As Canada recognizes a Palestinian state, some in the West Bank fear it's too late

Anas Samir, a 42-year-old father of four, cuts a dejected figure as he sits smoking outside the shop where he sells groceries in the Palestinian town of Al-Eizariya, just outside Jerusalem.

He has spent years watching bits of land Palestinians had hoped might one day be part of an independent state being lopped off in service of Israel's decades-old settlement enterprise.

The latest impacts him personally.

Last month, he and dozens of others along the main entrance to the town were notified by the Israeli military that demolition orders would soon be enforced.

"All this will go," he said, referring to plans recently approved by the Israeli government to expand the neighbouring Jewish settlement of Ma'ale Adumim in the direction of Jerusalem.

All settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories are considered illegal under international law. But the planned expansion of Ma'ale Adumim is especially controversial, not least because the Israeli government has boasted it will bury the idea of a Palestinian state — as countries including Canada recognized one on Sunday ahead of the United Nations General Assembly next week.

"It is a retaliation, in a way, to the announcement by Canada and other Western states," Palestinian lawyer Hiba Husseini said in an interview at her law offices in Ramallah, a city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

"[It] sends a strong message to the West: 'If you recognize the State of Palestine, it's really irrelevant for us on the ground. We do whatever we want to do because we control this entire land.'"  

'They're not willing to even talk about a 2-state solution'

The Ma'ale Adumim expansion will encompass a 12-square-kilometre patch of land known as E1 between the settlement and East Jerusalem.

Israel captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan in 1967, later annexing East Jerusalem, in a move not recognized by the international community.

Today, Ma'ale Adumim is one of the biggest Israeli settlements in the West Bank, home to some 40,000 residents.

Its mayor, Guy Yifrach, calls the decision to expand it to include E1 strategic.

"I hope one day there will be an arrangement that Ma'ale Adumim will be a part of Jerusalem and the state of Israel," he said in an interview with CBC News.

The Palestinians say the Israeli expansion will cut East Jerusalem off from the West Bank and further fragment Palestinian communities, making a contiguous state with East Jerusalem as its capital impossible.

The E1 plan has been on the books for decades, but in the past the international community — including the United States — had repeatedly convinced Israel to shelve it.

But the war in Gaza and support from the Trump administration have emboldened hardline Jewish nationalists in the cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly vowed to prevent a Palestinian state.

"Every decision, every rule, every step they make is designed to undermine the two-state solution," said Husseini, who was a member of the Palestinian negotiating team during the 1990s Oslo Peace talks, which eventually collapsed with each side blaming the other.

She and former Israeli negotiator Yossi Beilin are still working on new proposals for a two-state solution, a joint project they call the Holy Land Confederation.

"It's designed for a period past Mr. Netanyahu and the extreme right," she said. "Because, indeed, they're not willing to even talk about a two-state solution."

Despite criticism that recognition of a Palestinian state is merely symbolic, Husseini believes it's still important.

"It's a shift. And it's a statement that the world is no longer accepting that Israel is undermining the two-state solution, is undermining the resolution to this conflict."

Israel has given final approval to expand one of the largest Jewish settlements in the Occupied West Bank. The settlement’s mayor wants it to be part of Jerusalem whereas nearby Palestinians are worried about being cut off from East Jerusalem.

Palestinians fear it's too late

But many Palestinians fear the recognition comes too late, especially as Israel pushes ahead with what many call a de facto annexation of the West Bank.

There are already more than 700,000 Jewish settlers living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In May, Israel approved 22 new settlements.

Not all Israeli settlers are living on occupied land for ideological reasons. Some are there because housing is often cheaper and subsidized by the government.

But violence against Palestinians by the hardline settlers — who believe the land is theirs by God-given right — has increased dramatically since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel.

Between 2022 and 2024, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli settlers or forces increased from 154 to 498, according to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Israeli military has also displaced an estimated 40,000 Palestinians from their homes in decades-old refugee camps in towns including Nablus, Tulkarem and Jenin.

Israel has said it is targeting Palestinian militant groups.

Many Palestinians living in East Jerusalem or the West Bank are reluctant to talk about their own concerns given the ongoing devastation in Gaza and the killing of well over 60,000 Palestinians there, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

But the horror of what's happening in Gaza also heightens fears among West Bankers about what might be coming next for them, especially given the turbo-charged feel to Israeli settlement expansion.

An uncertain future 

Samir, the father of four in Al-Eizariya, has faced an uncertain future before. He lost his first business in Jerusalem's old city in the early 2000s, after Israel built a wall between Al Eizariya and Jerusalem.

Israel calls it a security barrier, built more than two decades ago during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, when Palestinian militants were launching a series of attacks inside Israel. Palestinians call it an apartheid wall and a land grab.

With his West Bank ID, Samir could no longer travel to Jerusalem for his work. Now, he says, he's lost everything all over again.

"We don't know where we have to go. It's over." 

WATCH | What it's like for Palestinians to live amid Israeli settlements:

Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank say Israeli settler tactics have become more extreme in the past year. Margaret Evans and a CBC News team went to the South Hebron Hills to better understand what it’s like to live in the shadow of these illegal settlements.

While he might welcome the decision of Canada and others to formally recognize a Palestinian state — conditional as it may be — he doesn't believe it will actually change anything for him or the Palestinian people.

"To Netanyahu, this is [greater] Israel, and so we can't live here," he said.

Another veteran negotiator for the Palestinians during the Oslo peace talks, Khalil Toufakji, says as things stand now, a viable Palestinian state is simply impossible.

"It's like Swiss cheese," he said describing the various cantons into which Palestinians have been divided by Israeli checkpoints, appropriated land, barriers and bypass roads reserved for settlers.

He does say a viable state could still be salvageable, though, through negotiation and land swaps, but only with serious engagement from the countries now prepared to recognize a Palestinian state.

Now, he says, not tomorrow.

Husseini, the lawyer in Ramallah, believes the international community must be prepared to introduce economic sanctions against Israel if it doesn't change course.

"When you are allowing hundreds of thousands and millions in Gaza to go hungry under the watchful eyes of the world, I think this requires some significant steps."

Husseini believes the only way forward for both Israelis and Palestinians is the two-state solution.

"The Palestinians are not going to go away. The Israelis are not going to go away. And we have to find a way," she said.

"It seems far-fetched today because the conflict has raged for so long and because the animosity is at a very heightened level and there is so much distrust. But we're hopeful. That's why we continue to work on it."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Margaret Evans, Senior International Correspondent

Margaret Evans is the senior international correspondent for CBC News based in the London bureau. A veteran conflict reporter, Evans has covered civil wars and strife in Angola, Chad and Sudan, as well as the myriad battlefields of the Middle East.