The West Bank emerges as a third and troubling front in Israel’s war

Palestinians in Ramallah protest against the war in Gaza, on 18 November 2023

Jack Khoury writes in Haaretz on 19 November 2023:

Public and political attention in Israel is naturally focused on the war ongoing in the Gaza Strip since October 7 and the daily exchanges of fire on the northern border naturally receive most of the public and political attention.

But between the north and the south there is another war, albeit limited in scope, but with the potential for a wider conflagration and no less important consequences: since October 7, scores of people have been killed in the West Bank.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, 210 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,800 have been wounded in clashes on the West Bank since the beginning of the war. On Saturday night, two more fatalities were reported.

Israel says that many of those killed are defined as “wanted persons involved in terrorism,” but Palestinian society does not really distinguish between them and civilians and sees every death as another step toward escalation throughout the West Bank.

If, before the war, incidents were focused on the northern West Bank, between Nablus and Jenin, since October 7 there has not been a city or refugee camp in which clashes have not been recorded.

In addition to the large number of dead and wounded, there has also been a drastic increase in the number of people arrested in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Close to 3,000 people have been detained since the start of the war. The Palestinian Prisoners’ Administration notes that such a large number of arrests in such a short time has not been seen since the Second Intifada.

According to the administration, many of those detained were issued administrative detention orders, and there does not appear to be any intention to prosecute them.

There has also been daily aggression by settlers, who, while enjoying support from the political echelon, dictate facts on the ground and harass Palestinians on the roads and in agricultural areas. Unlike Gaza and southern Lebanon, where Israel faces clear enemies in Hamas and Hezbollah, in the West Bank the situation is more complex.

Israel is carrying out counterterrorism operations and arrests deep inside Palestinian cities and refugee camps, and has introduced new weapons into its arsenal, such as aerial fire. It is fighting militants embedded in the civilian population and who are held in high esteem, especially among the younger generation.

Some of those killed were members of the Palestinian security forces and affiliated with Fatah, the political movement to which most of the Palestinian Authority leadership belongs – the very same PA was, until the start of the war, considered by many in Israel as irrelevant, but now it has suddenly spoken of as the default for the day after the war.

Israel has no plan for the day after in Gaza, beyond “crushing Hamas,” and no one knows who will control the Strip. But we must remember that the situation in the West Bank is no less dangerous and complex.

Israel can continue to crush the Gaza Strip under the banner of “hunting Hamas” and it can bulldoze the West Bank under the slogan of “fighting terrorism,” but in between, we must understand that with force and more force there will be no horizon for either side. For every fatality, another generation of young Palestinians will emerge and will join the struggle against Israel, seeing themselves as freedom fighters.

Every time Israel punishes the Palestinians by deducting taxes it collects on their behalf, it puts another nail in the coffin of the PA. Every expropriation of land for the construction of another outpost, every roadblock, every closure, every narrowing of civilian living space, closes another window of hope for change.

A month and a half after the war began, someone in Israel needs to realize that another attack and more force will only increase the anger and frustration among another generation of Palestinians.

In Israel, October 7 is often described – and rightly so – as a trauma that will lead to fundamental change, both social and political. The question is what kind of change Israel hopes for. A society that aspires to change for the better must rise from a crisis and think about reality. Because even after the crushing of Hamas and the paralyzing of the PA, the Palestinian people will not go away – not in the Gaza Strip and not in the West Bank.

This article is reproduced in its entirety