Under Israel’s watch, Palestinian gangs are sowing chaos in the West Bank
Sami Sawalmeh writes in +972 on 25 August 2026:
When I arrived in the central West Bank town of Qarawat Bani Hassan for a reporting trip on July 31, residents were dealing with the immediate aftermath of an explosion outside a local businessman’s property. An extortion ring operating from Jaljulia, a Palestinian town inside Israel, had detonated the device after demanding money from him, according to prominent figures from the town who preferred not to be named. (A video from the blast site, seen by +972, shows shattered glass across the entire storefront.)
Residents described the group responsible as part of a mafia network whose members appeared to pass easily through military checkpoints to enter the town and leave again. In a landscape dense with Israeli checkpoints, military patrols, and surveillance tools, the residents struggle to interpret such freedom of movement as mere negligence. The same military that chokes Palestinian movement, they point out, suddenly proves unable — or, more likely, unwilling — to stop armed criminal networks from importing weapons and violence across these boundaries.
This mechanism is what local residents and Palestinian analysts call “engineered lawlessness”: Israel’s military apparatus, capable of extraordinary levels of surveillance and control, selectively withholds such power when armed gangs and internal feuds tear Palestinian towns apart from within.
Nowhere is that dynamic more visible than in Beit Ummar, a town of roughly 23,000 people north of Hebron. Hemmed in on three sides by Israeli settlements and military posts, the town has been consumed in recent years by a violent feud between the Abu Ayyash and Ikhlayl families. What began as a private dispute involving extortion and the circulation of manipulated images has since spiraled into a prolonged, low-grade armed conflict.
Because parts of Beit Ummar fall within Areas B and C, as designated by the Oslo Accords, Palestinian law enforcement officers cannot carry out the necessary arrests without Israeli military clearance — authorization that Israel continues to withhold.