The Guardian view on Israel and the West Bank: the other relentless assault upon Palestinians | Editorial

A campaign of ethnic cleansing and ‘tectonic’ new legal measures are killing the two-state solution to which other governments pay lip serviceProtecting archaeological sites. Preventing water theft. The streamlining of land purchases. If anyone doubted the real purpose of the motley collection of , Israel’s defence minister spelt it out: “We will continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state,” Israel Katz said in a joint statement with the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.While the world’s attention was fixed upon the annihilation in Gaza, settlers in the West Bank intensified their campaign of ethnic cleansing. More than 1,000 Palestinians since October 2023; a fifth of them were children. Many more have been driven from their homes by relentless harassment and the destruction of infrastructure, with across vast swathes of land.