As Israel continues operations in Gaza against Hamas and in Lebanon against Hezbollah, a third front looms on its borders: the West Bank. Violence in the West Bank is now at levels unseen since 2006. West Bank insecurity bleeds into Israel. In just the past month, Israeli security services thwarted a suicide bombing in Jaffa, responded to two car bombings in the West Bank, and prevented a fourth attack near Beit Horon. Hamas leader Zaher Jabarin, working from his Istanbul safe haven, seeks to ignite the West Bank. Not only would this augment Hamas’s power over the Palestinian Authority’s, but it also would stretch thin Israel’s military resources when Israel needs them most.
The current violence involves a new generation of militants disconnected from traditional Palestinian factions. Referred to as the “TikTok Generation,” these young activists organize through social media, making their movements unpredictable and harder to track. Their tactics range from stone throwing to coordinated armed assaults to create an unpredictable security environment. While the Israel Defense Forces have responded with nightly raids, increased surveillance, and advanced AI-driven facial recognition technologies, the friction between Israeli security forces and the Palestinian population deepens.
The Palestinian Authority’s grip on power has weakened. Economic hardship, corruption, and years of political stagnation have eroded its legitimacy among Palestinians. With the Palestinian Authority’s ability to control violence and maintain security cooperation with Israel diminishing, Hamas and other militants expand their influence.
Under the terms of the Oslo Accords, maintaining security is a chief responsibility of the Palestinian Authority. Diplomatic nicety is no reason to continue as a zombie entity while Hamas fills the vacuum. If the Palestinian Authority is unable to fulfill its duties, Israel needs to impose a new model. Centralized Palestinian Authority governance has become a liability; Israel should instead decentralize governance in the West Bank to empower local leadership in smaller Palestinian communities. This would disrupt corrupt entrenched elites and provide a governance system attuned to local needs.
Such decentralization also could set the stage for a transition of power to a new generation of Palestinian leadership. Israel’s goal should be to nurture younger, more pragmatic Palestinian leaders who are focused less on ideological confrontation and more on practical governance and security cooperation. This new leadership would need to manage complex tribal and clan dynamics in way that Palestinian Authority leaders—many of whom, like the late Yasser Arafat, came from abroad—cannot.
Israel faces a choice. Maintain the status quo or implement change. Decentralization offers a path forward. It empowers local leaders, disrupts entrenched elites, and nurtures new pragmatic leadership. To repeat the strategies of the past, however, as many diplomats and the United Nations counsel, will only guarantee failure and an even bigger conflagration in the years to come, one that Israel will survive but Jordan may not.
