The Israeli army killed three Palestinian military commanders – including one from Hamas’s Qassam Brigades and two from Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades – and a mother and her child during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Monday, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials.
Several army convoys and bulldozers also stormed Tulkarem refugee camp, where the five were killed, to destroy homes, markets and entire neighbourhoods during the attack.
Like all of the West Bank, Tulkarem has been subjected to Israeli army raids and settler attacks that intensified following the return of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm of a far-right government at the end of 2022. The devastation brought on by these raids intensified further after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7.
Israel claims that its nearly daily raids are necessary to capture Hamas cells and ensure Israeli security. But critics say that raids are exacerbating the root causes that fuel armed resistance – in particular, Israel’s decades-long occupation – declared last week as unlawful by the International Court of Justice.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israel has killed 203 people in the West Bank between January and June 6 this year. That’s 75 more people killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers compared to the same period last year.
Activists and experts believe that Israel is playing up the threat of what it calls “terrorism” to justify the increasing violence, which leads to mass displacement and the expansion of illegal settlements.
Here is all you need to know about the uptick in violence as a result of operations in the West Bank.
How many raids have there been and who are they targeting?
Israel conducts military raids into the occupied West Bank on a near-daily basis, predating the current war on Gaza. Israel says the raids are in the name of upholding security, but locals say that they serve little purpose except to remind them of the realities of living under occupation.
Towns such as Jenin, Tulkarem, and the Nur Shams refugee camp are frequently targeted, and firefights with Palestinian armed men are frequent.
Shadi Abdullah, an activist from the Tulkarem refugee camp, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army typically fires missiles at residential areas, bulldozes education centres and hospitals, cuts the electricity and kills or wounds civilians during nearly every raid.
These same tactics have been reported widely across the West Bank and particularly in Jenin, where much of the camp has been reduced to rubble. Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in the camp during one such raid in May 2022.
“The Israelis don’t distinguish between resistance fighters and civilians,” Abdullah told Al Jazeera
“They are also trying to make the areas unliveable so that Palestinians migrate from one Palestinian town to another … it’s a form of forced displacement,” he added.
Who are the Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank?
Israel has long claimed to be targeting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad factions in the West Bank, as well as new independent armed groups that have emerged in recent years.
It recently arrested a number of students from Birzeit University who it said were plotting a “significant terror attack” against Israeli forces or settlers, according to Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency tasked with monitoring and foiling domestic threats.
“There was word that the student movements were going to start something in the West Bank, but the Israelis don’t care if this was popular resistance or armed resistance. They are not interested in any escalation,” said Tasame Ramadan, a Palestinian activist from the West Bank city of Nablus.
“[Israel] wants [Palestinians] to feel like they are controlled and they want them to feel afraid for their lives,” she added.
Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG), explained that many young men pick up arms or join armed factions to protect themselves and their communities from settler violence – which is increasing without much in the way of pushback from the military – and army raids.
“Whether it is student movements or armed groups, there are pockets of resistance in the West Bank and the idea that they are Hamas affiliated or Iranian-backed is [something Israel plays up] because it fits into notions of what counts as legitimate violence,” she said.
“Frankly, it doesn’t work well for the Western narrative if they learn that the majority of these fighters are just disenfranchised and disillusioned Fatah constituents.”
Fatah is a major Palestinian faction that controls the Palestinian Authority (PA), the entity tasked with governing most of the West Bank.
Are settlers involved?
Yes, and often.
Jewish settlers consistently attack entire Palestinian villages, as they seek to expand the territory under their possession in the West Bank. Many of the hundreds of thousands of Israelis living in illegal settlements in the West Bank see the land as an integral part of the land of Israel – and the Palestinians as an obstacle in the way.
While the settlers regularly conduct attacks on Palestinians with no prior justification, they take part in particularly aggressive raids if their own settlements have been attacked.
In April, an Israeli teen was found slain in the occupied West Bank, triggering a wave of vigilante and armed attacks by illegal settlers. The violence led to the death of a 17-year-old Palestinian boy and scores of injuries.
“The settlers are always protected by the army,” said Abdullah.
He added that the security forces and settlers invoke ‘terrorism’ as a justification to attack Palestinians, displace them from their villages and steal their land.
Why is the PA not protecting its constituents?
Because it doesn’t want to upend the 1993 Oslo Accords.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) was born out of that agreement, which saw then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat shake the hand of then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the lawn of the US White House.
The accords were supposed to pave the way for a Palestinian state, but instead have merely resulted in establishing close security coordination between the PA and Israel.
In addition, the accords effectively shackled the PA, said Tahani. As a governing body, it is unable to protect its constituents from Israeli soldiers and combative settlers who violate its jurisdiction in large swathes of the West Bank.
“Never mind fighting back against Israeli settlers or soldiers, the PA doesn’t even make arrests,” Tahani told Al Jazeera. “The PA unfortunately has no jurisdiction over Israelis…so what are [Palestinians] supposed to do?”
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