West Bank Israeli settler violence threatens US peace hopes

The headline news from the Middle East is, understandably, about Gaza: The escalating violence and the mounting humanitarian crisis as Israel strikes back against Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack are compelling and urgent subjects.

But a second front in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a few dozen miles to the northeast, has also seen rising violence in recent weeks.

And what happens there could have an even greater impact on the political future of Israel, the Palestinians, and the wider Middle East once the war in Gaza is over.

That second front is the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the Jordan River. Fifteen times larger than Gaza, it is home to 3 million Palestinians, along with some 600,000 Israelis in dozens of settlements.

Crucially, the West Bank would form the core of the Palestinian state envisaged by Washington in an eventual two-state peace treaty with Israel.

That may help explain the surge in violence there since Oct. 7.

On one hand, the Israeli military has launched a crackdown to head off protests in support of Hamas’ message of “resistance.” But there has also been a major surge in attacks by armed Israeli settlers on Palestinians in nearby towns, hamlets, olive groves, and grazing land.

The violence, which United Nations officials this week said had killed nearly 160 Palestinians, including 45 children, has prompted growing alarm not just in Washington but also among America’s allies in the Arab world, in Europe, and beyond.

They are concerned the settler attacks, unchecked so far by the government or the military, are a deliberate signal of Israel’s determination to retain, indeed tighten, its hold on the West Bank despite international calls for a return to negotiations on a two-state peace agreement.

They are especially worried by the fact that far-right Israeli government ministers, who are key to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s parliamentary majority, favor outright Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

One of them, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, this week signaled support for the settler attacks, advocating the establishment of “no-go areas” for Palestinians to ensure the security of Israeli settlements.

In the days following Oct. 7, Washington privately conveyed to Israel its concern over the West Bank violence.

But as the United Nations reported an increasing number of such incidents, Mr. Biden went public.

In comments to reporters when welcoming Australia’s prime minister to the White House late last month, he reiterated his support for Israel’s right to attack Hamas in Gaza. But he also urged a “concentrated effort” after the war to negotiate two-state Israeli-Palestinian peace.

And he concluded his remarks by voicing “alarm” over “extremist settlers attacking Palestinians on the West Bank,” adding that “they have to be held accountable. And it has to stop now.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reinforced that message on his recent visit to Israel, and foreign ministers of the G7 countries repeated it this week.

The Biden administration foresees a range of obstacles to achieving the two-state peace envisaged under the Oslo Accords of 1993. The nearest it came to fruition was at the Camp David summit seven years later, when U.S. President Bill Clinton hosted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

But the negotiations failed. A campaign of Palestinian violence erupted soon afterwards. And under Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership over the past 15 years, there has been no serious attempt to revive the talks.

Predicting the political picture in Israel after the Gaza war, U.S. officials recognize, is impossible. For one thing, the future of Mr. Netanyahu, whom many Israelis blame for the lack of preparedness on Oct. 7, is highly uncertain.

And many Israelis across the political spectrum may resist any early move toward peace with the Palestinians in the wake of the most deadly attack on civilians in their country’s history.

But the tension between Washington and the current Israeli government over the West Bank violence highlights a question sure to dominate relations after the war, no matter who is governing Israel.

What lessons should be drawn by the terrible violence of Oct. 7 and its aftermath?

The current Israeli government’s response, Mr. Biden worries, may well be to close down, rather than expand, efforts to negotiate a lasting peace with the Palestinians.

Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer said as much this week in a U.S. television interview. He argued that serious prospects for a political resolution would require “generational” change.

Washington, on the other hand, regards a rapid and serious new peace push as vital to its ambitions to build long-term Middle East stability on the foundations of normalized relations between Israel and key Arab states, including Saudi Arabia.

It is essential, Mr. Biden has said, to give Palestinians a credible alternative to Hamas’ message – a political horizon that holds out the prospect of self-determination in a state of their own.

And also, in his words, the prospect for both Palestinians and Israelis of “safety, dignity, and peace.”