The Israeli-occupied West Bank has been rocked by a disturbing escalation in violence by Israeli forces, settlers, and Palestinian militants in the past week that has many worried the conflict is moving into a new phase. This included two Israeli settler attacks on West Bank villages on Thursday that injured at least six Palestinians and set fire to a Palestinian school.
Attacks and operations on all sides are becoming bigger, more militarized, and deadlier, with the type of weaponry being deployed now not seen since the Second Intifada in the early 2000s. This week alone, at least 10 Palestinians and four Israelis were killed—bringing the total number of people killed this year to at least 155 Palestinians and 23 Israelis. “The current situation is unprecedented,” Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf during her visit to the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday, “and we will not remain silent amid the Israeli escalation.”
Fighting first erupted on Monday when an Israeli raid aimed at arresting two suspected Palestinian militants turned deadly in the West Bank city of Jenin, which has long been a central flash point of tensions. The raid quickly spiraled into one of the most intense rounds of fighting in years: Reports indicate Palestinian militants set off a roadside bomb to push back Israeli forces. Under fire, Israel then deployed Apache combat helicopters to open fire and extricate troops, an extremely rare move. Israeli forces killed six Palestinians, including a 15-year-old boy, and injured more than 90 others. Eight Israeli troops were also injured in the clash.
The following day, Hamas militants killed four Israelis at a restaurant in the West Bank settlement of Eli in response to Monday’s raid. Four other Israelis were injured in the attack. In response, around 400 armed Israeli settlers led a deadly rampage through the Palestinian village of Turmus Ayya on Wednesday, killing one Palestinian and injuring 12 others. That same day, Israeli military forces killed three people in a rare drone strike near Jenin while targeting a “terrorist cell” inside a suspicious vehicle. It was the first such drone strike in the West Bank since 2006, another sign that Israeli military maneuvers are intensifying.
This all comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government is taking steps likely to further inflame the situation. On Sunday, the Israeli cabinet approved a resolution expediting the process for approving West Bank settlement construction despite the fact that these settlements are illegal under international law. And on Wednesday, Netanyahu announced a move to fast-track the establishment of 1,000 new Israeli housing units in Eli, just 24 hours after Hamas militants killed four Israelis there. “Our answer to terrorism is to strike at it forcefully and build up our country,” Netanyahu said in a statement with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
At least 14 Palestinians were killed over three days in the occupied West Bank, making it one of the deadliest weeks in the West Bank since the start of 2023. Among the 14 people killed were two youths, ages 15 and 14.
The events of the past four days have, in many senses, felt like a repeat of the events witnessed at the beginning of this year. On January 26, Israeli forces conducted a massive military operation on the Jenin camp, killing 9 Palestinians in the span of a few hours (a 10th Palestinian would later succumb to wounds sustained during the raid). The next day, a Palestinian carried out a deadly shooting at an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, killing seven people, six of them settlers. In the wake of the deadly Jenin camp raid, and the Jerusalem settlement shooting, violence broke out across the West Bank, and more Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire. Israeli settlers also launched a series of revenge attacks across the West Bank, setting fire to Palestinian homes, vehicles, and property, uprooting trees, ransacking businesses and shops, and assaulting Palestinians. One of the villages that was targeted in January by the settlers was Turmus Ayya.
Coincidentally, at that time, Israeli government ministers also called for intensified military operations in the West Bank, steps to “strengthen” illegal settlements, the arming of settlers, and more punitive punishments for the families of alleged Palestinian attackers.
What we are witnessing in the current moment is not only a repeat of what has quintessentially been described by the media as the “cycle of violence” in occupied Palestine but an escalation in the Israeli government and military tactics and approach to the one problem they can never seem to get rid of: Palestinians resisting their subjugation and oppression.
Monday’s Dispatch delved into the question of Israel’s military strategy and whether the use of a helicopter in the Jenin camp raid on Monday was an indication of a shift in the army’s approach to centers of Palestinian resistance like Jenin. Was the deployment of air reinforcements signifying a return, albeit on a relatively smaller scale, to the days of the Second Intifada and the Operation Defensive Shield that figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir have been pining for?
While the question remained open on Monday, it seems that we got our answer on Wednesday. The drone strike outside Jenin on Wednesday night came as a shocking development to Palestinians on the ground. Even the army noted that the strike, carried out by an Elbit Hermes drone, was the first such aerial assassination operation carried out by the army in the West Bank since 2006. Israel has carried out several targeted assassinations of Palestinian fighters over the course of Operation Break the Wave in 2022, but Wednesday’s drone strike, and Monday’s use of a helicopter mark a clear shift in Israel’s approach.
The apparent change in military strategy should not be viewed as separate from the other “prong” in Israel’s apparent two-pronged approach to “quashing” Palestinian resistance. While the military intensifies its targeting of resistance fighters, the government is no longer calling for reinforcing the settlements but is actually establishing new facts on the ground. In the past few days, thousands of new settlement units have been promised, and new outposts have cropped up in the West Bank. While Israel deploys soldiers to weed out Palestinian resistance, it is deploying its armed settlers to drive out Palestinians through arson, assault, and any means necessary. Israel has created the perfect storm: a situation so unbearable that Palestinians are increasingly turning towards armed resistance, thus allowing Israel to use more force against Palestinians and take over more Palestinian land, all under the guise of “combating terrorism.”
And while the resistance is very much alive, as evidenced by the fight put up against the army’s invasion of Jenin on Monday, so is Israel’s spirit of taking advantage of the situation it has created. With the army on one hand, and the settlers on the other, Palestinians in the West Bank face a quickly evolving threat: a future in which annexation, and a more violent occupation, draw nearer every day.
Important Figures
- At least 174 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in the occupied West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem
- 30 Palestinian children have been killed by Israel in 2023
- As of June 12, the UN had recorded more than 500 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians.