The West Bank Is About to Explode
While Israel faces unrest in Gaza and Lebanon, another front may be about to boil over. The West Bank is facing tension from Palestinians as well as Israeli settlers. This region threatens to become the most devastating front in Israel’s war on terror.
What is catching most international attention is so-called “settler violence.” Approximately 500,000 Israeli citizens live in the West Bank. These settlers, controversial even within Israel itself, regularly come into conflict with Palestinians. As the Trumpet has previously covered, many of the most high-profile reports of “settler violence” are greatly exaggerated and grossly manipulated by international figures to demonize Israel. Yet Israel’s own statistics suggest the settler community is becoming increasingly unruly.
Figures from Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, state the government recorded 660 instances of “nationalistic crime” against Palestinians in the West Bank between January and June. This is an increase of 63 percent compared to the same time frame in 2025. This is almost four incidents a day for half a year. “Nationalistic crime” against the Israel Defense Forces (idf) and other Israeli security reached 45 incidents between January and June, a 50 percent increase from last year.
Reportedly, the settlers are becoming so unruly that Israel’s cabinet enacted financial sanctions in March. A Channel 13 report claims Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the meeting even referred to the violence as a “metastasizing cancer.” If true, this would be one of Netanyahu’s harshest comments against a community that is normally among his support base.
Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank is nothing new. Anonymous sources leaking intimate comments should be viewed with some skepticism. But anecdotes like these suggest that the settler communities are at odds even with the Israeli government and military.
Two telling examples of this growing tension happened last November. The night of November 12 to 13, settlers torched a mosque in the West Bank and covered the building with graffiti. But the graffiti wasn’t against the Palestinians. It was in Hebrew and read in part: “We are not afraid of Avi Bluth.” Bluth is the idf general in charge of the West Bank.
On November 21, Bluth visited the mixed Jewish-Arab West Bank city of Hebron for a religious festival. Settlers mobbed Bluth and other officers, blocking pathways and calling him a “traitor.” Netanyahu’s office commented: “All violence directed against idf officers and soldiers must be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law.”
In other words, many settlers are viewing the idf with suspicion, almost as if it sides with the Palestinians rather than the settlers. A comparison could be made with the rivalry between the Ulster militias and the British government during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It appears this is even attracting Prime Minister Netanyahu’s attention—as he heads into an election where he needs settler votes.
‘All-Out War’
Increased conflict between settler communities and the idf is a cause for concern. But this is not the main threat coming from the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority (PA), the Arab government over the rest of the West Bank, now poses a credible threat to Israel.
According to the 1990s Oslo Accords, the PA is allowed to organize its own police force strong enough to reign in terrorist groups like Hamas. The Accords limited the PA police to 30,000 personnel armed with 4,000 rifles and 4,000 pistols.
Today, that force is 70,000-strong—double the number of Hamas terrorists Israel has killed in Gaza since 2023. This “police force” calls its personnel “soldiers” and undergoes military training. Its armaments include tens of thousands of rifles and pistols, hundreds of heavy machine guns, artillery, rpgs and more. Its units include snipers and parachutists.
One would think the West Bank is ridden with crime to necessitate such a “police force.” But according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the crime rate in the PA-controlled West Bank in 2024 was 1,335 offenses per 100,000 residents. That’s less than a quarter of Canada’s rate the same year.
A Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (jcfa) poll released September 7, which had a small sample size of 703 individuals, suggests 77 percent of Israelis fear the PA could launch its own October 7-style invasion of Israel. The same day, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he is taking the threat of a PA invasion seriously. He said he is preparing the idf for “an all-out war against senior officials and mechanisms of the Authority.”
The jcfa summarized in July: “There is no meaningful difference between the PA (controlled by Fatah) and Hamas. Both organizations embrace terrorism and both seek to destroy the State of Israel. In the absence of urgent and significant action to neutralize the danger posed by the PA security forces, [this Palestinian military buildup] could once again end in horrific slaughter.”
Prophetic Perspective
Any serious crisis in the West Bank could quickly spill into Israel proper. Major cities, including Jerusalem, could get hit fast. The Bible predicts such a crisis is coming soon. It also shows what will be the main cause.
Hosea 5:13 reads: “When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb: yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound.” “Ephraim” is a prophetic term for modern Britain. (Request a free copy of The United States and Britain in Prophecy for more information.) “Judah” refers to the Jewish state of Israel. Assyria is modern Germany.
The prophecy refers to Judah having a “wound” that requires international help. Strong’s Concordance defines the word: “in the sense of binding up: a bandage, i.e. remedy ….” Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon defines it as “the pressing together, binding up of a wound; hence used figuratively of a remedy applied to the wounds of the state ….”
Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes in Jerusalem in Prophecy:
In other words, the remedy IS the wound! … Is the peace pact with the Arabs the Israeli wound that God refers to in Hosea 5:13? There would have been no peace pact if Judah would have trusted God instead of men. The word wound doesn’t necessarily itself refer to some violent act, but it will undoubtedly lead to violence.
A related prophecy is in Zechariah 14:1-2. The time frame is the “day of the Lord” (verse 1), or the time right before the Second Coming of Christ. Verse 2 reads: “For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity ….” Mr. Flurry continues:
Today the Arabs live in roughly one half of Jerusalem. They just don’t control it—yet. When such an attack occurs, the Jews couldn’t effectively drop bombs, especially nuclear bombs, on one half of their own city.
Looking at the ongoing violence in Jerusalem today—the absolute inability of the involved parties to solve things by peaceful means—we can easily see how one half of Jerusalem shall be taken captive in the very near future. The present violence is an embryo that is about to explode into much greater violence.
The West Bank is ready for this explosion. The PA has the forces to accomplish what Hamas three years ago could have only dreamed of. The idf is facing tension even from Israelis themselves. Nothing good can come from this volatile cocktail.
To learn more, request a free copy of Jerusalem in Prophecy.