Israel is pushing the occupied West Bank “toward an explosion” that threatens the entire region, senior Jordanian officials have warned, accusing Israel’s far-right government of trying to recreate the security conditions of Gaza to force Palestinians from their land.
In a briefing shared with The Independent, the officials said Israeli policies “orchestrated by far-right extremists” were designed to impose de facto annexation, dismantle the Palestinian Authority (PA) and confine Palestinians to “restricted enclaves”, with the ultimate aim of preventing a Palestinian state.
“The far-right government in Israel is purposefully escalating the situation in the West Bank to enforce new geographic and demographic realities,” the document read, accusing Israel of trying to “prepare for a scenario of security chaos”.
Israel, it added, “seeks to worsen the security situation in the West Bank in a manner similar to that in Gaza, with the goal of pushing Palestinians towards forced displacement as a result of suffocating livelihoods and under the guise of ‘voluntary emigration’”.
The brief concluded that Israel’s policies, ultimately aimed “at preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state”, will “drive the security situation in the Palestinian territories toward an explosion, which is a danger for the entire region”.
Jordan shares a long border with the West Bank and signed a treaty with Israel in 1994 that, though strained, has been a cornerstone of regional stability.
Amman has repeatedly warned that the security implications of Israeli policy in the West Bank, including mass forcible displacement, would destroy the notion of a future Palestinian state, threaten its own stability and that of the region.
Israel seized the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day War, an occupation which the International Court of Justice has deemed illegal and in defiance of the Palestinian right to self-determination and statehood.
Since then, Israel has built and expanded its settlements: the West Bank is now home to more than 500,000 Israeli settlers. Three million Palestinians also live there under Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority exercising limited autonomy in scattered enclaves.
Violence has surged since Hamas’s deadly 7 October 2023 attacks on southern Israel that killed around 1,200 people and Israel’s devastating bombardment of Gaza, which a UN inquiry has since concluded is a genocide.
As the situation has worsened in September, the UK announced plans to introduce a ban on the trade of goods produced within Israeli settlements. Foreign secretary Ed Miliband said: “The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank – perpetrated by settler terrorists.” The move prompted severe backlash in Israel.
Israel denies its forces have violated international law. The Israeli military dismissed as “baseless” the accusations that it was deliberately worsening the security situation in the West Bank to forcibly displace Palestinians.
In a statement to The Independent, it said, instead, that its mission in the West Bank was to “thwart terrorism, protect all residents, and maintain law and order in the area”.
It claimed there had been more than “2,000 attempted terror attacks” in the area since the start of the war and that any activities were conducted in accordance with ”operational necessity, the law, and IDF orders”.
But annexation efforts have been publicly accelerated by extreme right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, both of whom are settlers and public about their desire “to kill the idea of a Palestinian state”.
The Jordanian officials pointed to Israel’s large-scale military offensive, Operation Iron Wall, in the northern West Bank, which has forcibly displaced around 54,000 Palestinians since it was launched in January 2025.
The brief also accused Israeli authorities of having “chosen to turn a blind eye” to attacks by settlers that have displaced more than 6,200 Palestinians, including over 3,000 children. According to UN data, in 2026 alone there have been more than 1,600 settler attacks causing Palestinian casualties, property damage or both.
The brief also said that Israel has now imposed at least 940 checkpoints and movement obstacles, the highest level of checkpoints across the West Bank that the UN has recorded in two decades.
The Israeli military said these checkpoints were necessary to its “security activities” and added that a deeply divisive new billion-dollar 22-mile barrier it is building within the Jordan Valley – which rights groups say is severing Palestinians from their land – addresses a “clear security need”.
The Jordanian officials also accused Israel of a “systematic campaign” to weaken and collapse the PA by withholding around $7bn (£5.3bn) in Palestinian tax revenues, about 65 per cent of its income. It said it had also revoked large numbers of work permits for Palestinians employed in Israel, driving up unemployment.
Israel has in the past claimed that these funds, often collected as customs duties on Palestinian imports, are being used to “support terrorism”.
The brief said that the “extremist Israeli government” has approved 104 settlements since taking office in December 2022, and that at least 51,200 settler housing units have been advanced, approved or tendered since 2025.
Of greatest concern is E1, a long-stalled settlement project east of Jerusalem. The officials warned it “would dissect the West Bank, isolate East Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings, and fundamentally alter the geography on which the two-state solution is based”.
Israeli finance minister Smotrich has said plans to build more than 3,000 homes there will “bury the idea of a Palestinian state”.