This is the “third front” of the war that Israel has been waging since October 7, 2023. In the occupied West Bank, the operations of the Israeli security services – army, commandos, internal intelligence service – do not however, in appearance, resemble those taking place in Gaza, on the “southern front”, or even the clashes between the Israeli army and Lebanese Hezbollah, on both sides of the border, on the “northern front”. In the south, a military offensive with artillery, armor, air support, massive destruction, 30,000 dead. In the north, deadly exchanges of fire, but calibrated to avoid escalation.
In the West Bank, since the beginning of the year, another type of conflict has intensified, the scope of which is less clear because it is sheltered behind a facade of muscular police operations. It is first characterized by military-type interventions, but punctual and repeated, carried out by the armed forces with the support of armored vehicles, in the cities where there is the highest concentration of Palestinian armed groups, of various affiliations, such as Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarem. This resulted in multiple arrests, but also the elimination of those responsible through drone strikes and, sometimes, with the help of the security services of the Palestinian Authority.
A DIVIDED TERRITORY
1949 ceasefire line
Palestinian refugee camp
Status of the territory according to the Oslo Accords
Palestinian Authority control
A DIVIDED TERRITORY
Separation wall built or planned
Outpost (embryo colony) illegal, including in the eyes of Israeli law
VIOLENT ACTS AGAINST PALESTINIANS, between October 7, 2023 and February 26, 2024, according to Acled
Act committed by Israeli security forces
VIOLENT ACTS AGAINST PALESTINIANS, between October 7, 2023 and February 26, 2024, according to Acled
Act committed by settlers or Israeli self-defense militias
Sources: OCHA; Acled; Peace now; B’Tselem; AFP, AP, The world
At the same time, these operations aim to destroy infrastructure in the camps for displaced people – homes of “militants”, as they are called in the West Bank –, at the risk of blunders and excesses: a quarter of the victims, since October 7 2023, are children. Finally, they are accompanied by restrictions on movement, which suffocate the population across the territory, such as the multiplication of checkpoints or the cancellation of work permits for Palestinians employed in Israel.
Fear of a new Intifada
The whole constitutes a form of war which partly escapes general attention, because it seems less intense than that waged in the Gaza Strip, but also because it is marked by the continuation of the conditions of Israeli occupation (begun in 1967) with greater, more deadly intensity. Since October 7, 2023, more than four hundred Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank: a toll presented by the Israeli far right as a victory over “terrorists” who would threaten the Israeli settlements where more than 600,000 settlers live. Over the same period, thirteen Israelis, including four members of the security services, were killed in the West Bank, East Jerusalem or in Israel by Palestinians, according to UN figures from February 26.
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