Pressure builds to turn West Bank into ‘Gaza War 2’

Upon initial consideration, it might seem puzzling why the Israeli military, already tied up in a seemingly endless war in Gaza and cross border fighting with Hezbollah in Lebanon, would further escalate conflict with Palestinians in the occupied West Bank by launching major raids there.

Yet Israeli military analysts say there was no choice but to launch last week’s “Operation Summer Camps’’, the biggest and most significant army push in the West Bank since the Gaza war started on October 7 with Hamas’s brutal attack on southern communities.

By Saturday, the fourth day of the operation in the northern West Bank, more than 20 Palestinians, mostly militants had been killed, and swathes of the Nur Shams and Jenin refugee camps had been damaged or destroyed.

It's just the start of increased pressure on refugee camps and towns to combat a heightened capability of Palestinian militants stemming from Iranian provision of weaponry, explosives and money, Giora Eiland, former head of Israel’s National Security Council, told The Jewish Independent. “This has created real abilities and a substantial threat.”

He noted that a West Bank assailant had tried and failed to carry out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv two weeks ago, killing only himself. That raised fears of a return to the bus and restaurant bombings during the second intifada more than two decades ago

“If we just wait until the suicide bombers come, it will be too late,” Eiland said.

However, Jihad Harb, a Palestinian analyst based in Ramallah, believes the real aim of the operation and other Israeli military activity is not self-defence but rather to further entrench an occupation deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice and to advance Israeli annexation, including settlement activity.

Israel, he argues, is contriving an Iranian threat as “a pretext to strike at the Palestinian project”. While Iran sends money to West Bank groups, the real causes for Palestinian militants waging attacks are the occupation itself and hopelessness about the future, not Tehran, he says. Add in anger over Israel’s Gaza assault, spiking settler violence and a severe economic crisis, and the looming prognosis is “greater confrontation,” he says.

Israel now sees an opportunity to expand military operations in the West Bank because the international community did little to stop its assault in Gaza and because the threat of a regional war involving Hezbollah and Iran now seems to be lessening, added Harb, director of the Thabat Center for Research and Opinion Polls.

Eiland, however, says the purpose of taking control of the camps and nearby areas for a limited period is “to kill the terrorists themselves, destroy infrastructure and destroy places where they transform explosives”.

A drive-by shooting at Tarqumiya in the southern West Bank on Sunday that killed three Israeli police officers, and other violence in the southern West Bank over the weekend, has prodded the army to start shifting focus to Hebron, Eiland indicated.

A total of 663 Palestinians, including at least 150 children, have been killed in West Bank army raids since the Gaza war started, according to the Associated Press, while there has also been a surge of Palestinian attacks against Israeli targets.

Eiland and Harb agree that Operation Summer Camps” signifies that the conflict is about to become much wider in scope. On a visit to Jenin on Saturday, army chief of staff Lt. Gen Herzi Halevi made clear that further cities and camps will be invaded.

“We have no intention of letting the terror in Judea and Samaria raise its head, and therefore the initiative is to move from city to city and refugee camp to refugee camp with excellent intelligence and very good operational capabilities,” he told troops.

Harb says the Israeli operation deliberately further weakens the standing of the already unpopular Palestinian Authority. He termed the wide damage troops caused a “collective punishment” to Palestinian residents. The army said it had to damage roads because of concern that explosives were planted beneath them.

But Menachem Klein, emeritus professor of political science at Bar Ilan University, believes the army has arrived at a point where massive damage will now be an integral part of its West Bank operations. “The Palestinian resistance is better organised and there is cooperation between factions across organisational frameworks.

“Since they have better guerrilla capabilities, Israel must send more units, helicopters and drones. You need a bigger army presence and the bigger that is, the more destruction you get, so you end up being at war with an entire refugee camp or city.”

In Klein’s assessment, too, Israel’s framing of Iran as responsible for the tension and violence is inaccurate. Rather, he says, the West Bank is “boiling because of the decline of the PA, the absence of a future for young Palestinians and the genocide in Gaza. The young generation has concluded ‘we want the occupier to pay for his brutality even if we are killed’,” Klein said.

He criticises the government and security establishment for being blind to the Palestinian reality. “They have Iranophobia and refuse to acknowledge that the Palestinians have very good reasons to resist without Iran. The government doesn’t put itself in the Palestinians’ shoes and then it asks ‘why don’t they accept our superiority’?”

Klein says Operation Summer Camps signifies the start of applying methods used in the Gaza onslaught to the West Bank. “Settler leaders are putting heavy pressure on the government to go for Gaza War 2 and it will probably happen,” he said.

“Tomorrow morning the army may raid a refugee camp in the Tulkarm area, expel its residents to the city and destroy the refugee camp as Israel did in Gaza. It’s inevitable,” Klein said.

That does not seem like such a far-fetched prediction, with Israeli foreign minister Yisrael Katz, writing on X at the start of Operation Summer Camps, that Israel must “take care of the threat in the exact way terror infrastructure in Gaza is taken care of, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian civilians and every other necessary step”.

Eiland, for his part, says it is “premature” today to carry out such displacements but adds that in the future they could become policy. “I can’t exclude the possibility that at some place like the refugee camps in Jenin, people will be told to evacuate for a week or so and then we will go from house to house and basement to basement to look for weapons and explosives and only then let the people return,” he said.

RELATED NEWS

IDF: kills 14 terrorists, seizes dozens of explosives in West Bank operations that could last weeks (Jerusalem Post)
The IDF’s extensive West Bank operation since August 28, targeting Jenin and Tulkarem, has led to 14 terrorist deaths and ongoing evacuations.

In longest West Bank raid in 20 years, IDF aims to set stage for future, smaller ops (Times of Israel)
Military shifts focus to Jenin, where troops rip up roads to find bombs, work to establish ‘operational control’; army says 14 gunmen killed, over 25 suspects detained

‘There was no mercy, even on children’: trauma in the West Bank after Israeli raids (Guardian)
Israel accused of using a 10-year-old girl as a human shield as it carried out its devastating attack on the occupied Palestinian territory

Jenin residents say they've been under siege for days, infrastructure has been destroyed (Haaretz)
One resident said power outages could cause food to spoil and residents are staying inside their homes; The Red Crescent director in the city said the Israeli military has fired at ambulances

Three Israeli police officers killed in West Bank shooting (Haaretz)
The Israeli army is searching for several suspects who shot a vehicle carrying defence personnel near the Tarqumiya checkpoint

Soldier killed in fierce clashes in Jenin as IDF presses major West Bank operation
Locals say they do not have access to water and electricity; Israel says at least 26 gunmen killed during operation; Palestinian terror groups have claimed 13 as their own.

RELATED ANALYSIS

A 'unity of fronts' between Gaza and West Bank seems closer than ever (Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz)
The constant acts of violence perpetrated by settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank, as well as Ben-Gvir's provocations on the Temple Mount, could lead to a violent outburst in the West Bank

West Bank no longer secondary front as terror simmers (Yossi Yehoshua, Ynet)
Analysis: Since war, Israeli forces successfully kept West Bank as secondary front to Gaza, but recent attacks signal potential escalation; with mounting terrorist activity and sophisticated explosives, this could prove a threat that will dwarf those from the enclave

West Bank, the next feared flashpoint, was there all along (Dan Perry, The Forward)
With a large Israeli operation in Jenin and Tulkarm, the West Bank is seething