Testing the boundaries for ethnic cleansing in the West Bank
Israeli armoured vehicles drive through Tulkarem, 3 September 2024
Abdaljawad Omar writes in Mondoweiss on 4 September 2024:
There is a pretense of novelty in Israel’s most recent offensive in the West Bank, which it has glibly called “Operation Summer Camps.” Even before it began, Israel announced that the operation was the most wide-ranging invasion of the West Bank since 2002. What is most striking about this framing is the charade that each new operation represents a fresh response to an emerging threat. In truth, these actions are part of a continuous, unbroken chain of suppression and a bloody impulse through which Israel exercises its power to kill and arrest, all the while undergirded by a continuous desire to see Palestinians disappear.
Many have already observed that Israel’s need for constant initiative across its numerous battlefields is central to the hyped-up nature of its offensive. In Gaza, Israel finds itself consolidating its presence in the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors, with little military initiative elsewhere in the strip beyond maintaining relentless pressure on a Palestinian population that has endured all manner of horrors over the past 11 months, including daily massacres that are tearing apart the social fabric of the small and dense coastal strip.
In the north, the Lebanese resistance and the Israeli military trade blows within a highly regularized set of rules of engagement. Despite earlier escalations, the battlefield remains largely fixed within specific rhythms, extracting a toll from both sides without any clear resolution in sight.
In other words, Israel’s military campaigns, if not approaching a stalemate, have settled into a war of attrition. The way to regain the initiative is to open up another, perhaps “easier” front that might offer a clearer image of “victory,” even as the actual prospects for decisive victories in other theaters fade. But to whom does Israel want to demonstrate this initiative?