The Israeli military said two soldiers had been killed, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to launch a major offensive in the Israeli-occupied territory.
Page A220From§Eachthe morning edition — 23 October 2026
ONE WORD, TWICE
Unauthorized settler outposts and the Palestinian Authority receive the same verdict from Netanyahu's government: dismantlement.
As it ran on the front
Do I know what that word means? I do. I've known since September, and that's exactly the trouble — the man using it hasn't learned anything new since then, he's just pointed it somewhere else.
Write this down, I keep telling myself. September 7th: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders what the wire service calls the "dismantlement" of unauthorized settler outposts in the West Bank. Structures. Plywood, mostly, I'd guess, though I don't have the blueprints — buildings put up without a permit, no inspector's signature, nothing with a foundation the government downtown ever agreed to. Just a second, here's the quote — Washington Examiner, September 7th: Netanyahu "ordered unauthorized West Bank settler outposts to be dismantled."…
…(cont) Forty-six days later — October 23rd, today's paper — Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says the Palestinian Authority should be dismantled too. Same word. Different noun entirely. One was a shed with no permit. The other is the government that runs the lives of the people living under occupation — I don't have a count for how many of them there are, and I'm not going to guess one, but the word doesn't ask how many. It just asks what's left standing when the crew shows up.
I've got a shed of my own out back, stood there thirty-one years without a county permit, and my neighbor brings it up at the fence about twice a summer like it's on his calendar. If the zoning board ever used that word on it, I'd know exactly what comes next — a crew, a crowbar, a dumpster, done by Thursday. That's what the word means when it's pointed at plywood.
But Smotrich isn't pointing it at plywood. He's pointing it at an Authority — an office, a police force, a payroll, the outfit that issues the paperwork for the people who live there. You don't send a crowbar for that. The morgue's been filling in what gets sent instead all month: B'Tselem calls the whole pattern "The Elimination Project," Amnesty counted fifteen land confiscation orders in July alone, twenty hectares, and not one of those got the demolition word attached to it when it happened. That word was saved for something else.
I keep a toolbox in the garage, metric bolts on one side, standard on the other, and I've learned the hard way not to reach for the wrong size twice — stripped one clean trying.
His number, not mine; he's the one who reached for it. I'm not asking what's unprecedented about a military operation. I'm asking why the same prime minister had a demolition word for an illegal shed in September, and his own finance minister has the identical word for a government in October.
Oh — one more thing, before you go. That word from September, the one for plywood with no permit, nothing downtown ever signed off on — it's the same one his finance minister is using now for the Authority that governs the people under occupation. Forty-six days between the two sentences. I wrote down the first one and I wrote down the second one, and I keep checking they're not a typo. Is it the same word in both places — dismantled?
“Watch the sequence: Netanyahu orders the illegal outposts dismantled, and weeks later his own finance minister wants the actual Palestinian government dismantled, same word both times. That's not enforcing a permit code, that's deciding what counts as legitimate whenever it's convenient, because nobody with power tells this government no. The shed came down in September; this time it's the only government the people living under occupation have.”
“This is about security — two IDF soldiers were killed, and the lockdown is the response, not some annexation plot. The outpost order back in September was Netanyahu reining in settlers, proof he's not just rubber-stamping the far right — so wait, why is that same government now using "dismantle" on the actual Palestinian Authority? That doesn't — did I just make the other guy's point for him?”
The receipts
ISRAEL vowed to “lock down” the entire occupied West Bank of Palestine today after a shootout that left two Israeli soldiers and two Palestinians dead. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had reviewed a “very extensive operation in the West Bank that will be unprecedented since 1967,”
The visit came amid discussions between the US and Israel about a renewed assault on Iran.
Israel locked down the West Bank after two Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed and three wounded by two Palestinian gunmen. On Friday, two Palestinian gunmen armed with an M16 rifle and a handgun, whom Israeli authorities alleged were members of Hamas, opened fire at an IDF position near the city of Hebron, triggering a […]
Smotrich said the Palestinian Authority should be “dismantled” and called for increased demolition of Palestinian homes.
· Netanyahu orders dismantlement of West Bank settler outposts: Report from the morgue, 7 Sep 2026
· Battle Over Illegal E1 Settlement in Occupied West Bank Escalates a Month Before Israeli Election from the morgue, 27 Sep 2026
· "The Elimination Project": Israel's Systematic Dismantling of Palestinian Life in West Bank: B'Tselem from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
· Amnesty Warns Israel Is 'Brazenly Expanding Its Annexation Agenda' in Occupied West Bank from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.