Why Israel Will Never Leave the West Bank

Topographical model of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

In the noise of campus discourse, so much is lost. Between the carefully engineered slogans and the finite word counts of Instagram posts and Twitter threads, nuance is the first casualty. Columbia students chant “from the river to the sea,” but how many of us actually have a visceral understanding of the terrain we are invoking? While much of the discourse around the West Bank rightly centers on Jewish settlements and the controversies around the religious, historical, and ideological claims tied to them, I want to momentarily set those factors aside. These dimensions are deeply significant and deserve thoughtful discussion, but for the purposes of this article, I want to focus on a dynamic that receives far less attention in mainstream debates: the strategic and military implications of the West Bank’s geography and topography. These implications complicate the situation to such a degree that they force even the most settlement-critical Israeli politicians and liberal scholars to concede a hard truth: a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank is not just unlikely, it may be strategically and practically untenable.

At Israel’s narrowest point, which is located near Netanya, the country’s width measures approximately 8.7 miles—the kind of distance a fit runner could cross before breakfast. This creates what military strategists call a “strategic chokepoint,” as short-range rockets could reach Israeli population centers and critical infrastructure with little to no advance notice. The threat of military aggression is amplified by the density of Israel’s coastal plain that parallels the West Bank, which is home to nearly 70 percent of the country’s population, as well as major economic and industrial centers such as Tel Aviv, Herzliya, and Netanya. Ben Gurion International Airport is only 6.2 miles away from the Green line, the armistice line of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and Jerusalem is surrounded on three sides by the West Bank. Due to the positioning and proximity of the West Bank to the coastal plain, large percentages of Israel’s population are at risk in ways that cannot be said about other territories acquired during the Six-Day War in 1967. Regarding the other territories, the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs notes, “Military losses in these areas would seriously undermine Israeli security, but the State of Israel would continue to exist. Incapacitating and overrunning the coastal plain [via the West Bank] would terminate Israel’s very existence.” 

To make Israeli security strategists even more nervous, the West Bank, with its mountainous topography, is much higher than Israel’s coastal plain. To provide some perspective, the average elevation of a hill or highland in the West Bank can range from 2300 to 3,000 feet above sea level (roughly the height of two to three Empire State Buildings). Israel’s populated core—Tel Aviv, Netanya, and Herzliya—sit approximately at sea level just West of the West Bank. Sun Tzu, the great Chinese military strategist, once said, “He who occupies the high ground…will fight to advantage.” Therefore, it is no surprise that military strategists would be eager to engage in any security measure deemed necessary to secure this unique geographical dynamic, considering the elevation disparity and proximity give whoever controls the West Bank a commanding view and fire advantage that could “dominate the coastal lowlands.” Currently, because Israel controls the West Bank’s airspace and high points, it can station early-warning radar there and intercept threats from within and farther out. If Israel lost that high ground, hostile planes or drones coming from the east would appear on Israeli radar practically over the Israeli heartland with almost no warning. Not to mention, in the case of a coordinated attack, any hostile force with access to the West Bank’s western ridgeline could potentially sever the country into northern and southern segments. Such a division would disrupt critical supply lines, hampering the movement of troops, equipment, and emergency services between regions. 

This concern is far from theoretical. Since the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, Israel has faced tens of thousands of rocket and mortar attacks from hostile entities in the coastal territory. In fact, as I write this, news has just broken that the Houthis, an Iranian proxy based in Yemen, have struck near Ben Gurion Airport, injuring eight people. To an Israeli security planner, the thought of a similarly hostile force in the West Bank, which is larger and more strategically positioned than Gaza and much closer than Yemen, is deeply alarming. In this vein, even Yitzchak Rabin, widely considered one of Israel’s most sympathetic Prime Ministers, insisted in his final Knesset speech in 1995 that Israel must retain control of the Jordan Valley “in the broadest meaning of the term.” Even leaders of the opposition in Israel, Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, who have consistently championed a two-state solution and demand the resumption of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, maintain that a military presence in the West Bank and a unified Jerusalem are essential for national security. They argue that “it is important to find a solution without compromising our security needs and the safety of our citizens.” These politicians, who many believe represent the center-left, have called for the strengthening of settlement blocs and security infrastructure in both the West Bank and Golan Heights, asserting that these are security measures “we will never withdraw from.”

Ultimately, government officials and military strategists from all sides of the political spectrum are driven by fear, and rightfully so. It is not a coincidence that Israel has built an entire system of red-alerts throughout its cities to alert citizens of incoming threats. Israelis are terrified of what might happen if a hostile entity, aided by Tehran's ongoing efforts to smuggle weapons into the West Bank, were to one day launch rockets or stage a raid from the Western hilltops onto Israel proper. Moreover, it is well documented that when nations are scared, they often double down on their control.

Despite the depth of the security dilemma, there have been serious attempts to propose creative security alternatives that might break the stalemate between Israeli security assurance and the Palestinian right to self-determination. A prominent idea that was proposed by Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority, urged for an international force, such as NATO troops, to patrol a future Palestinian state in the West Bank. “We will be demilitarized,” Abbas told the New York Times in 2014 in an attempt to reassure Israel that no heavy weapons or infiltrators would flood the West Bank. The United Nations proposed a similar concept, including demilitarized zones or electronic early-warning systems handed over to international monitors, to allow Israel to pull back without abandoning its security. 

However, many Israeli officials, strategists, and even the public see this as unrealistic. The logic is as follows: Why would Israel delegate its security to a third-party force when it can rely on its own military, which is already deeply familiar with the region’s terrain, threats, and strategic complexities? This skepticism is backed by precedent. In 1967, the United Nations Emergency Force withdrew from Sinai at Egypt’s request, removing what was supposed to be a neutral buffer and contributing to the outbreak of the Six-Day War. More recently, United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in southern Lebanon have struggled to prevent Hezbollah from rearming and entrenching itself along Israel’s northern border. These failures reinforce a core tenet of Israeli strategic thinking that could be dated back to 1967 or even the beginning of Jewish history: “There is no one to depend on but ourselves.” 

In examining the strategic and military dynamic of the West Bank through its geography, it becomes starkly clear that Israeli security planners operate under legitimate and tangible concerns. The close proximity, elevated terrain, and long history of failed international guarantees shape a defensive posture that prioritizes maintaining control for the sake of safety and security. This military logic, however, does not exist in a vacuum. It directly affects the reality for Palestinians living in the West Bank through restrictions on movement via checkpoints and surveillance, and a constant military presence. These conditions, according to the testimonies of my Palestinian peers at Tel Aviv University, drastically deepen resentment and frustration, inflaming the same tensions Israel seeks to contain. 

All of this brings us back to campus, where, at Columbia specifically, students tend to discuss the topic on purely moralistic and historical terms. While it is important to consider these factors, no true progress will occur on campus, or anywhere, if stakeholders and students do not also look at the issue pragmatically—understanding not only what should be, but why things are the way they are. Highlighting the Israeli security perspective in the West Bank does not diminish other extremely vital dimensions of the conflict, but rather invites us to acknowledge the full complexity of the security dilemma. In doing so, we allow space for more creative solutions and layered discussions, especially as an increasingly informed public are beginning to demand nuance over slogans.

Nicole Wizman (CU ’26) is a columnist from Los Angeles, California. She studies political science and psychology, and is interested in national security, Middle East policy, and legal reform. She can be reached at nw2510@columbia.edu.