IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir said on Aug. 27 that he was expanding the Israeli forces used to maintain public order in the West Bank ahead of the upcoming fall Jewish holidays. The force level will be more than double the pre-October 7 size of around 11 battalions, and at times has grown to 15-20 battalions, with a temporary increase expected to be even larger. The numbers are blunt. More troops. More checkpoints. More pressure on people already living under a military system that keeps widening its reach whenever the calendar or the politics demand it.
The State's Monopoly
Zamir warned the government that Jewish extremist violence has run out of control and said greater backing is needed from the government, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others actively restraining political officials from provocative actions. The expansion comes as IDF officials say Jewish extremist violence has reached new levels, with hundreds of extremists recently drawing out a conflict with the IDF at the Palestinian village of Kusra for multiple weeks. IDF and Shin Bet officials also say the police, after three years under Itamar Ben-Gvir, have reached highly problematic lows in terms of arresting and helping indict Jewish extremists in the West Bank. None or almost none of those involved in the Kusra actions were arrested.
That’s the machinery in plain view: the army says it needs more force, the police can’t or won’t touch the extremists, and the people in Kusra are left in the middle while the institutions trade warnings. Zamir has brought in the Golani Brigade and the Paratroopers Brigade to supplement the standard forces in the area, some of which have appeared too sympathetic to Jewish extremists attacking Palestinian villages. He has warned that even increased military forces will be insufficient without more backing from the government.
Gaza as a Managed Population
In Gaza, officials at the MEAD conference in Washington said rebuilding the Strip should involve more than repairing damaged homes and infrastructure. They said the process should also include educational efforts to address the anger, hatred, radicalism and extremist ideology that have taken root among Gaza’s population. Figures presented at the conference showed that 1.2 million Palestinians had been displaced from their homes and 370,000 homes had been damaged or destroyed, including 70,000 that were partially destroyed. Four officials involved in determining Gaza’s future appeared together onstage at the conference on Tuesday.
The language was tidy, bureaucratic, and familiar. Rebuild the houses, then rework the minds. The conference treated a shattered society like a policy problem with a curriculum attached. It also made clear who gets to speak for the future: officials, onstage, under lights, while the displaced remain statistics in a presentation.
Hamas, the US, Turkey, Egypt and Qatar have agreed on a plan to rebuild the Gaza Strip that would include disarming Hamas, but the initiative remains stalled amid widespread suspicion and a lack of trust among the parties. Conference participants said Hamas members are liars and difficult to trust, making it hard to rely on commitments made behind closed doors when public messages differ. The conference also revealed that the Board of Peace’s plan includes deploying 10,000 Palestinian police officers to the Gaza Strip, with the officers first undergoing vetting as part of the US-mediated process. For now, the plan is described as "not progressing."
That’s another security architecture dressed up as reconstruction. A police force, vetted through a US-mediated process, is supposed to arrive in Gaza as part of a plan that isn’t moving. The same old promise: order first, freedom later, maybe never. Participants called on other countries to support the Gaza reconstruction plan and change their rhetoric and narratives, and warned that without progress in the process led by the Board of Peace, both Palestinians and Israelis would face harmful alternatives, including a possible return to war.
Diplomacy Without Exit
On Lebanon, the US State Department said Lebanon-Israel negotiations will take place in Washington and will address ongoing developments and the implementation of the trilateral framework, described as the practical mechanism for restoring Lebanon’s sovereignty and ensuring Israel’s security. The Jerusalem Post also reported that there is no real process to disarm Hezbollah, unlike in Gaza where there may be such a process with Hamas. It said the Lebanese army is still terrified of having a direct conflict with Hezbollah and that long-term this could leave Israel stuck in Lebanon like it was from 1982 to 2000, with no apparent exit strategy.
The phrasing does a lot of work. Sovereignty for Lebanon, security for Israel, negotiations in Washington, and no real process where the armed group is concerned. The state system keeps producing frameworks, trilateral mechanisms, and mediated plans, each one promising control and each one leaving the people on the ground to live with the consequences.
A Haaretz analysis said that in Netanyahu’s Israel, failure follows failure on every front. The piece said the full dire picture is revealed as Yoav Kisch celebrates the catastrophic collapse of Israeli education and Gideon Sa'ar gloats over the complete collapse of the country's relations with Europe. It described Tuesday as a Likud celebration, with the party's chairman, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, celebrating with candidates of its reserved slots on the Knesset slate amid reports of the secret warning phone call concerning a possible attack by Hamas in 2023 from the president of the UAE.
The article’s final picture is less a policy debate than a portrait of competing power centers congratulating themselves while the damage piles up. West Bank militarization, Gaza reconstruction by police vetting, Washington-led negotiations, and a ruling party celebrating in the middle of collapse. The people underneath get the bill.