Gaza Doctrine: The West Bank Is Under Fire
Residents forced out of their homes in Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm, 25 February 2025
B’tselem publishes a new report on 10 March 2025:
On 19 January 2025, once the ceasefire in Gaza went into effect, the Israeli government declared it was adding the demand for “increased offensive activity” in the West Bank to its official list of “war objectives”. The addition was merely a formal affirmation of Israel’s treatment of the West Bank since 7 October 2023 as another front in the all-out war declared on the Palestinians since the Hamas attack. In keeping with this approach, the Israeli regime has ramped up its oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank and adopted more extreme measures, including extreme arbitrary violence against innocent civilians, further loosening of the permissive open-fire policy, severe movement restrictions and disruption of daily life, blanket cancellation of permits to enter Israel, and extreme limitations on access to farmland that are critically damaging livelihoods, mass arrests and the transformation of detention facilities into a network of torture camps.
Along with the intensified oppression, in the northern West Bank Israel has begun replicating tactics and combat doctrines honed in its current offensive on Gaza. This includes increased use of airstrikes in civilian population centers, widespread and deliberate destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, and displacement of civilians from areas designated by the military as combat zones. These actions suggest Israel is working toward “Gazafication” of the West Bank, already implemented in the north and, according to statements by government officials, expected to spread to other parts.
As of March 2025, the implementation is centering on the northern West Bank, and primarily refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas Districts. The military conducted a series of invasions into these camps at the start of the war, followed by Operation Summer Camps launched in August 2024, and a further escalation after 19 January 2025: massive troops invaded several towns and refugee camps in the north with bulldozers, deliberately and indiscriminately destroying civilian infrastructure – including roads and electricity, water and sewage networks. Hundreds of homes were bombed and partially or completely destroyed without any concrete threat associated with them. Medical aid for residents was disrupted, and there has been massive and indiscriminate gunfire. Recently, tanks and armored personnel carriers have been used for the first time since the second intifada.
Another element of Gazafication is the increasing use of airstrikes, targeting some of the most crowded areas in the West Bank and gravely endangering civilians. From 7 October 2023 to 8 March 2025, B’Tselem documented 69 airstrikes, which killed 261 people, including at least 41 minors. In stark contrast, airstrikes in the West Bank killed 14 people in the preceding 18 years, from 2005 to 7 October 2023.
The lethal activity is also reflected in the permissive open-fire policy implemented by the military, which has claimed the lives of many Palestinian minors. In 2024, B’Tselem monitored the killing of at least 488 Palestinians in the West Bank—90 of them minors. In 2023, 498 Palestinians were killed—120 of them minors and four of them women. With constant public statements about plans to expand this military activity to the rest of the West Bank, the last two years – the deadliest since the second intifada peak of 2002 – may be a preview for greater bloodshed to come.
An especially blatant manifestation of the Gazafication is the mass displacement of residents from refugee camps in the northern West Bank, where residents fled or were forced to leave home due to the threat of military activity. According to UNRWA, since Operation Iron Wall began on 21 January 2025 in Jenin RC, later expanding to the Tulkarm RC, Nur Shams RC and al-Far’ah RC, roughly 40,000 residents have been displaced. Some have found temporary housing solutions, but many remain in makeshift IDP camps, relying on local communities for their basic needs. Based on Gaza’s bitter experience, there is grave concern this displacement will not be short. Recently, Defense Minister Israel Katz clarified that Israeli forces would remain in Jenin RC for the coming year, during which residents would not be allowed to return.
As stated by Israeli public figures, Israel’s war on the Palestinians following Hamas’ October 2023 attack is not confined to Gaza, but targets all Palestinians living in the various areas under Israeli control. Since the war began, the Israeli apartheid regime has radically escalated its oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank and is operating in the northern part as though it is as combat zone. Since the ceasefire was declared on 19 January 2025, Israel has shifted the focus of its onslaught on the Palestinians on the West Bank, and is acting there in disregard for its obligations under international law while trampling basic moral principles underfoot. These actions on the ground and statements by government officials, coupled with Trump and Netanyahu’s declared plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza, raise grave concern that Israel intends to use the shift in combat to establish irreversible facts on the ground: reshaping the West Bank to further its aspiration of permanently displacing some Palestinians and forcing others into living conditions that will eventually drive them to leave.
Full report (written sections & videos): Gaza doctrine