TEHRAN — Fakhri Abu Diab stands in the jagged graveyard of rebar and gray dust that used to be his living room in al-Bustan, a neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem (al-Quds). For decades, this was where he shared tea with his mother and watched his children grow.

Today, it is a demolition site, cleared by Israeli bulldozers to make way for the “King’s Garden,” a biblical-themed settler project designed to encircle the Old City and sever the Palestinian heart of al-Quds.

Abu Diab’s ruin is the visible edge of a coordinated, multi-front campaign. Across the West Bank and East Jerusalem (al-Quds), Israel has moved past the era of “managing” an occupation. It is now engaged in a systematic program of permanent annexation and demographic engineering that many on the ground are calling a new Nakba.

Smotrich’s silent coup and the million-settler blueprint

The strategic center of this transformation is the “Million in Samaria” plan. Once a fringe ambition of the far-right, it is now an official roadmap backed by the full weight of the regime.

In December 2025, the Knesset approved a special budget of NIS 2.75 billion ($932 million) dedicated exclusively to West Bank settlement infrastructure over the next five years.

This funding has fueled a staggering surge in colonization. Between May 2025 and May 2026, the Israeli regime approved 75 new settlements, including a record-breaking batch of 34 approvals in March 2026 alone.

This is what Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich calls “civilianization.” By decoupling land registries and building permits from the military hierarchy and transferring them to civilian ministries, Israel is effectively imposing domestic law on occupied territory.

The April 2026 re-establishment of the Sa-Nur settlement, evacuated during the 2005 pullout, signals the final burial of the so-called “disengagement” era. The West Bank is no longer being governed as a temporary military holding; it is being treated as a domestic Israeli district.

Making life unlivable

While new settlements rise, existing Palestinian communities are being hollowed out through a strategy of infrastructure erasure.

In the northern refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams, military operations have shifted focus. D9 bulldozers systematically rip up asphalt, crush water mains, and destroy sewage systems.

In Nur Shams camp, satellite imagery confirmed that 35 percent of all structures were damaged or destroyed by early 2026. The intent is to make the camps uninhabitable. Since January 2025, more than 33,000 Palestinian refugees have been displaced in the northern West Bank alone.

This physical destruction is reinforced by a record-shattering network of 925 movement obstacles, checkpoints, iron gates, and earth mounds that have turned the West Bank into a fragmented cage for 3.4 million people.

By blocking access to Road 60, the primary north-south artery, Israel has reserved high-speed travel for settlers while forcing Palestinians onto crumbling secondary roads. This fragmentation is an economic death sentence, causing a systemic collapse where 36 percent of medical permit applications for East Jerusalem (al-Quds) hospitals are now denied or left pending.

The war on childhood and the siege

In East Jerusalem (al-Quds), the battle is for the soul and the soil of the city. In neighborhoods such as Silwan and Batn al-Hawa, demolition pressure is relentless. In March 2026, 15 families were evicted from Batn al-Hawa in a single sweep to facilitate the expansion of settler enclaves.

The pressure on Al-Aqsa Mosque represents the most explosive frontier. In May 2026, nine cabinet ministers and 13 lawmakers formally petitioned police to allow a mass settler storming of the compound. When the regime’s leaders lead the charge to violate the historical status quo, the mosque is a line in the sand for the future of al-Quds.

The most harrowing metric of this campaign, however, is written in the blood of the youngest. UNICEF reports that 70 Palestinian children have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (al-Quds) since the start of 2025, an average of one child every week. At least 93 percent of these deaths were caused by Israeli forces using live ammunition.

Thus, Israel’s policy is a permanent project of territorial consolidation and demographic pressure. Settler violence, which OCHA documented at more than six attacks per day in early 2026, functions as a paramilitary arm of the regime, often operating under the active cover of the military.

The phrase “new Nakba” is a fitting description of a reality where Palestinians are being fenced in, burned out, and fragmented while the structures of their life are steadily erased.

The map of Palestine is being redrawn daily, not with pens, but with bulldozers and checkpoints, to make a Palestinian state a physical impossibility.