‘The battlefield is about to shift’: West Bank braces for rising violence
Mourners carry the body of Ahmad Nimer al-Shaib after he was killed during an Israeli military operation in Jenin, in the West Bank village of Bruqin, 22 January 2025
Mat Nashed reports in Al Jazeera on 22 Jan 2025:
When the Gaza ceasefire was announced on January 15, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank were overjoyed that Israel’s devastating war on the besieged enclave would finally end.
However, Israeli state violence has quickly escalated across the West Bank in what local monitors and analysts describe as an apparent attempt to formally annex more land.
The sudden uptick in settler attacks and Israeli military operations has frightened Palestinians in the occupied territory, who believe they could now face the same kind of violence meted out to their countrymen and women in Gaza. Israel has killed more than 46,900 Palestinians in Gaza since its war started on the enclave in October 2023.
“We watched a genocide unfold in Gaza for 14 months and nobody in the world did anything to stop it and some people here think we’ll suffer a similar fate,” said Shady Abdullah, a journalist and human rights activist from Tulkarem. “We all know we fear that the situation could get much worse here in the West Bank,” he told Al Jazeera.
Shifting battlefield
Hours after the Gaza ceasefire began on January 19, Israel began erecting dozens of new checkpoints in the West Bank to prevent Palestinians from gathering and celebrating the release of political prisoners, who were let go in a swap for Israeli captives held by Hamas as part of the deal.