While global attention remains fixed on the devastation in Gaza, Israel is quietly redrawing the map of the West Bank. Under the cover of war, and with little international scrutiny, the Israeli government has accelerated efforts to cement control over the occupied territory—through concrete, asphalt, and relentless settlement expansion.

Since October 2023, construction crews have laid down hundreds of kilometres of roads, not to serve Palestinians, but to connect settlements deep inside the West Bank to Israeli cities. These roads carve through Palestinian villages, cut off communities from their farmland, and entrench a system of segregation. In 2024 alone, nearly $840 million was poured into such infrastructure, transforming bypass roads into tools of annexation.

Israel no longer hides its ambitions. It has formally begun to rename the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria” in its legislation, a move increasingly echoed by Western allies, despite its clear violation of international law. Settlers—many backed by state funds—are pushing further into Palestinian lands, establishing new outposts, sometimes overnight. What began as isolated farms now function as territorial claims, rapidly fencing off Palestinian land under the guise of agriculture.

The aim is not merely to populate the land with settlers but to make Palestinian life unbearable—restricted by military checkpoints, denied freedom of movement, and slowly suffocated by a network of settler roads and security zones. The Green Line, once a marker of separation, is disappearing under the weight of bulldozers and concrete barriers.

This creeping annexation, aided by silence and diplomatic complicity, is making a two-state solution increasingly implausible. As Palestinians in the West Bank watch the land around them disappear piece by piece, it becomes painfully clear: the occupation is not just a military presence—it is a long-term project of erasure.