When a ceasefire in Gaza was announced on January 15, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank were ecstatic that Israel’s devastating war over the besieged enclave was finally over.
However, the state of Israel Violence escalates rapidly in West Bank Local monitors and analysts said the move was an apparent move to formally annex more land.
The sudden increase in settler attacks and Israeli military operations has frightened Palestinians in the occupied territories, who believe they may now face the same violence suffered by their compatriots in Gaza. Israel has More than 46,900 Palestinians killed in Gaza Since war broke out in the enclave in October 2023.
“We looked at genocide This disaster has been going on in Gaza for 14 months and no one in the world has done anything to stop it, and some people here think we will suffer a similar fate,” Shadi, a journalist and human rights activist from Tulkarem Shady Abdullah said.
“We all know that we are worried that the situation in the West Bank could get worse,” he told Al Jazeera.
battlefield shift
a few hours later Gaza ceasefire Starting on January 19, Israel began setting up dozens of new checkpoints in the West Bank to prevent Palestinians from gathering and celebrating the release of political prisoners as part of a deal in exchange for Israeli prisoners held by Hamas .
Checkpoints also barred farmers from entering their fields and blocked entire cities such as Hebron and Bethlehem from civilians.
Israeli settlers then began expanding illegal outposts in the West Bank and attacking Palestinian villages. Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank illegal under international lawand many haphazardly constructed outposts even illegal under Israeli lawalthough often little is done to eliminate them and many later become formalized.
“The impact of violence is that it leads to direct or associated displacement, consistent with Israel’s goal of preventing the establishment of any Palestinian state on its soil,” said Tahani Mustafa, Israel-Palestine expert at the International Crisis Group.
Additionally, the Israeli army announced plans to launch major operations in the West Bank starting on January 21 Massive invasion of Jenin refugee campostensibly to root out armed groups. Israeli attacks on the West Bank predate the Gaza war, but As war breaks out, violence and intensity increase.
“The settler violence and incursions that we are seeing…are indicative of where we are going now,” Mustafa told Al Jazeera.
trade off?
The escalation in violence has led some to believe that new U.S. President Donald Trump has traded off with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to suspend the war in Gaza in exchange for intensifying aggression in the West Bank.
“The Gaza ceasefire — which looks more like a humanitarian ceasefire and a “hostage and prisoner trade” — comes at a price. Israel will never give up anything without paying a price, and I think given the Trump administration The type of (officials) we see in the West Bank,” Mustafa said.
Trump has given no indication of any deal with Netanyahu that would allow him to increase violence in the West Bank, but he has also refused to commit to a two-state solution and has nominated several figures who oppose Palestinian statehood to serve in his administration. Important positions.
The prospect of more crackdowns on Palestinian militants in the West Bank, a rise in illegal settlements and possibly even annexation appears to be motivating Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to stay in Netanyahu’s fragile government In the alliance, not out. and brought down the government as a way of protesting the ceasefire in Gaza.
Under Smotrich, Israel Quietly confiscating more land in the West Bank Last year’s total exceeded the previous 20 years combined, according to Peace Now, an Israeli nonprofit that monitors land grabbing.
Smotrich and the broader settler movement have long viewed the occupied West Bank as an integral part of “Greater Israel” and refer to the territory as Judea and Samaria.
Smotrich’s rapid annexation of the West Bank went largely unnoticed because of the larger crisis in Gaza, where, in addition to the massive massacre of Palestinians, nearly all of the pre-war 2.3 million people have been uprooted and displaced.
settler attack
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank now say settlers are stepping up attacks in coordination with Israeli forces to confiscate and seize more land.
January 20, Settler violence attacks two villages The northern West Bank, Funduq and Jinasfut, and further south to Masafer Yatta and the villages around Ramallah.
According to local human rights groups, settlers set fire to houses and cars and beat Palestinians under the full protection and surveillance of Israeli forces.
However, Gen. Avi Bruce, commander of the Israeli Army’s Central Command, said in a statement that any “violent disorder would endanger security and the army will not allow it.”
The attacks occurred during Trump’s term as U.S. president and were among his first actions as president. He lifted sanctions against groups and individuals The United States has previously viewed it as part of an “extremist settler movement.”
“The aims of the settlers are well known,” said Abbas Milam, executive director of the Palestinian Farmers’ Union. “They want to move Palestinians out of the West Bank and annex land to Israel and impose Israeli law.”
Ghassan Aleeyan, a Palestinian living in Bethlehem, expressed his frustration to Al Jazeera.
“What these people are doing is illegal, but they don’t care about international law, Palestinian law or Israeli law,” he told Al Jazeera. “They don’t even care about God’s law.”
Raid belongs to Jen
In early December, armed groups in Jenin began clashing with the Palestinian Authority (PA), the government created under the 1993 Oslo Accords.
The agreements launched a now-defunct peace process ostensibly aimed at establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied Palestinian territories with East Jerusalem as its capital.
A key element of the Oslo Accords is the requirement for the Palestinian Authority to root out armed groups and disarm them as part of its security coordination with Israel.
But as hopes for statehood fade and Israel consolidates its occupation, a number of neighborhood armed groups loosely linked to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas and even Fatah, the faction that controls the Palestinian Authority, have established a presence in Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank. appears in.
As the Palestinian Authority was unable to suppress armed groups in the Jenin refugee camp, Israel launched a large-scale operation on January 21, which has so far killed at least 10 people.
Local monitors told Al Jazeera that Israel justified its actions under the guise of supporting Israeli security and ensuring that an Oct. 7-style attack would not happen again, even though armed groups in the West Bank are far less capable and organized than Hamas in Gaza.
“We believe that Israel’s plan is to attack the northern West Bank, similar to the invasion of Palestinian refugee camps during the second intifada,” said Murad Jadallah, human rights monitor for Palestinian rights group al-Haq.
Israel occupied the Jenin refugee camp for 10 days during the second intifada in 2002, destroying about 400 homes and displacing about a quarter of the residents, according to the United Nations Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA).
The ICG’s Mustafa believes that Israel will launch more incursions and major military operations in the West Bank in the coming days in an attempt to suppress all forms of resistance.
“The battlefield is about to shift from Gaza to the West Bank,” she said.