A report alleges Israeli soldiers and settlers are using sexual assault and gendered violence to force Palestinians out of the West Bank.

The political objective is not the mere maintenance of security or the policing of a disputed border. The political objective is the permanent alteration of the demographic and territorial reality of the West Bank to ensure that the contested land becomes an indisputable fact of sovereignty. The strategy follows from this distinction. If the goal were simply security, one would seek stability through predictable, regulated, and legally defensible control. However, the reported use of gendered violence and sexual assault suggests a strategy of displacement - a method designed to break the will of the population and render the territory uninhabitable for the existing inhabitants, thereby achieving a territorial objective through the erosion of the adversary’s social fabric.

In any such undertaking, friction is the inevitable and corrosive force. Here, the friction manifests in the breakdown of the distinction between the military instrument and the civilian actor. When the actions of soldiers and settlers become indistinguishable in their impact, the clarity of command dissolves. This is the accumulation of small, horrific imperfections: a single incident of assault, a localized act of intimidation, a reported disruption of schooling. Individually, these may appear as isolated breaches of discipline or law, but collectively, they create a thick, suffocating fog that obscures the political legitimacy of the state’s presence. This friction does not merely degrade the execution of a plan; it creates a secondary, unintended conflict with the international community and the legal frameworks that govern modern warfare and occupation. The plan assumes that territory can be cleared, but it fails to account for the fact that every act of violence creates a new layer of resistance and a new dimension of international scrutiny.

The centre of gravity in this conflict is not the physical presence of the Palestinian population, nor is it the military hardware of the Israeli defense forces. The centre of gravity is the international and legal legitimacy that sustains the political will to maintain the occupation. If the political objective is territorial permanence, then the strategy of displacement via violence is a direct assault on this centre of gravity. By utilizing methods that violate the most fundamental norms of human conduct, the actors involved are inadvertently striking the very foundation of their own political position. To break the legitimacy of the occupying power is to render the territorial gains unsustainable, regardless of how much land is physically held. If the international community or the legal institutions of the world conclude that the cost of the occupation is the abandonment of fundamental human rights, the political objective of permanent sovereignty becomes an impossibility.

We must also consider the third element of the trinity: the passion of the people. While the rational political objective seeks territorial gain, and the instrumental military/settler actions seek displacement, the emotional response of the Palestinian population - the rage, the trauma, and the profound sense of injustice - serves as a powerful counter-force. This passion is the engine of long-term resistance. The reported violence against women and girls is an attempt to destroy the future of the community, yet such acts often serve to galvanize the very spirit they seek to crush. This is the moment where the strategy becomes self-defeating. The more the instrumental force attempts to achieve its goal through terror, the more it fuels the emotional commitment of the adversary, thereby strengthening the very resistance it intended to dissolve.

The fog of war here is not a lack of information, but a surplus of conflicting narratives and the inherent difficulty in verifying the scale of atrocities in a contested zone. We cannot know with absolute certainty the precise pattern or the total number of these incidents, nor can we know exactly how much displacement has been achieved through these specific means. However, we can observe the strategic trajectory. The strategy is currently operating in a way that prioritizes immediate, tactical displacement at the expense of long-term, political sustainability. It is a gamble that assumes the world will look away from the methods used to achieve the ends.

The strategic diagnosis is this: the current course of action is a high-stakes attempt to achieve a permanent territorial result through the use of highly volatile, non-traditional instruments of coercion. While these instruments may succeed in the short-term displacement of individuals, they are simultaneously undermining the centre of gravity - the political legitimacy required to hold that territory. The strategy is effectively trading the long-term viability of the state’s political objectives for a short-term, tactical advantage in land control. It is a movement toward a state of permanent, unmanageable friction.