How West Bank, Settlements Fit Into Israel-Hamas War

In the months before militants of the Palestinian group Hamas launched a new war by bursting out of the Gaza Strip Oct. 7 to commit a massacre in Israel, a different enclave, the West Bank, had been the greater source of friction between Israelis and Palestinians. Now, the war between Israel and Hamas has further inflamed conflict there. In the West Bank, unlike in Gaza, not only are Israeli soldiers ever-present, so are Israeli civilians. They are residents of the so-called West Bank settlements, one of the thorniest issues in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

It’s a landlocked block of territory west of the Jordan River where 3.2 million Palestinians and about half a million Israeli settlers live. By way of comparison, 2.3 million Palestinians and no Israelis live in the Gaza Strip, a sliver of Mediterranean coastline between Israel and Egypt where Hamas has governed since 2007. Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war. Together they make up the land where the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which made peace with Israel in 1993, is committed to establishing an independent Palestinian state, alongside Israel, through diplomacy. The Islamist Hamas, considered a terrorist group by the US and European Union, is dedicated to using armed struggle to destroy Israel itself.