‘The battlefield is about to change’: West Bank braces for rising violence Israel-Palestine conflict news

When the Gaza ceasefire was announced on January 15, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank were overjoyed that Israel’s devastating war on the besieged territory would finally end.

However, Israeli state violence has escalated sharply throughout the West Bank, in what local monitors and analysts describe as an apparent attempt to formally annex more land.

The sudden increase in settler attacks and Israeli military operations has frightened Palestinians in the occupied territory, who believe they may now face the same violence as their countrymen and women in Gaza. Israel has killed more than 46,900 Palestinians in Gaza since the war over the enclave began in October 2023.

“We watched a massacre in Gaza for 14 months and no one in the world did anything to stop it, and some people here think we will suffer the same fate,” said Shadi Abdullah, a journalist and human rights activist from Tulkarem. “

“All we know is that we fear that the situation in the West Bank could get much worse,” he told Al Jazeera.

The battlefield is changing

Hours after the Gaza ceasefire began on January 19, Israel began building dozens of new checkpoints in the West Bank to prevent Palestinians from gathering and celebrating the release of political prisoners, known as Israeli detainees held by Hamas. In return he was let go. deal.

Checkpoints also prevented farmers from accessing their fields and sealed off entire cities such as Hebron and Bethlehem to civilians.

Israeli settlers then began expanding illegal outposts in the West Bank and attacking Palestinian villages. Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law, and many haphazardly constructed checkpoints are also illegal under Israeli law, although often little is done to remove them, and many are later formalized.

“The implication of the violence is that it leads to direct or associated displacement and is consistent with Israel’s objective of preventing any Palestinian state on its land,” said Tahani Mustafa, an Israel-Palestine expert at the International Crisis Group.

In addition, the Israeli army announced plans to carry out major operations in the West Bank, starting with a major incursion into the Jenin camp on 21 January, apparently to root out armed groups. Israeli raids on the West Bank occurred before the war on Gaza, but increased in violence and intensity with the beginning of the war.

“The settler violence and incursions that we are seeing… are an indicator of where we are headed now,” Mustafa told Al Jazeera.

exchange?

The increase in violence has led some to believe that new United States President Donald Trump has struck a deal with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the war on Gaza in exchange for increasing aggression in the West Bank.

“The ceasefire in Gaza – which looks like a humanitarian pause and a “trade of hostages and prisoners” – comes with a price. Israel never gives up anything without paying a price, and I think Trump Given the kind of administration (officials) is made up of, we are seeing this in the West Bank.

Trump has not indicated that he has any kind of agreement with Netanyahu to allow violence to escalate in the West Bank, but he has also refused to commit to a two-state solution, and several figures Has nominated those who oppose Palestinian statehood to key positions in his administration.

It appears that the increased crackdown on Palestinian militias in the West Bank, as well as the growth of illegal settlements and even the prospect of possible annexation, have prompted Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to join Netanyahu’s weak coalition rather than pull out. Are encouraged to remain in. and toppling the government in Gaza as a way of protesting the ceasefire.

Under Smotrich, Israel has quietly seized more land in the West Bank in the past year than in the previous 20 years, according to Peace Now, an Israeli nonprofit that monitors land grabs.

Both Smotrich and the broader settler movement have long viewed the occupied West Bank as an integral part of “Greater Israel”, and refer to the region as Judea and Samaria.

Smotrich’s rapid occupation of the West Bank did not go unnoticed because of the much larger crisis in Gaza, where, in addition to the mass murder of Palestinians, almost the entire pre-war population of 2.3 million people was uprooted and displaced .

settler attacks

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank now say settlers are increasing attacks in coordination with the Israeli military to seize and annex more land.

On 20 January, settlers violently attacked two villages in the northern West Bank, Funduk and Jinasfut, as well as villages in the south around Masfar Yatta and Ramallah.

According to local rights groups, residents set fire to homes and cars and beat Palestinians under the full protection and surveillance of Israeli forces.

However, General Avi Bluth, head of the Israeli army’s Central Command, said in a statement that any “violent rioting harms security and the army will not allow it”.

The attacks occurred as Trump was sworn in as US President – ​​in one of his first acts as president he reversed sanctions on groups and individuals the US had previously deemed part of an “extremist settler movement”. .

“The settlers’ objective is known,” said Abbas Milhem, executive director of the Palestinian Farmers Union. “They want to move Palestinians out of the West Bank and annex the land to Israel and impose Israeli law.”

Ghassan Alian, a Palestinian who lives in Bethlehem, expressed his frustration to Al Jazeera.

“What these people are doing is illegal, but they have no regard for international law, Palestinian law or Israeli law,” he told Al Jazeera. “They don’t even care about God’s law.”

Raid on Jenin

In early December, armed groups in Jenin began clashing with the Palestinian Authority (PA), an administration created as a result of the 1993 Oslo Accords.

The agreement jump-started a now-defunct peace process, which aimed to establish a Palestinian state in the occupied Palestinian territory, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

A key element of the Oslo Accords was tasking the PA to dismantle and disarm armed groups as part of security coordination with Israel.

But as hopes for statehood faded and Israel tightened its grip, many neighborhood armed groups linked to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas and even Fatah – the faction under control of the PA -Emerged in Palestinian camps in the West Bank.

With the PA unable to crush armed groups in the Jenin camp, Israel launched a major offensive on 21 January, which has already killed at least 10 people.

Local monitors told Al Jazeera that Israel was justifying its operation under the guise of promoting Israel’s security and ensuring that another attack like the one of October 7 does not occur, even if the armed group in the West Bank is fighting against Hamas in Gaza. are much less capable and organized than the ,

Murad Jadallah, a human rights monitor with the Palestinian rights group al-Haq, said, “We believe Israel plans to attack the north of the West Bank in the same way it did during the second intifada when it attacked Palestinian camps. Was attacked.”

According to the United Nations Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA), Israel previously occupied the Jenin camp for 10 days during the second intifada in 2002, destroying about 400 homes and displacing about a quarter of the residents. Had given.

The ICG’s Mustafa believes Israel will carry out more incursions and major military operations in the West Bank in the coming days in an effort to crush all forms of resistance.

“The battlefield is about to shift from Gaza to the West Bank,” he said.