With Gaza population already displaced, some fear Israel has similar plans for West Bank

As Israeli tanks and troops stormed into Palestinian communities within the occupied West Bank this week — one of many largest such navy operations in years — a remark by the nation’s international minister reverberated loudly throughout the area.

Israel ought to resort to the “temporary evacuation” of Palestinian residents from the West Bank, if want be, to facilitate the struggle in opposition to terrorism, Israel Katz wrote on social media, as Israeli bulldozers dug up roads, destroyed buildings and left a path of destruction behind them.

For many, it raised the spectre that Israel may be adapting the form of scorched-earth ways it has employed for virtually a yr in Gaza to the extra populous and politically delicate West Bank.

And that forcing West Bank Palestinians out of their properties may be the primary stage in pushing them out completely.

“The Israeli major military operation in the occupied West Bank must not constitute the premises of a war extension from Gaza, including full-scale destruction,” Josep Borrell, the European Union’s international coverage chief, responded.

Birds fly after an explosion in Nour Shams camp in Tulkarem, within the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Aug. 29. (Mohammed Torokman/Reuters)

Different veteran observers of the decades-long battle concurred.

“It looks very much like Israel is not only not ending the war in Gaza, but they’re expanding it to the West Bank,” Khalid Elgindy, a fellow with the Center East Institute in Washington, D.C., informed CBC Information.

A lot of the 2.3 million individuals in Gaza have been pushed from their properties by Israel’s navy and compelled to stay in tents in filthy situations, making a public well being catastrophe that has allowed ailments akin to polio to fester.

Gaza well being authorities say greater than 40,000 individuals have been killed since Israel’s assault started final October, with tens of hundreds extra wounded.

As of Thursday, no less than 17 Palestinian civilians and combatants have been reportedly killed within the latest West Bank raids, together with a frontrunner of Islamic Jihad in Tulkarem.

Israeli settlers have gained political energy

Israel claims the assaults on West Bank cities akin to Tulkarem, Jenin and Nablus had been aimed toward stopping imminent assaults on Israelis, and that the militants purportedly accountable are being funded and supported by Iran.  

WATCH | Israel launch new operation in West Bank:

Israel launches main navy operation within the West Bank

Israel launched a large-scale growth of its navy efforts into the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, calling it a counter-terrorism operation. Palestinians are accusing the Israeli military of increasing the ways it has been utilizing in Gaza.

This week’s raids got here roughly 10 days after a person with a bomb blew himself up in Tel Aviv, in what the Palestinian militant group Hamas later acknowledged was a failed assault by a suicide bomber.

Katz, the Israeli international minister, accused Iran’s leaders of supporting a “terror front” in opposition to Israel.

Whereas Israel’s navy thrust into the West Bank has been on a a lot smaller scale than the one in Gaza, there are greater than 270 Jewish settlements within the West Bank.

In July, the Worldwide Prison Court docket of Justice (ICJ) delivered a landmark ruling during which it stated Israel’s 57-year occupation of the West Bank is prohibited, that its settlement insurance policies violate worldwide legislation and that present settlements must be eliminated.

Israel took management of the Palestinian territories following the 1967 conflict, and the Israeli authorities has repeatedly refused worldwide calls to barter the institution of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Mourners carry the physique of a Palestinian who was killed by Israeli forces, throughout his funeral in Nur Shams refugee camp, close to Tulkarem, within the West Bank, on Aug 30. (Mohammed Torokman/Reuters)

Certainly, many ultranationalist Jewish Israelis, particularly members of the settler motion, have brazenly flaunted their objective of totally annexing the West Bank — which they discuss with by an historical Biblical title, Judea and Samaria — and both expelling Palestinians who stay there or in any other case making them depart.

Beneath Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the settler motion has grown politically highly effective, with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich performing because the de facto governor of the Israeli settlements.  

Crucially, Netanyahu’s governing coalition has relied on the assist of Israel’s far-right events to remain in energy.

Settler violence growing

The human rights group Peace Now says settlement building has surged, with 28 new Jewish communities established on Palestinian land final yr, and one other 16 to this point in 2024.

The settler population within the West Bank has grown to greater than 478,000, with an extra 229,000 in occupied East Jerusalem, a three-fold enhance in simply 20 years.

Elgindy says whereas Netanyahu has final authority, ministers akin to Smotrich and Nationwide Safety Minister Itamar Ben Gvir are driving Israeli coverage within the West Bank, and that their goals are clear.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, proper, speaks with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich through the weekly cupboard assembly on the Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Jan. 7, 2024. (Ronen Zvulun/Pool/Reuters)

“[Smotrich and Ben Gvir] would like nothing more … than to remove the Palestinian population from large swaths of the West Bank,” stated Elgindy.

“Whether this operation is going to lead to that, we don’t know. But it’s definitely, I think, a cause for alarm.”

Tahani Mustafa, a senior Palestine analyst with the Worldwide Disaster Group, stated this week’s navy assaults quantity to an “acceleration” of a sample of violence that had turn out to be a characteristic of Israel’s authorities lengthy earlier than the Hamas assaults of Oct. 7,  which killed 1,200 individuals in Israel.

“The situation has incredibly deteriorated and the violent trends have gotten worse, in terms of the uptick in violence, the search-and-arrest operations, the attempted land grabs and making life unbearable for residents of the West Bank,” Mustafa stated in an interview from Amman, Jordan.

Greater than 600 Palestinians killed in West Bank since October: UN

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that between Oct. 7, 2023, and Aug. 19, 2024, 607 Palestinians had been killed within the West Bank, together with in East Jerusalem. That quantity contains 589 who had been killed by Israeli forces and 11 by Israeli settlers.   

In that very same interval, 15 Israelis, together with 5 settlers, had been killed by Palestinians. 

OCHA says over the identical 10 months, Israeli authorities demolished greater than 1,400 Palestinian properties and different buildings throughout the West Bank, which is greater than double in contrast with the identical interval earlier than Oct. 7. 

Israeli settlers stroll previous building equipment after buildings had been erected for a brand new Jewish seminary faculty within the settler outpost of Homesh within the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Might 29, 2023. (Ronen Zvulun/Reuters)

Whereas the leaders of some settler actions have been slapped with international sanctions, to this point, the USA, Canada and European nations haven’t imposed any penalties on the Israeli cupboard ministers most accountable for the expansions.

“The international community has not put any red lines on Israel,” stated Mustafa.

Israel’s authorities has accused Iran of stepping up monetary assist for militant teams within the West Bank, in addition to of arming them, however has not offered proof.

“There is some level of truth [to this claim], in the sense that Iran is one of the largest financial backers of these groups, but that sort of misses the entire contextual rationale for why these groups have popped up and why they have gained momentum,” stated Mustafa.

The rationale these teams exist is not to serve Iran’s pursuits, however slightly the determined scenario individuals face at dwelling, she says.

“These groups do not have a serious political agenda other than fighting the [Israeli] occupation,” stated Mustafa.

Threat of radicalizing extra Palestinians

She says slightly than eliminating or severely weakening these teams, Israel’s navy motion this week will seemingly have the alternative impact. 

“If anything, you are going to radicalize more Palestinians.”

This additionally appears to be the view of some in Israel’s safety providers, because the desperation within the West Bank mounts.

A Jewish settler teenager walks by an Israeli flag in Givat Eviatar, a brand new Israeli settler outpost close to the Palestinian village of Beita within the West Bank, on June 23, 2021. (Amir Cohen/Reuters)

Ronan Bar, the highest commander of Shin Guess, Israel’s inner safety service, published an open letter to Netanyahu within the aftermath of a succession of settler assaults on Palestinian communities within the West Bank, warning that “Jewish terrorism” is endangering the nation’s existence.

“The damage to Israel … is indescribable,” Bar wrote, claiming the perils embrace “delegitimization” within the eyes of the worldwide group, and that the actions of settlers might function a recruitment instrument within the occupied West Bank for Palestinians looking for revenge.

Elgindy predicts that within the absence of considerable stress from Israel’s allies — particularly the USA — to drag again, Israeli raids into the West Bank will enhance.

“If things continue on their current trajectories, then we’re going to see more and bigger operations like what we saw overnight in the West Bank — and we’re going to probably also see more armed resistance by Palestinian groups.”