On Sunday, Britain joined Canada, Australia and Portugal in recognising Palestinian statehood. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the move a “huge reward for terrorism”, while far-Right ministers in his coalition floated the idea of annexing parts of the West Bank in response. This provocative step, however, risks profound military repercussions, transforming a simmering occupation into a full-scale insurgency at a time when the Israeli military is already stretched. On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump reportedly told Arab leaders that he would not permit this course of action.

This week, Economy Minister Nir Barkat — also of Netanyahu’s Likud party — wrote on X that “our real answer should be to dissolve the Palestinian Authority [and] apply sovereignty to Judea and Samaria.” Until October 2024, only a third of Israelis supported this position. But as of March this year, the figure had risen to 47%, according to the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI).

Annexation, potentially starting with Area C as set out in the Oslo Accords (60% of the West Bank), would formalise Israeli law over settlements, removing Palestinian governance and enabling unrestricted settlement expansion. The immediate fallout could lead to intensified attacks from Palestinian militants. Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives in the West Bank, numbering in the thousands, could coordinate with those remaining in Gaza, launching rockets or ambushes from the Jenin and Nablus refugee camps. These areas are already militarised, with 40% of Jenin now an Israeli “military zone”. Israeli group Peace Now reports a surge in settler violence incidents since the war began almost two years ago, fuelling Palestinian recruitment for armed resistance.

Should Netanyahu order any annexation of the West Bank, Israel’s Defence Forces will be spread thinly across a 2,300-square-kilometre front, far larger than Gaza’s 365-square-kilometre area. Not only would this embolden the most extreme armed groups — potentially collapsing the fragile Palestinian Authority and ushering in a vacuum of governance — but it would give the IDF duties it could not possibly carry out. For example, assuming quasi-governing responsibilities over a hostile population would effectively compel soldiers to become administrators, police, and occupation enforcers, responsible for maintaining law and order, protecting settlements, and countering insurgents while navigating civilian unrest. Quite apart from what it would mean for Palestinians under occupation, annexation is unrealistic for an army heavily reliant on reservists who need to return to their normal, pre-war lives.

This means confronting guerrilla attacks in towns and villages with populations hostile to Israeli presence. The risk of ambushes, Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), and infiltration attempts from densely populated urban areas makes traditional military tactics difficult, while the sheer number of Palestinians — over 2.7 million in the West Bank — would require a constant, resource-intensive security presence. The IDF would face legal and moral dilemmas like those faced in Gaza: civilian casualties provoke international condemnation, but restraint emboldens militants.

And then there is regional and global diplomacy to consider. Jordan has warned that annexation endangers peace treaties. The UAE, a key Abraham Accords partner, labelled it a “red line”, and Saudi Arabia has threatened to collapse normalisation talks if Israel takes control of the West Bank. This would compromise Israel’s security, potentially leading to the closing of airspace, halting intelligence sharing, and emboldening Iran-backed proxies such as Hezbollah or the Houthis. Annexation would likely deepen Israel’s diplomatic isolation, inviting sanctions or arms embargoes when Tel Aviv ought to be re-engaging its receptive neighbours.

Although Israeli control in the West Bank has expanded since the October 7 attacks, annexation still may not happen. Unlike those in the far-Right of his coalition, Netanyahu is alarmed by the effect this would have on Israel’s relations with allies, which are imperative to the country’s security.

Ultimately, annexation as retaliation for Western countries recognising the state of Palestine would be disastrous. It offers no military victory, only perpetual conflict. Israel’s security hinges on restraint, diplomacy, and limited military operations. It must assure that the West Bank doesn’t become another Gaza: a fortress of resentment fuelling jihad.

---

Dr Limor Simhony Philpott is a writer and researcher focusing on antisemitism, extremism and defence.

limorsimhony

---

China is trying to catch up with America on artificial intelligence. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Zhipu AI — one of China’s six “AI tiger” LLMs — has released a new model that can rival leading US systems, including Anthropic’s Mythos, in cybersecurity tasks such as pinpointing security bugs. While this marks a milestone in China’s drive to catch up with Western AI capabilities, strong performance on a single benchmark does not mean it has taken the lead. Chinese models still lag behind their Western counterparts in broader capabilities, such as autonomous operation. Skepticism is therefore warranted before resorting to hysterical conclusions, but complacency about the geopolitical implications of China’s AI advances would be an even greater mistake.

On the infrastructure side, Chinese AI is still constrained by access to advanced chips, with American labs way ahead in computing capacity as well as investment. Analysis from earlier this year suggests that Chinese models are likely to be at least a few months behind those in the US. But they are still continuing to make progress, or that the geopolitical importance of AI will be decided only by whose LLM has ventured deeper into the technological frontier. The practical applications of AI, countries’ to capture foreign markets, and the application of AI into the real economy will matter just as much.

Here, China may hold an advantage. As with its dominance across many critical supply chains, Beijing may not need to produce the most advanced AI systems — only those that are affordable and widely deployable. In doing so, it could consolidate global influence by supplying functional, low-cost AI at scale.

Beijing seems to be pursuing exactly that path, developing an AI “open-source” strategy that offers affordable, widely available AI models for companies and individuals to use and modify as they wish. The production of the DeepSeek AI model, which matched the performance of Silicon Valley tools such as ChatGPT at a fraction of the cost for users, created goodwill among Chinese models with developers.

The four most popular models on OpenRouter, an AI hardware platform for developers, are now all Chinese. The goal for China is not only to win the frontier-model race, but to make its systems the default layer of AI adoption across industries and global markets. For most economies, the choice is increasingly between an affordable tool they can deploy now and a more robust one that may be out of reach.

And while the countries adopting Chinese models may be exposed to political pressure and cyber threats from Beijing, safer and more capable alternatives matter little if they are unaffordable. American AI companies are already under pressure to monetize products whose operating costs are rising. If Chinese open-source models become the cheap default for startups, universities, governments and businesses across the developing world, then America’s AI lead will be eroded from below.

Perhaps more concerning for America in the long run is how AI can give Chinese manufacturing even more strength, through the ongoing integration of AI as a general-purpose technology. China’s new Five-Year Plan mentioned AI more than 50 times and includes an “AI+” action plan aimed at spreading AI across the economy.

Beijing has been pioneering automation of its critical infrastructure for years, with promising recent results in increasing warplane production capacity. In that regard, China’s open-model strategy and manufacturing dominance will reinforce each other. Cheap, adaptable models accelerate deployment across the real economy while those deployments generate real-world data and use cases that can feed back into further model improvement.

The United States should not dismiss the importance of its lead in the AI race. That lead worries Beijing, not least because a more automated Chinese economy would also become more vulnerable to AI-generated cyber threats. But nor should Washington assume that China cannot catch up with American capabilities over time.

This AI competition represents part of a broader struggle over tech supply chains and geopolitical influence. Decisions over whether to adopt US or Chinese models could produce a more fragmented global reality, with different regions relying on different cloud providers, chips and security structures. The result will likely be a global economy which is divided into competing spheres, rather than one which produces a single winner.

---

Miquel Vila is a political and geopolitical risk consultant focusing on industrial strategy, critical infrastructure and global supply chains.

miquelvilam

---