No ceasefire for the West Bank
The Gaza ceasefire has of course brought relief and joy for Palestinians and the families of the Israeli hostages, but the ceasefire has not hailed a pivot towards a just and peaceful future for Palestine. Instead it has heralded a shift in the focus of the Israeli military towards the West Bank, with a doubling down on the structural and physical violence of the occupation. On Monday January 20th, a day after the ceasefire began, the checkpoint infrastructure across and into the West Bank began to tighten its grip, with the usual checkpoints increasing the intensity of searches of Palestinian vehicles crossing them and previously dismantled checkpoints being reactivated. Along with these restrictions on movement, in the last week several roads have been closed to Palestinians, settler attacks have continued, military incursions have also increased, with homes invaded and dozens of Palestinians arrested and detained.
At the heart of this shift of focus towards the West Bank is the Israeli military’s operation towards Jenin. Starting on January 21st 2025, it follows weeks of building violence in this Northern West Bank town, where in December 2024 the Palestinian Authority had also carried out military attacks on militias in Jenin refugee camp that were opposing their rule. In the last week, the Israeli military assault has included usage of drones, snipers, aircraft and other heavy armoury. The roads of Jenin have been torn up, dozens of homes demolished and burned, and thousands have been displaced, many on foot, from Jenin refugee camp. A senior regional director from the Norwegian Refugee Council has said “We are seeing disturbing patterns of unlawful use of force in the West Bank that is unnecessary, indiscriminate and disproportionate. This echoes the tactics Israeli forces have employed in Gaza.” And it is not surprising that these parallels are drawn when a senior Israeli security official on Israeli TV (Channel 14) said of the planned operation in the northern West Bank: “what we did in Gaza, we will do to it as well, and we will leave it in ruins”. It is hard to imagine that it will stop with Jenin, or that the Palestinian people will not seek to take up arms against the Israeli military or the Israeli settlers. Already, on January 28th the military operation has spread to the northern Palestinian city of Tulkarem, with its governor calling for international intervention to prevent the escalation of violence.
The freedom of movement of many Palestinians is restricted by checkpoints and walls.
The long history of repression
The violence being experienced in these recent months is not a new phenomenon for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Since 1967 Israel has militarily occupied the West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem. Under the Oslo Agreement of 1993, the West Bank was divided into three areas (A, B, and C). Area C (more than 60% of the land) is under full military control and home to over half a million Israeli settlers, whose presence in the occupied territory is in direct violation of international law. While these settlers build homes, towns, even cities in Area C on land taken from the Palestinian population, Palestinians in the same area are subjected to a permit system which rarely if ever allows them to build any new structures, including basics such as water wells and animal shelters as well as homes. Alongside this inequality, there are roads which only settlers may use, large areas of farmland made into military zones preventing Palestinian farmers from entering them, and military checkpoints throughout the rest where Palestinians can be stopped, searched and may face arbitrary detention. While all of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, many of them are also home to people with violent fundamentalist ideologies, which have led to decades of intimidation and violence towards neighbouring Palestinian communities, which has gone largely unpunished by the Israeli authorities. This has included the burning of crops and attacks on homes and villages. Terrifyingly, the Israeli military is often present during these attacks and does not intervene.
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Escalating settler attacks with government approval
In February 2023, a particularly frightening attack by groups of armed Israeli settlers on the Palestinian town of Huwara was described by one Israeli security official as a ‘pogrom ’, at the same time videos of the attack showed Israeli soldiers standing by. While Israeli settler attacks were a terrible norm in the West Bank, in 2023, emboldened by the rise in power of the Israeli far-right in government, they worsened. The attacks on Huwara were not a pogrom to this political faction, instead the Israeli Minister for finance called for Huwara to be “erased” and the attacks as “civilian counter-actions”.
Since October 2023, in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel that killed more than 1000 people and led to the hostage taking of around 250 people, in parallel with the Israeli bombardment of Gaza and its disproportionate military force, repeated mass displacements, systematic destruction of civil infrastructure and deliberate withholding of humanitarian aid, the violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem escalated both physically and structurally. Settler attacks increased on a daily basis and Israeli military incursions into towns and villages (including those other PA control) rose incrementally across the 15 months. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, since October 07 2023, at least 870 Palestinians, including 177 children, have been killed by either the Israeli military or settlers in the West Bank with close to 7000 injured. In addition, at least 135,000 Palestinians, including children have been arrested.
International law and responsibilities
It is a terrifying vista that now lies ahead for the Palestinian people. We are further away from a just peace for the people in Palestine and Israel then at any point in time in the almost 80 year long history of the conflict. Gaza lies in ruins, UNRWA soon to be obliterated in the occupied territories, and the West Bank facing new levels of violence. All of this is happening in plain sight for the world, and is happening untethered by the international community. EU states, particularly Germany, along with the UK and the US continued to send arms and other forms of financial aid to Israel throughout the bombardment of Gaza, and there are no signs of this support ending now. The 4th Geneva Convention as a part of international humanitarian law outlines the responsibilities of parties in a conflict towards civilian populations, including those in occupied lands. For those of us working for peace and justice in this world, this convention was meant to mean something to its signatory states. But with everything that has happened in the last 15 months, it seems the respect for international law was an illusion. The only way the brutality of the occupation of Palestine can end and a just and lasting peace for all people in the region can be achieved, is if those who continue to violate these and other international laws are held to account. This responsibility sits primarily with the UN states and those who elect them.