By Daniel Frost
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
The aphorism, long attributed to Edmund Burke, has been recited so often that it has lost its edge. The West Bank is where it cuts again. While the world’s attention remains fixed on the war in Gaza, a quieter transformation is advancing in the territory beside it. Street by street, hill by hill, the West Bank is being broken into a patchwork of isolated Palestinian enclaves. Western governments denounce the process in the strongest terms, calling settlement expansion illegal under international law and reaffirming their devotion to a two-state solution. Then they do nothing. The distance between those solemn words and that studied inaction is not an oversight; it is the policy itself. Gaza burns in full view; the West Bank is being unmade between the headlines.
The distance between solemn diplomatic words and studied inaction is not an oversight; it is the policy itself.
The strategy operates on a simple equation: secure maximum land while keeping the Palestinian presence on it to a minimum. Young men of the Hilltop Youth movement, civilians in name only, plant informal outposts on the ridgelines above farming villages. The encampments look improvised, even random; their placement is anything but. Sited to exert steady pressure on the communities below, they come with state subsidies and a permanent military escort. The methods are familiar and varied: wheat fields set alight, olive groves destroyed, livestock stolen or slaughtered, water pipes severed, and villagers beaten by men who return home without consequence. Human Rights Watch documents that since late 2023, thousands of rural Palestinians across more than a hundred communities have abandoned ancestral land, forced out not by formal eviction orders but by calculated, day-to-day harassment.
Such displacement could not proceed without an institutional architecture built for impunity. The military holds overarching security authority in the West Bank, yet routinely declines to intervene in settler attacks, insisting that civil law enforcement lies outside its mandate. The civilian police, in turn, confine their activity almost entirely to recognized settlements. Between these two jurisdictions lies a regulatory void in which crimes against Palestinian villagers carry no realistic prospect of investigation, arrest, or punishment. And because only the intelligence agencies may order detentions, an endangered family has no channel of protection: no complaint mechanism, no legal avenue, no state remedy, no number to call.
Between military security mandates and civilian police boundaries lies a regulatory void that leaves Palestinian communities without legal remedy.
The ground realities faithfully reflect the politics above them. Far-right figures within the governing coalition speak openly of permanent sovereignty over the West Bank and of financial incentives designed to encourage Palestinian emigration. Strategic planning reinforces the agenda. The projected expansion of the E1 corridor near Jerusalem, for instance, would bind the principal settlement blocs together while dividing the West Bank’s northern and southern halves, effectively foreclosing any possibility of contiguous Palestinian territory. What remains of the Palestinian map is being drawn out of existence, one infrastructure decision at a time.
In the cities, the project assumes an overtly destructive form. Sustained military operations in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nablus have dismantled refugee camps that have stood since the wars of 1948 and 1967. Residential streets have been bulldozed, housing units demolished, and essential utilities destroyed, all under the banner of counter-terrorism. Tens of thousands of urban residents have been displaced. It is difficult to mistake the purpose: the camps were centers of political resistance, and their leveling is changing the character of the principal cities.
The same pressure reaches the historic religious and agricultural communities of the countryside. In villages of the central West Bank whose livelihoods rest on seasonal harvests of figs and olives, closures and localized blockades repeatedly keep farmers from their fields; the fruit rots on the branches while fragile local economies collapse. Even communities that should enjoy protection are not spared. In Taybeh, one of the region’s oldest Christian towns, residents endure repeated incursions, property arson, severed power lines, and unrelenting intimidation. When religious leaders and human rights organizations appeal for intervention, the military often responds by declaring the targeted areas closed military zones, trapping residents inside, cutting off outside aid, and leaving the harassment to continue undisturbed. Daily existence becomes a test of endurance that no one should be required to pass.
Infrastructure expansion and urban leveling systematically foreclose the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state.
The response of the wider world has been inertia wrapped in principle. The United States and the European Union regularly declare that settlement expansion violates international law; they restate their support for a viable two-state framework and caution against unilateral acts that endanger regional stability. Yet these warnings never acquire consequences: no trade restrictions, no sanctions on the ministers responsible, no conditions attached to defense assistance. Commercial agreements, economic ties, and security partnerships proceed as though the words had never been spoken. The signal, however unintended, could hardly be clearer: there is no price to pay.
This persistent failure of enforcement exposes how thoroughly diplomatic principle has been hollowed out. Rhetoric without remedy functions as a protective shield, conferring implicit approval on continued land acquisition and forced displacement. By choosing condemnation over action, Western governments have allowed the foundational rules of international law to be eroded in plain sight. As rural communities are erased from the landscape, agricultural traditions extinguished, and historic urban quarters flattened, the prospect of a sovereign, viable, and contiguous Palestinian state is being deliberately extinguished. The West Bank is an orphan war, not because its agonies are unknown, but because those with the power to intervene have chosen to do nothing. Burke’s warning has not been forgotten. It is recited daily, with perfect irony, in every Western capital that condemns and then looks away.
About the Author
Daniel Frost is a Foreign affairs columnist specializing in global geopolitics, European security, and strategic policy.