of these settler attacks involved the use of flammable liquids, Molotov cocktails and other incendiary material, primarily affecting agricultural land and equipment, vehicles and homes.

“Alongside enhanced defensive preparations in Gaza, we must be ready for significant operations in Judea and Samaria (occupied West Bank) in the coming days,” the chief of the Israeli forces said in a statement on January 20.

Palestinian activist Shehada says Tel Aviv’s decision to carry out large-scale attacks in the occupied West Bank immediately after the ceasefire in Gaza is an attempt to assert “complete control” over the area.

“Israel may view this as an opportunity to clear the area of Palestinian resistance,” she says. Tel Aviv may take advantage of the situation and escalate its attacks in the occupied West Bank as international attention is currently focused on Gaza, she adds.

“This step could also serve as a means to prevent further uprisings in the occupied West Bank and demonstrate control over the region,” she says.

The administration of President Trump is filled with Zionist members. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the top US diplomat, said at the Senate confirmation hearing on January 16 that the Trump administration is going to be the “most pro-Israel administration” in US history.

Similarly, Trump’s nominee for the US envoy to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is “staunchly pro-Israel” and supports Israeli occupation in the West Bank.

It was under Trump’s first term (2017-2021) that the Arab-Israeli normalisation process revived in earnest as part of the Abraham Accords, bilateral agreements that Israel signed with the UAE and Bahrain in 2020.

In a break with official US policy for decades, the Trump administration also recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and shifted the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the city that most countries consider part of the Palestinian territories.

To the delight of Israelis, Trump’s position on the two-state solution has also shifted away from decades-long US policy, with the president saying he isn’t sure about its viability.

“It is likely that Israel secured secret assurances from the Trump administration in exchange for a Gaza-based truce, which Trump favours to avoid regional escalations involving key actors and US allies,” says Yetim of Eskisehir Osmangazi University.

He says that such assurances would allow Israel greater freedom to pursue colonial expansion and further undermine Palestinian unity and statehood.

“While Trump opposes widespread confrontations that could disrupt his push for regional normalisation between Israel and other countries, he fully supports Israel’s radical claims, particularly in the occupied West Bank.”