As the saying goes, “Out of sight, out of mind.” The daily terror attacks that once dominated the headlines have been eclipsed by the war in Iran, Gaza, and the North. Israelis go about their lives in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and the coastal cities, while just a few kilometers away, in the hills of Judea and Samaria, an enemy society simmers, armed, indoctrinated, and waiting.
The truth is painful but undeniable. Palestinians in the West Bank are not a partner for peace. They are an enemy society bent on destroying the Jewish state. This is not rhetoric; it is borne out by cold, hard facts. Recent polls from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research show that even today, a majority of Palestinians in the West Bank, 59%, still believe Hamas’s October 7 massacre was “the right decision.” Support for Hamas itself hovers around 32 percent in the West Bank, and backing for armed struggle against Israel remains disturbingly high.
Thousands of attacks
The numbers on Palestinian terrorist activity are even more concerning. In the five years leading up to and including the post-October 7 surge, Israeli security agencies recorded thousands of attacks originating from the West Bank, including shootings, stabbings, firebombs, and vehicular rammings. In 2022 alone, there were 305 shooting attacks, a tripling from the previous year. Even as overall numbers have fluctuated with IDF operations, the intent has never wavered. These are not isolated incidents by “lone wolves.” They reflect a society steeped in hatred.
Palestinian hatred of Israelis is systematically taught. Year after year, reports from IMPACT-se, which monitors textbooks across the Middle East for compliance with UNESCO standards of peace and tolerance, document the same pattern in Palestinian Authority schools. Increasing glorification of jihad and martyrdom, erasure of Israel from maps, antisemitic stereotypes that paint Jews as deceitful enemies, and the framing of the conflict as a religious war with no possibility of compromise.
Even the 2025–2026 curriculum shows no meaningful change. Math problems count “martyrs.” History lessons lionize terrorists. Peace is never presented as desirable. Children are raised not to build a state, but to destroy one.
Worse, Palestinians have consistently chosen victimhood over opportunity. Billions in international aid have flowed in, yet the priority has not been building hospitals, schools, or an economy. It has been pay-for-slay pensions for terrorists, incitement in the media, and a relentless diplomatic campaign to delegitimize Israel. Polls consistently show that the “Palestine question,” meaning the fight against Israel, ranks higher than economic development or stability.
They rejected generous peace offers in 2000 and 2008. They chose terror over statehood. This is not a failure of leadership alone; it is a societal choice.
Now the clock is ticking. Mahmoud Abbas is 90 years old. He has clung to power for two decades without elections. There is no clear, accepted heir apparent. When he dies, and it will be soon, the power vacuum will be immediate and explosive. The Palestinian Authority’s institutions will fracture. Factions will fight for control. Chaos will follow. And unlike Hamas in Gaza, the PA has an estimated 75,000 armed police and security officers already embedded throughout the West Bank.
That is more fighters than Hamas had on October 7. There is no border fence to breach, no perimeter to guard. They are already here, inside our communities, living among us and beside us.
For years, Palestinians comforted themselves with the fantasy that the “axis of resistance,” Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, would do the job for them. They believed proxies would deliver Israel’s destruction. That illusion has shattered. Iran is weakened, Hezbollah battered, Hamas decimated. The realization has dawned that if Israel is to be destroyed, it will be up to them. They have never accepted a Jewish state within any borders. Diplomatic maneuvering was always a tactic, never a goal. Violence is the default.
This is not new. As the 100th anniversary of the 1929 Hebron massacre approaches, we would do well to remember what Yardena Schwartz so powerfully documented in her book Ghosts of a Holy War. In 1929, long before there was a State of Israel, before “occupation,” before settlements, Arabs in Hebron slaughtered 67 of their Jewish neighbors, including men, women, and children, amid false rumors of Jewish attacks on Al-Aqsa.
Same forces of ‘holy’ war
The same forces of “holy” war, incitement, and absolute rejection of Jewish life echo directly on October 7. They have never gone away. They block peace today as they did a century ago.
Israelis must wake up. There is no chance of a peace deal with a society raised on this curriculum, rewarded for this violence, and led by leaders who have never prepared their people for compromise. Palestinians will soon give up hope that outsiders will finish the job. When that happens, they will return to what they have done since 1929: massacre their Jewish neighbors.
The settlements will be the first target. Then the attacks will spread to Jerusalem. Then throughout Israel. The only way to break the cycle is to change our own mindset. We must annex Judea and Samaria. This is not about “settlements” versus “Palestinians.” It is about recognizing reality: this land is ours, historically, legally, and morally.
Annexation will force Israelis to confront the threat next door instead of pretending it is temporary. It will strengthen security by removing the fiction of a “two-state solution” that only incentivizes terror.
We cannot afford another October 7 massacre. Complacency is a luxury we no longer have. The next war is coming to the West Bank unless we act now. Annexation is not just policy; it is security. It is the only way to prevent the ghosts of 1929 and the horrors of October 7 from rising again.
The writer is a certified interfaith hospice chaplain in Jerusalem and the mayor of Mitzpe Yeriho.
