Israel’s year of war on the West Bank
Palestinians inspect the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike in Tulkarem refugee camp, which killed 20 people, 4 October 2024
Qassam Muaddi reports in Mondoweiss on 7 October 2024:
For a year now in the West Bank, Israel has launched a war against Palestinians. While the genocidal assault on Gaza has claimed the lives of tens of thousands, and according to some estimates, hundreds of thousands, the onslaught in the West Bank has ramped up in the form of displacement, the unprecedented expansion of settlements, rampant settler violence and pogroms, economic warfare, mass incarceration, and the launching of a military offensive on centers of resistance across the West Bank. As of this writing, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 743 Palestinians, wounded 5,250, and displaced 5,947. But underlying these numbers is a far deeper reality of Israeli settler encroachment and creeping annexation in the West Bank.
The Israeli offensive in the West Bank is nothing but random, nor is it detached from Israel’s policies in Gaza. It follows a strategy in line with Israel’s stated plans to annex the West Bank and undermine any possibilities for a future Palestinian state.
Although these Israeli policies have been employed by Israel for decades of occupation in the West Bank, observers argue that Israel’s strategy in the West Bank after October 7 has aimed to create a new political reality, heading towards achieving definitive Israeli control over the West Bank.
The main feature of Israeli violence after October 7 has been characterized by Israeli settler pogroms against Palestinian villages and rural communities.
Following the October 7 attacks on Israel, Israeli settler mobs attacked Palestinian communities in the West Bank’s Area C, which makes up over 60 percent of the West Bank’s area and falls under full Israeli military control. Palestinians living in Area C have struggled to survive Israel’s building restrictions, constant land grabs, and home demolitions.
By December, settlers had already depopulated 20 Palestinian Bedouin rural communities, forcibly displacing hundreds of inhabitants.