When a cease-fire was announced in Gaza on January 15, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank were overjoyed that Israel’s devastating war on the besieged enclave would finally end.
However, Israeli state violence has sharply increased in the West Bank in what local monitors and analysts describe as a clear attempt to formally annex more land.
The sudden increase in settler attacks and Israeli military operations has alarmed Palestinians in the occupied territory, who believe they may now face violence against their compatriots and women in Gaza. Israel has killed more than 46,900 Palestinians in Gaza since the war on the enclave began in October 2023.
“We have seen genocide in Gaza for 14 months and no one in the world has done anything to stop it and some people here believe that we will suffer the same fate,” said Shedi Abdullah, a journalist and A human rights activist from Tilakram said.
“We all know that we fear that the situation here in the West Bank could get worse,” he told Al Jazeera.
Changing the battlefield
Hours after a cease-fire in Gaza 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 held by Israelis held by Hamas. The captives were released in exchange. deal
Checkpoints also barred farmers from their fields and sealed off civilians, such as in Hebron and Bethlehem.
Israeli settlers then began expanding illegal checkpoints 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 Later they become regular.
“The implications of the violence are that it leads to direct or related displacement and is consistent with Israel’s goal of preventing any Palestinian state on its land,” said an Israel-Palestine expert with the International Crisis Group. Tahani Mustafa said.
In addition, the Israeli military announced plans to launch a major operation in the West Bank, beginning with a major incursion into the Jenin camp on January 21, ostensibly to root out armed groups. Israeli attacks on the West Bank preceded the war on Gaza, but increased in violence and intensity as the war began.
Mustafa told Al Jazeera that the settler violence and incursions that we are seeing … is an indication of where we are headed now.
Trade off?
The escalation in violence has led some to believe that new US President Donald Trump struck a trade deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war on Gaza in exchange for an escalation of aggression in the West Bank. .
“The cease-fire in Gaza – which looks more like a humanitarian pause and a “trade of hostages and prisoners” – comes with a price. Israel never gives up on anything without a price and I I think we’re looking at the West Bank. [officials] The Trump administration is comprised of,” Mustafa said.
Trump has not indicated that there is any deal 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 who are opposed to a Palestinian state. in prominent positions in his administration.
The prospect of an increased crackdown on Palestinian militants in the West Bank, as well as an increase in illegal settlements and even possible annexation, has encouraged Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smutrich to remain in Netanyahu’s fragile coalition. , instead of them leaving. and overthrow the government in Gaza as a protest against the cease-fire.
Under Smotrich, Israel has quietly confiscated more land in the West Bank than in the previous 20 years, according to Peace Now, an Israeli nonprofit monitoring land seizures.
Both Smotrich and the broader settler movement see the long-occupied West Bank as an integral part of “greater Israel,” and refer to the area as Judea and Samaria.
Smutrich’s rapid annexation of the West Bank has gone unnoticed because of the massive Gaza crisis, which has uprooted and displaced some 2.3 million of its pre-war population, in addition to mass killings of Palestinians. went
Attacks by Settlers
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank now say that settlers are intensifying their attacks to seize and seize more land in collaboration with the Israeli military.
On January 20, settlers violently attacked two villages in the northern West Bank, Funduq and Jinasfut, as well as villages around Masafir Yata and Ramallah.
According to local rights groups, settlers burned and beat Palestinian homes and cars under the full protection and supervision of the Israeli army.
However, the head of the Israeli army’s Central Command, General Avi Bluth, said in a statement that any kind of violent riots harm security and the army will not allow it.
The attacks came during Trump’s inauguration as US president – in one of his first steps as president, he lifted sanctions on groups and individuals the US previously considered part of an “extremist settler movement”. .
Abbas Malham, executive director of the Palestinian Farmers’ Union, said the settlers’ goal is known. “They want to move the Palestinians out of the West Bank and annex the land to Israel and impose Israeli law.”
Ghassan Aliyan, 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 on Jenin
In early December, armed groups in Jenin began clashing with the Palestinian Authority (PA), the administration created as a result of the 1993 Oslo Accords.
The accords launched the now-defunct peace process, ostensibly aimed at establishing a Palestinian state on occupied Palestinian land, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
A key element of the Oslo Accords tasked the PA with rooting out and disarming armed groups as part of security coordination with Israel.
But as hopes for statehood faded and Israel consolidated its grip, a number of local armed groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas and even Fatah – the faction controlled by the PA – emerged in Palestinian camps in the West Bank.
After the PA failed to crush armed groups in the Jenin camp, Israel launched a major operation on January 21, killing at least 10 people.
Local monitors told Al Jazeera that Israel is justifying its operation under the guise of stressing Israel’s security and ensuring there is not another October 7-style attack, even though armed groups in the West Bank and Gaza I am much less capable and organized than Hamas. .
“We believe that Israel’s plan is to attack the north of the West Bank in the same way it did during the second intifada when it attacked Palestinian camps,” said Murad Jadullah, a human rights activist with al-Haq. are caretakers, a Palestinian rights group said.
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNRWA), Israel previously occupied the Jenin camp for 10 days in 2002, destroying nearly 400 homes and displacing a quarter of its residents during the second intifada in 2002. Was displaced.
Mustafa from the ICG believes that Israel will carry out more incursions and major military operations in the West Bank in the coming days in an attempt to crush all forms of resistance.
He said that the battlefield is going to shift from Gaza to the West Bank.
