The final weeks before Israel's election have collapsed the already thin boundary between military occupation and domestic politics. Settlement launches, prison intimidation videos, and calls for West Bank military operations are no longer policy — they are campaign events, choreographed for voter consumption. On September 23, Israeli ministers attended the founding ceremony of Metzoke Eretz, a new illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank built on private Palestinian land near the ethnically cleansed Bedouin community of al-Muarrajat al-Wasat. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and fellow politicians used the event to argue that only a Netanyahu-led government would sustain settlement momentum. The site, previously the Netzah Harel outpost established in 2023, is one of 104 settlements the current government has legalised domestically, though all remain illegal under international law. The performative escalation extended across the political class. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir released a video from an Israeli prison in which he threatened to kill jailed Hamas figure Hassan Salameh. Smotrich called for the army to "go to war" in the occupied West Bank. Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly as delegations walked out. Each act calibrated not for diplomatic or security outcomes but for domestic electoral positioning. The costs of this posturing are borne entirely by Palestinians. Israeli forces razed 24 homes in the village of Jinba in Masafer Yatta on September 23, displacing approximately 180 people, more than 80 of them children, according to B'Tselem. A weeklong closure of the West Bank and its crossings was announced for Jewish holidays, producing what the Palestinian news agency Wafa described as "severe and unprecedented" congestion, with soldiers at the Atara checkpoint stopping ambulances from crossing. Settlers uprooted centuries-old olive trees in Beit Ur al-Fauqa, Nabi Saleh, and Beit Rima, stole olives in Sinjil, Turmus Aya, and Umm Safa, and carried out pogroms in Farkha and Burqa, beating residents and cutting off water and electricity to the Kaabneh community near Taybeh. In Gaza, the post-ceasefire killing continued. Among the week's dead: Jabr Muqbil, 34, killed in Deir el-Balah on September 24 with relatives wounded in a follow-up strike; 12-year-old Muhammad Sief al-Din al-Shakhrit in al-Mawasi; and Amal Khalid al-Ajla, killed in a strike on a home sheltering displaced people in Gaza City. The Ministry of Health recorded 27 more Palestinians killed during the week, bringing the post-ceasefire toll to 1,421 and the total since October 2023 past 74,000, reaching 74,022 as of September 28. The structural picture continues to darken. A UNCTAD report found 92 percent of Gaza's economic establishments damaged or destroyed. The US-created Board of Peace said it would not work with UNRWA in Gaza, while its envoy Nickolay Mladenov announced a $2.45 billion reconstruction package tied to Hamas disarmament — a condition that ensures the money remains theoretical. Aid deliveries remain blocked in sufficient quantities. What emerges from this week is not complexity but clarity: Israeli electoral incentives are structurally aligned with Palestinian dispossession. Every demolished home, every closed checkpoint, every prison threat video generates domestic political returns for the politicians who order them. The occupation is not a side effect of Israeli politics — it is a campaign platform, and the election cycle accelerates the extraction.
