Israel's endgame in the occupied West Bank mirrors Gaza - annihilation

Before October 7 of last year, it looked like Israel's next all-out war on Palestinians was set to occur in the occupied West Bank, not Gaza.

In the final hours before news of the Hamas-led offensive on Israel broke, media was reporting on violence in the occupied West Bank, including an Israeli settler attack that left one 19-year-old dead and injured over 70 Palestinians in the town of Huwara.

In fact, 2023 had already become the deadliest year since 2005 for occupied West Bank Palestinians due to attacks from the Israeli military and armed settlers.

Last week, Israel showed that it is not yet done with the occupied territory, and continues to push the West Bank to levels of violence and destruction unparalleled in the last 20 years. Israel launched its latest operation, cynically named "Summer Camps," on August 28 in the northern part of the territory. It is Israel's largest-scale incursion into the occupied West Bank since 2002.

Israeli government officials said this military operation is in response to October 7. But the reality is that Israel's attacks on the occupied West Bank and its ongoing genocidal war on Gaza have the same objective: waging military attacks against resistance forces to justify a decades-long project of ethnic cleansing and mass expulsion.

Israel's attacks, annexation schemes, and rhetoric from officials indicating intent to ethnically cleanse the occupied West Bank have intensified in recent years. Throughout its ongoing genocide in Gaza, Israel has routinely assassinated, injured, tortured, and mass arrested West Bank Palestinians (including children), raided cities and towns, and demolished homes.

What should become clear through this episode is that, while Israel manages each war front differently, its goals in the occupied West Bank and Gaza are exactly the same.

War front intensifies

Israel's latest attack on the occupied West Bank includes air strikes, opening fire on Palestinians, attacks on journalists, assassinations, home demolitions, and the destruction of infrastructure and roads. The northern areas are now on the verge of humanitarian catastrophe.

For the past week, the city of Jenin has been under siege. Israel has cut off its water and electricity, affecting most residents. Palestinians are also now reporting food and medicine shortages.

About 70 percent of Jenin's roads have been destroyed by Israeli bulldozers. Tulkarem and its Nour Shams Refugee Camp was hit by an Israeli airstrike that killed four Palestinians, including two children. In Tulkarem, the Israeli military blocked off and destroyed roads; damaged electric, water, and sewage infrastructure; and raided and demolished homes. In Tubas and the nearby Al-Far'a Refugee Camp, Israel launched drone strikes and raids.

Israel has also intensified a crackdown on other parts of the occupied West Bank. Hebron has been besieged by Israeli forces, who also raided the Jalazone Refugee Camp near Ramallah, as well as Bethlehem, Nablus, and Qalqilya.

Israel's genocide in Gaza is a war on Palestine and all Palestinians.

Operation "Summer Camps" does not mark the opening of a new war front, but rather, the intensification of a war on the territory that began after Oct. 7. In the last 11 months, Israel has killed over 600 Palestinians in the West Bank. Additionally, Israel arrested nearly 10,000 Palestinians, of which, more than 60 are journalists and 640 are children, many of whom were subjected to torture and abuse.

The arrest and torture of Palestinian children in Israeli military prisons is not a new practice. According to Defense for Children International, Israel has arrested 13,000 Palestinian children since 2000.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that 159 of these deaths in the West Bank were due to Israeli airstrikes, 11 were due to settler attacks, and 8 were due to joint attacks waged by settlers and the Israeli military. At the start of its war on Gaza, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir distributed arms to thousands of settlers, and in those final months of 2023, there were 535 recorded settler attacks in the occupied West Bank.

While some might dismiss a far-right official like Ben-Gvir as a fringe element, state and settler convergence is a more widespread phenomenon than Israeli officials would like to admit. Further, this coordination over recent years points to Israel's ultimate goal in the occupied West Bank.

Ethnic cleansing

Contrary to Israeli claims, its West Bank operation is not a response to increased Palestinian armed resistance in the territory, but rather, it is an acceleration of its decades-long project of expansionism, ethnic cleansing, and annexation.

The ultimate goal here is to pursue what Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid described in 2016 as "maximum land (with) minimum Palestinians," a statement that summarises the ideology of Zionism in just a few words.

It is a project that long predates not only the establishment of the main resistance factions in the occupied West Bank, but also the establishment of the first illegal Israeli West Bank settlement in 1967, and the state of Israel itself. Rhetorical condemnations of the settler movement do not conceal Israel's existence as a settler-colonialist state built on Palestinian erasure and dispossession.

Israel has colluded with the settler movement consistently over time, especially in 2023, and intensified this partnership after the start of its war on Gaza. The number of West Bank settlers has quadrupled in the 30-year period following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. And the Israeli government has retroactively legalised some settlements established without state approval.

In early 2023, the Knesset revoked legal barriers to settlement expansion in the northern West Bank, which is illegal according to international law.

The government's coalition agreement included giving Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich expansive powers over Area C of the occupied West Bank and civilian control over two military units that maintain the occupation.

Around the same time, Smotrich drew condemnation internationally when he said that there is "no such thing as a Palestinian nation," and after a settler mob attacked Huwara, he said that the village should be "wiped out."

Reaching a peak in the summer of 2023, these settler mobs waged attacks on Palestinian villages widely described as pogroms. Clearly, this rhetoric from state officials and power arrangements enabled settler violence.

War crimes

Although this year has not yet come to a close, 2024 is already set to mark the most West Bank land seizures Palestinians have seen in a single year since the pre-Oslo period.

On August 29, just one day into the ongoing West Bank incursion, Foreign Minister Israel Katz called for the "temporary evacuation" of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, understood by many to signal plans for permanent expulsion.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has described the current West Bank incursion as "mowing the lawn," and added that in the future, Israel must "pull out the roots," gesturing to an intense push that could lead to the decimation of the occupied West Bank and force Palestinian displacement under the guise of security measures.

Through its attacks on civilians, infrastructure, hospitals, and journalists, Israel is committing the same war crimes in the occupied West Bank that it has been committing on a larger scale in Gaza.

Last fall, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked a close adviser and Minister of Strategic Affairs, Ron Dermer, to craft a plan to "thin" out the population of Gaza "to a minimum."

In the midst of Israel's simultaneous West Bank incursion, it is impossible to ignore the signs that Israel is pursuing the same goal in Gaza and the West Bank: using security concerns to justify war crimes and massacres, creating the conditions for Israel to expel Palestinians and seize their land.

Israel learned that it will continue to be unconditionally supported and enabled by the United States throughout its genocidal war on Gaza.

President Joe Biden's "bear hug" strategy, in which the US refuses to impose an arms embargo, condition military aid, or at least use its leverage to demand a ceasefire, has emboldened Israel to escalate its attacks on Palestinians everywhere.

If Israel is not held accountable for its war crimes, particularly through measures like an arms embargo, its genocide of Gaza will continue.

Israel could also bring this level of violence to the West Bank. Without effective measures to restrain Israel, all Palestinians between the river and the sea could face mass expulsion.