Why the security situation in Israel and Palestine is likely to worsen

• Watch coverage in the ITV Lunchtime News as Israel 'withdraws troops' from the West Bank (Picture credit: AP)

So it looks like the latest spasm of violence in Jenin is over.

But it won’t be long until the next time, not least because there is no peace process to prevent it.

The interludes between the convulsions are becoming shorter as militant groups in Gaza and in the northern West Bank appear to take it in turns to respond to or to precipitate Israeli Defence Force attempts to weaken them.

The Israelis will claim they achieved their objectives and the freelance militant groups now in control in Jenin will claim they resisted and repelled the enemy. And so it goes on.

The security situation in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza is likely to worsen as Israel’s most right-wing government ever is committed to rapid settlement expansion on the West Bank.

More and more the Palestinians will see land they thought was earmarked for their state developed and occupied by nationalistic settlers emboldened by the fact that several of their own now have prominent positions in the Israeli cabinet.

The two-state solution is a figment of the international community’s imagination. 

It’s a diplomatic fiction, a polite conceit meant to convey the possibility that there is at least a plan to resolve the conflict.  But the truth is there isn’t one.

The Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority have never been further apart.  Washington’s influence over Jerusalem appears to be waning.

Extremism on both sides now controls the narrative and ensures the next spasm will be soon.

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