The Trump administration just gave a gigantic gift to extremists in the West Bank

Columnist
Dan Perry
April 30, 2025

President Trump’s pattern of foreign policy recklessness may be reaching a perilous new front: the West Bank.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s reported proposal to eliminate the U.S. Security Coordinator for the West Bank and Gaza — a position held by a three-star general charged with averting crises in one of the world’s most volatile regions — is no ordinary bureaucratic reshuffle. It is a gamble with lives, and an insult to logic and expertise that’s likely to further destabilize the West Bank at a time of already exceptional volatility.

Such a move, part of Rubio’s broader reorganization of the State Department, is a rejection of decades of institutional knowledge — one that exemplifies the risks of the administration’s populist war on professionals. When performative politics, cheap stunts and slogans about “efficiency” override sober, results-driven governance, there can be real costs.

For the West Bank, those consequences could be profound. The USSC advises, trains and helps equip Palestinian Authority security forces, which are essential in preventing chaos in areas under Palestinian civilian control. Further, the USSC facilitates coordination between the PA and the Israeli military, including intelligence-sharing and deconfliction efforts — a thankless but vital task in an environment where misunderstandings can quickly spiral into fatal escalation.

The USSC, currently Gen. Mike Fenzel — who helms a team of American and allied officers supported by NATO experts — is, in other words, not just another ceremonial liaison. The office is a vital instrument of stability in a region on the brink. In its work coordinating security between Israel and the PA, it helps ensure a degree of communication that has helped prevent escalations. Fenzel has direct access to top Israeli and Palestinian officials, and his briefings to Washington offer rare, real-time insight.

The terrain it operates in is almost ungovernable without such a mechanism, especially given the degree of hostility manifested by the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toward the PA.

The West Bank is currently a labyrinthine patchwork of PA-administered enclaves surrounded by Israeli-controlled territory, all connected by roads riddled with Israeli checkpoints and security infrastructure.

Also in the mix are the constantly growing Israeli settlements — some fully authorized, others illegal outposts, all of them considered unlawful by most other countries (although not by the Trump administration). Many are deep inside the occupied territory, and some are home to radical extremists who reject the most basic coexistence.

Settlers have gone on repeated rampages in Palestinian villages, involving arson, looting, and the killing of civilians. Since the current government came into power in late 2022, they’ve experienced something close to impunity in doing so — even though Israel’s own security chiefs have warned of the destabilizing impact of such lawlessness.

Meanwhile, the threat of Palestinian terrorism is tragically real. Armed cells, often tied to Hamas or Islamic Jihad, have carried out deadly attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers in the West Bank, particularly in the flashpoint towns of Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarm. In 2023 and 2024, these areas saw large-scale Israeli counterterrorism raids involving elite units and heavy weaponry. The PA has been too weak — politically and operationally — to rein in these groups alone.

That’s where the USSC comes in. By shoring up the PA’s capabilities, offering a channel to the Israeli side, and serving as a neutral broker during escalations, the USSC helps fill the gaps. Remove that infrastructure, and what remains is a vacuum — one that will be quickly occupied by militants, chaos and possibly war.

Israeli military officials uniformly value the position, and believe it has helped to keep a lid on potential unrest in the occupied West Bank, despite the cataclysm unfolding in Gaza, where Israel’s war on Hamas is reported to have killed about 50,000 people (perhaps a third of them militants). In the West Bank, meanwhile, hundreds have been killed in the past year and a half.

Eliminating this position at this time is akin to dousing a tinderbox with kerosene. And it is, of course, not an isolated mistake.

In part through the efforts of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, the administration has plans to slash some 15% of U.S.-based State Department staff and “consolidate” more than 100 foreign policy bureaus.

Human rights, women’s empowerment, and atrocity prevention offices are being dismantled or merged out of existence — senseless moves often justified with vague accusations of “wokeness.” A similar coordinator for Ukrainian atrocities is being axed. Offices that respond to global food insecurity and disinformation campaigns are being gutted.

The consequences for U.S. soft power are staggering, offering a monumental assist to rivals like Russia. Disastrously, the administration is also eviscerating USAID, with the vast majority of its congressionally approved programs slated for cancellation. These include efforts to support democratic development, independent media and post-conflict reconstruction — the very tools that prevent the need for military intervention later.

Removing the USSC in the West Bank will most immediately hurt Israelis and Palestinians. But the grand Trump administration design of which it is a part will ultimately hurt the United States. Rubio’s cuts mirror Trump’s tariffs — policies universally condemned by experts, but advanced anyway as political theater.

Whatever savings are to be had by cutting the USSC would be dwarfed by the cost of cleaning up the mess that will ensue should the West Bank explode in anger, as it very well might. Moreover, the USSC could be vital in the eventual post-war reconstruction of Gaza, possibly helping to train Palestinian forces to replace Hamas. The costs of giving up that possibility are also great.

Eliminating the role now amplifies the signal that horrified allies the world over have already received: The U.S. is no longer interested in being a useful player on the world stage, and with it the Middle East.

This is how superpowers lose influence: by becoming so hubristic that utter nonsense follows. Let’s hope it is not Israelis and Palestinians that pay the price of American folly.

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