The article below was first published in the September 1, 2026, issue of the Israeli daily Haaretz. The author, Amira Hass, is the Haaretz correspondent for the occupied territories — Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel has illegally held since the Six-Day War in June 1967.

“Across Gaza, the West Bank and Israel itself, the machinery for making Palestinian life impossible is already operating, laying the groundwork for mass expulsion,” Hass warns in this opinion column. “Let me reiterate: The very existence of the Palestinian people between the sea and the river is now in danger.”

Born in Jerusalem in 1956, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Hass joined Haaretz in 1989. She has been in her current position since 1993. While carrying out her assignment, she spent three years living in Gaza, which served as the basis for her widely acclaimed book, Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege. She has lived in the West Bank city of Ramallah since 1997.

Hass is “the only Israeli Jewish journalist to have spent 30 years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank,” Democracy Now noted in its introduction to an October 19, 2023, interview with her.

World-Outlook has published a number of Hass’ columns over the last three years.

We are publishing the article that follows for the information of our readers. The headline, subhead, text, and photos below are from the original. Notes are by World-Outlook.

— World-Outlook editors

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Opinion

Otherwise Occupied • Israel Isn’t Debating a Palestinian State. It’s Preparing for Expulsion

Gadi Eisenkot’s position on Palestinian statehood is beside the point. Across Gaza, the West Bank and Israel itself, the machinery for making Palestinian life impossible is already operating, laying the groundwork for mass expulsion

By Amira Hass

Haaretz, 10:13 AM • September 01, 2026, IDT

Gadi Eisenkot,^[1] the election frontrunner and leader of the Yashar party, has a stance on a Palestinian state that is ultimately irrelevant. What is at stake today is not a “diplomatic solution,” but the very existence of the Palestinian people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Israeli forces striving to “erase” them recognize no limits or restraints. Their supporters are too numerous for us to rely solely on the steadfastness and resilience of a people that has already endured expulsion plans carried out by Israel.

The world stands by. The left is tiny, weak and hoarse from sounding too many warnings. The anti-Bibi opposition oscillates among downplaying the danger, remaining indifferent to it and outright supporting expulsion. The sporadic condemnations, prompted mainly by something the U.S. ambassador posted on X, are about as useful as a sieve in a rainstorm. The Jewish Phalangists attack constantly and everywhere, not only in Qusra.^[2]

The debate over one state, two states or a federation is more theoretical than ever.^[3] Any agreed-upon solution requires first acknowledging the problem and agreeing on what it is. Too many Jews in Israel have been conditioned to believe that the problem is the very presence in this land of a Palestinian people with roots, historical and economic continuity, cultural capital and material assets, a rich agricultural heritage and a profound love of homeland.

“Erasure” is the nightmare solution being written into reality every day. Knesset laws, politicians’ declarations, military orders, school textbooks and the holy real estate battalions operating in Gaza, the West Bank and the Negev all work, together and separately, to advance this “solution” diligently and without fear of international condemnation.

Israeli policy is directed toward making life unbearable for Palestinians wherever they live, so that their emigration can be described as an act of free will. Within Israel itself, the authorities give Arab crime organizations free rein to arm themselves and kill Palestinian citizens in their homes. In the West Bank, those same Israeli authorities give “God’s battalions” free rein to arm themselves, kill and expel, while the official army continues its raids day and night. In devastated and thirsty Gaza, the government and the army cultivate armed militias of criminal collaborators, while Israeli pilots continue to launch missiles of revenge and retribution that claim the lives of still more children. All these testosterone-fueled displays are interconnected.

At the same time, Israel is destroying or severely restricting Palestinians’ ability to earn a living. In Gaza, that mission has been completed. A “living dead” population of aid recipients, two million people carrying the weight of some 74,000 fresh graves, families and memories, talents and professions, and evaporated savings, is crammed into roughly 150 square kilometers of scorched earth. Creativity, resourcefulness and mutual aid are dwarfed by the scale of the destruction and by Israel’s prohibition on rebuilding and recovery.

In the West Bank, the Finance Ministry’s^[4] financial noose is tightening around the necks of approximately three million people and the Palestinian Authority. The systematic theft of revenues is compounded by the army’s campaigns of destruction in cities and refugee camps, as well as by the other methods used to prevent Palestinians from cultivating and developing their land: checkpoints, bureaucratic prohibitions, fences and Israeli-Jewish shepherds.

Within Israel itself, the “Judaization of the Galilee and Negev”^[5] was and remains code for stealing land and resources from Palestinian citizens of Israel. Discrimination against them in allocations, subsidies and employment, along with building prohibitions and demolitions, has always featured prominently in official policy within the Green Line.

Let me reiterate: The very existence of the Palestinian people between the sea and the river is now in danger. Too many active forces are creating that danger: Israel’s military might and capabilities; the cult of military service under all conditions and under every government; obedience as a value; weapons and military attacks as the default modus operandi; the normalization of PTSD among soldiers and of soldiers dying by suicide; the attractions of a military career and the doors it opens; the lure of an affordable villa in a Galilee exclusionary community or a settler suburb in Samaria; the falsehoods of official and unofficial propaganda; indifference to the hell on earth Israel has created in the Gaza Strip; denial of 60 years of occupation and forced rule; the Pavlovian response, “But October 7”;^[6] the synergy among the army, the government, the rabbis and the kippa-wearing militias in the West Bank; equanimity in the face of Lebanon’s destruction; disregard for the occupation of more parts of Syria; the normalization of expulsion discourse; justice and education systems tainted by secular and religious racism; and the army of jailers who abuse thousands of Palestinian prisoners, both under orders and by choice.

Together, these and similar forces are creating the material, ideological and psychological infrastructure within Israeli-Jewish society for another mass expulsion of Palestinians and for what might accompany it: mass slaughter.

The heroes of the settler militias openly declare that expulsion is their goal. They clearly recognize the readiness of large segments of Israeli-Jewish society to participate in carrying it out, actively or passively, directly or indirectly. Through their daily provocations and crimes, committed in broad daylight and made possible only by institutional support, the Phalangists constantly seek to provoke a Palestinian act of rage and revenge that “succeeds,” so that it can be exploited as the match that ignites a new holy war.

The Jewish Phalangists and the right-wing organizations that fuel them are counting on broad mobilization, including from the leaders, voters and supporters of Yashar and the liberal Democrats party,^[7] for a war that could already be given the slogan: “One people, one army, one land cleansed of Arabs.”

NOTES

[1] Gadi Eisenkot is the leader of the Yashar party, a frontrunner in Israel’s upcoming elections, according to recent opinion polls that give it 22% support among Israeli voters. Likud, the right-wing party that leads the current ruling bloc, is rated second with 21% support. The legislative elections for the Knesset, the country’s parliament, are scheduled for October 27, 2026. Eisenkot is a retired army general who was the chief of staff of Israel’s Defense Forces (IDF) from 2015 to 2019 and a minister without portfolio in the Israeli government from 2023 to 2024.

[2] Beginning in early August, dozens of Israeli settlers surrounded Palestinian homes on a hilltop (Mount Ras al-Ain) in the West Bank village of Qusra, southeast of the city Nablus, and about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north of Jerusalem. Settlers severed water, electricity, and power lines, pitched tents, and blocked roads to trap families inside and force them off their land. Masked settlers repeatedly attacked the village with stones, set fire to nearby fields, and vandalized or looted properties. Some of the targeted homes belong to Palestinian American families.

The Israeli army declared the area a closed military zone and installed new metal gates and roadblocks around the besieged homes, which residents and human rights groups say effectively institutionalized the siege. Humanitarian convoys and activists attempting to deliver food, medicine, and water to the trapped families have been repeatedly blocked or turned away by military forces.

The violence and siege in Qusra have drawn international criticism. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu shed crocodile tears by condemning the settler actions. But local residents report that soldiers on the ground have failed to stop the settlers. The nearly month-long siege is still ongoing.

[3] For more information see Palestine/Israel: Edward Said on ‘The One-State Solution’.

[4] Israel’s finance minister is Bezalel Smotrich, an ultra-rightist and leader of the far-right Religious Zionist Party. He is also a minister within the Ministry of Defense, with oversight powers on civil administration and settlements in the West Bank. He is one of the foremost advocates of expanding Israeli settlements and of eventual annexation of that occupied territory to Israel.

[5] The Galilee is the northernmost area of Israel bordered by Lebanon to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and the Jordan Rift Valley to the east. The Negev is the southernmost area of Israel, an arid and semi-arid desert region, covering more than half of the country’s total land area (roughly 12,000 square kilometers); it stretches from Beersheba — its largest city and capital — in the north down to Eilat on the Red Sea coast.

[6] This is a reference to the grotesque Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

[7] The Democrats is a liberal Zionist party in Israel. According to recent opinion polls, it is currently rated fourth in the country’s upcoming elections, with about 11% support among eligible voters. Together (Beyachad), a centrist-right political alliance founded in April 2026 by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, is rated third with 12% support.

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