Interactions within the West Bank: Mutual National Security of Jordan and Palestine

This material was published in the second issue of the Jordanian Politics and Society magazine (JPS).

Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. elections and his preparation to return to the White House in January 2025 have created a state of cautious anticipation in the region. This comes amidst the ongoing Israeli extermination war on the Gaza Strip, which has persisted for over a year and two months, alongside escalating tensions in several areas, including Israel’s war on Lebanon and internal developments in Syria.

However, Trump’s return casts a direct shadow on the Palestinian political developments, which were central to his interventions during his previous term. It also has profound repercussions for Jordan’s national security, especially since the primary focus of the U.S.-Israeli projects during Trump’s previous presidency was the West Bank. Today, with his return, Trump faces a new reality shaped by rampant settlement activity and Israel’s official shift to the far right. These dynamics have prompted the architects of such projects to prepare plans reflecting their vision of swallowing what remains of the West Bank. This development carries significant consequences for the Palestinian territories and Jordan.

This article seeks to shed light on the situation in the West Bank amid these settlement-related developments. It examines the rapid erosion of the Palestinian governing authority, unprecedented economic and social restrictions, and projects involving displacement and population restructuring. Furthermore, the article explores Trump’s administration and its stance on the Palestinian cause while analyzing the implications of these developments on the Palestinian political entity and Jordanian national security. Finally, it aims to explore potential strategies for confronting and addressing these challenges.

The General Context of the West Bank After October 7
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has leveraged its extermination war on the Gaza Strip to accelerate the establishment of a settler statelet in the West Bank. This effort has been fueled by the nature of the right-wing settlement-driven government and the influential role settlers play within it, particularly Bezalel Smotrich, who oversees the Ministry of Finance and the areas designated for settlement under the Ministry of Defense.

A year and two months into the war, the West Bank now includes 174 settlements and 171 settler outposts, which are being rapidly “legalized.” These settlements are home to approximately 800,000 settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem, supported by an extensive infrastructure network from which Palestinians are increasingly excluded.

By the end of 2023, the settlement infrastructure in the West Bank has emerged as a cohesive system interspersed with isolated Palestinian enclaves, as illustrated in the map below. Approximately 750 gates and military checkpoints fragment these enclaves.

Figure 1: Settlement map in the West Bank until the end of 2023, Source: Settlement Wall Authority

Simultaneously, Smotrich is leveraging his position to undermine the funding sources of the Palestinian Authority, which primarily rely on clearance revenues—taxes forcibly collected by Israel on Palestinian imports due to its control over land and sea crossings. He has deducted increasing portions of these revenues under several categories: net lending (debts for the compulsory import of water and electricity from Israel, unilaterally assessed without review), punitive deductions for supporting the families of martyrs, the injured, and prisoners, punitive deductions for Palestinian transfers to the Gaza Strip, and compensation for settlers and their families who are “affected by military operations.” Overall, by September 2024, the total amount withheld by Israel from the clearance revenues amounted to approximately one-third of the total general budget ($2 billion).

These deductions occurred amidst escalating burdens on the Palestinian Authority, which faced an unprecedented economic reality in the history of the West Bank. Around 200,000 workers lost their jobs in the Israeli market, and their work permits were revoked, depriving the Palestinian economy of approximately $4.8 billion annually. Added to this were those who lost their jobs in the local market, bringing the total to about 306,000 workers, meaning that one-third of the West Bank’s labor force is unemployed.

Additionally, the closure of checkpoints and crossings along the Green Line deprived the Palestinian economy of critical resources previously generated by Palestinians shopping within Israel, particularly in the central northern cities of the West Bank: Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus. Consequently, UNCTAD described the Palestinian economy as being in a state of devastation.

The crisis of the Palestinian Authority has been exacerbated by the ongoing erosion of its governance on the ground. Israel has intensified its incursions and destruction of city centers and Palestinian refugee camps, particularly in Jenin, Tulkarm, Tubas, and Nablus. For the first time since the end of the Al-Aqsa Intifada (2000–2005), Israel has targeted the West Bank using drones, helicopters, and warplanes, extensively destroying infrastructure and property while portraying the Palestinian Authority as entirely powerless.

In this context, the number of martyrs in the West Bank rose from 169 in 2022 to 478 by mid-November 2024, with extensive damage to infrastructure and property amounting to tens of millions of dollars. The Palestinian Authority has been unable to compensate for or repair these losses, further amplifying its image of political and administrative incompetence and its inability to confront Israeli violations.

Politically, Israeli opposition to strengthening the Palestinian Authority has escalated. The governing right-wing coalition is unified in its intent to weaken and undermine the Authority, rejecting the notion of any Palestinian political entity, whether it is “Hamastan” or “Fatahstan,” as described by Smotrich and Netanyahu. This has only worsened the situation.

Trump and the Upcoming Transformations
The conditions on the ground appear ideal for advancing the settler vision of annexation and incorporation—conditions further reinforced by Donald Trump’s return to the White House for a second term and the implementation of the “Decisive Plan” or “One Hope Plan” presented by Smotrich. In a meeting organized by the “Yesha Council,” the regulatory settler council for the West Bank and Gaza, at the end of November, features of a proposed plan to be submitted to the Trump administration emerged, serving as a roadmap for the next four years.

The program aims to annex the West Bank and impose Israeli sovereignty through the following measures: establishing civil control over Palestinian villages in Area C and suffocating them with settlement expansion; dismantling the Palestinian Authority and replacing it with local administrative councils; redefining the relationship with Palestinians to mirror the relationship with East Jerusalem residents; massive investment in settlement-serving infrastructure; implementing Israeli law and managing the West Bank through Israeli government offices; and transforming strategic settlements into cities by creating four major cities and attracting Israelis to settle in them.

While these proposals may seem extreme, reflecting their proponents’ nature, ambitions, and vision, they have been emboldened and fortified by Trump’s return to the White House. One of Trump’s earliest signals of his upcoming policies was his invitation to settler leaders to attend his inauguration ceremony, including Yossi Dagan, head of the Northern Samaria Settlements Council, who had previously rejected Trump’s plan known as the “Deal of the Century,” deeming it unjust to Jewish rights in “Judea and Samaria.”

Trump’s nominees for key positions are staunch supporters of Israel and aligned with its current right-wing orientation. Among the most prominent are the proposed Secretary of State, Marco Rubio; the proposed National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz; the proposed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Elise Stefanik; and the proposed Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. The latter is known for his infamous statements denying the existence of Palestinians, rejecting the use of the term “West Bank” in favor of “Judea and Samaria,” and being a fierce advocate for the annexation of the West Bank.

Implications for Jordan and Palestine: Mutual Challenges to National Security

This map of interactions and challenges, both current and anticipated, points to a set of key conclusions concerning Jordan and Palestine. These challenges impact Jordan’s national security on one hand and threaten the existence of the Palestinian political entity on the other. These challenges can be summarized as follows:

The Challenge to the Political Entity:

Israeli right-wing projects aim to dissolve the Palestinian political entity and replace it with Israeli security control over the West Bank, a self-service administrative system at the city level, and a functional attachment of Palestinians to Jordan on selected issues, such as certain aspects of education, religious endowments and services, travel and related documents, etc. This is rejected by both the Jordanian state and the Palestine Liberation Organization, as confirmed in accumulated bilateral understandings.

In parallel with the political dissolution in the West Bank, signs of acceptance for a limited role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza have started to appear. This brings to mind Israeli attempts to confine the Palestinian Authority to Gaza and limit the Palestinian state and national project to the small sector.

Israel seeks to impose a reality that forces all parties to respond compulsively, whether through bypassing its obligations—such as violating the Jordanian custodianship principles over the holy sites in Jerusalem—or by creating an environment that compels all sides to respond and conform in order to prevent any wide-scale humanitarian deterioration.

The Security Challenge:

The rising settlement-driven right-wing movement in Israel, with its focus on the West Bank, generates increasing fears from a wave of expulsions of Palestinians, aiming to forcibly push tens of thousands to migrate from the West Bank. This has been hinted at or stated explicitly by several Israeli politicians. This could lead to waves of attacks on Palestinian villages, particularly in Area C, such as the night of the Hawara fire and the assaults on the villages of al-Mughayer and Turmus’Ayya.

Today’s settler movement is organized through various associations, organizations, and coordination groups that handle mobilization, training, organization, and guidance. They also defend settlers in cases of arrest. The movement is armed with approximately 100,000 firearms, emergency teams, and settlement guards seeking to arm themselves with drones and anti-tank weapons. This indicates that we are no longer dealing with “hilltop youth” as an exceptional case in Israeli society but with an organized militia protected by the government. In contrast, Israel has intensified its efforts over the past year to strike at the resistance in the West Bank, which had been an individual or poorly organized phenomenon at best. Its groups began forming in 2021 and were concentrated in refugee camps, not villages. The occupation then used drones, warplanes, helicopters, special forces, and comprehensive destruction of infrastructure to target both the resistance and its supporters.

The Economic Challenge:

Over the past year, Israel has begun efforts to adapt to the absence of Palestinian labor, prevent Israelis from accessing Palestinian markets, and shift from “calming” economic approaches to a more aggressive, exclusionary approach. Through these approaches, Tel Aviv aims to institutionalize a hostile environment and promote voluntary migration from the West Bank to abroad while also creating a difficult economic reality in the West Bank, which cannot adopt any development policies or achieve economic disengagement under occupation, which is inherently exploitative and settlement-driven.

The economic reality in the West Bank directly impacts Jordan, not only through trade exchange but also through social connections and their economic consequences. Any movement of skilled Palestinian labor toward Jordan—especially those holding the yellow ID card (Jordanian Citizens)—will put pressure on the Jordanian labor market, which is already suffering from the region’s ongoing crises.

Beyond the occupation’s use of the economy as an exclusionary system, Jordanian banks, for example, account for about 40% of the banking sector in Palestine and provide around 35% of total credit facilities in Palestine. Therefore, they are directly affected by the occupation’s policies related to severing ties with the Palestinian banking system—essentially isolating it from the world and causing its collapse—or from the continued deterioration of the economic situation and the failure to address credit facilities.

Joint Jordanian – Palestinian Responses

Since October 7th, the Jordanian and Palestinian leaderships have worked in close coordination. With the direct challenges facing the West Bank and Gaza, both Jordanian and Palestinian rhetoric has focused on warning against displacement, settler terrorism, and the policies of occupation. Clear positions on displacement and the violation of Palestinian national rights have been articulated in bilateral summits, trilateral meetings with Egypt, and joint Arab-Islamic summits.

Jordanian-Israeli relations have seen the highest levels of tension over the past year. In addition to the aggression, policies in the West Bank and the continuous violations of Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem were direct causes of this tension. Jordan has also been active in collective Arab diplomacy, which moved at both the international and UN levels to stop the aggression and address the humanitarian catastrophe in both Gaza and the West Bank.

However, the acceleration of occupation policies and the international shift in support, marked by Trump’s return to the White House, necessitate proactive approaches through which Jordan, in coordination with Palestine, moves along two tracks. The first is a bilateral track focused on building a response and challenge plan to occupation policies, distributing roles, work programs, and responses. This supporting track is related to political coordination. It extends to joint efforts in exploring mechanisms and strategies to enhance Palestinian resilience as a shared Jordanian national security interest and Palestinian interest.

The second track is the Arab track, where, in recent months, a collective Arab stance has emerged, with coordinated positions on central issues related to the aggression. However, it is essential to escalate this coordination and build on its outcomes, particularly the collective Arab-Islamic-international work to create a viable Palestinian state and prevent any Israeli-Arab settlement paths from being taken unilaterally. It is also crucial to push for linking any Palestinian or regional settlement agreements that end this war to the situation on the ground in both the West Bank and Gaza.

In conclusion, the challenges facing Jordanian national security are the same challenges that affect the comprehensive political existence of Palestine. However, the responses and confrontation here, although primarily the responsibility of collective Arab regional efforts, are urgent and existential for both the Jordanian and Palestinian sides. These responses must also be carried out sensitively to the ongoing regional developments.

Conclusion
With Trump’s victory in the U.S. elections, Smotrich declared that 2025 would be the year of enforcing Israeli sovereignty over “Judea and Samaria,” in parallel with a comprehensive settlement plan that will be presented to the incoming U.S. administration, aligned with this project in both structure and ideology.

Thus, we may be facing a new “Deal of the Century” in the context of expanding the Abrahamic normalization, focusing on Riyadh, and creating economic approaches that bypass Palestinians politically or reduce what they may receive, at best. The joint Palestinian-Jordanian responses against the first deal presented by Trump were clear by vetoing the course and outcomes of the deal, not only in relation to demographics and geography but also in matters concerning the Hashemite custodianship of the holy sites in Jerusalem, framed in the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel.

In conclusion, in a joint and effective political movement, the confrontation here is political, based on re-strategizing and building regional alliances to protect the Palestinian political entity and Jordanian national security. It also involves leveraging the Saudi stance against normalization without a Palestinian state as the core of the supportive front for countering the Zionist settlement project.