Israel Amplifies Crackdown in West Bank, Targets Hamas Amid Gaza Hostilities
Palestinian Health Ministry cites over 120 fatalities since October 7
The Israeli army has been ramping up its raids across the West Bank as war in the Gaza Strip rages.
The Palestinian Health Ministry reported at least 120 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war on Gaza.
Israel says it has carried out airstrikes against armed Palestinians clashing with its forces in the Jenin refugee camp, while aggressively rounding up Hamas members.
“Former parliamentarians and Hamas leaders were among the detainees,” the Palestinian Prisoners Society told The Media Line.
Qadura Fares, chairman of the Palestinian Prisoners Society, said that around 1,600 Palestinians have been detained by the Israeli army in the West Bank.
Israel intensified its West Bank raids in parallel with its war against Hamas in Gaza, and its nightly incursions are seen as an attempt to quell any outbreak of violence in the West Bank.
“A large part of what Israel is doing is retaliatory in the West Bank. It wants to take revenge on Hamas, inflict the biggest blow on Hamas, hurt Hamas, and also ensure that there is no role for Hamas in the occupied West Bank,” Ramallah-based political analyst Esmat Mansour told The Media Line.
Mansour says Israel’s iron fist approach in the West Bank is “part of its policy to take out Hamas.”
Hamas’ presence is limited in the West Bank, where the rival Fatah movement holds power, but the armed Islamist group’s actions are widely popular among Palestinians.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, director of national security and Middle East affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, told The Media Line that Hamas is present in the West Bank and the army is taking preemptive measures to stop anyone from taking steps to further inflame the situation.
“There should be a state of precaution to make sure that Hamas doesn’t try to carry out attacks from the West Bank. They may consider carrying out attacks if they are cornered in the Gaza Strip,” says Kuperwasser.
Part of the reason behind the mass arrests, Kuperwasser explains, is to round up Hamas activists in order to prevent them from organizing demonstrations in support of Gaza.
“We wish for the situation in the West Bank to remain as calm as much as possible to prevent demonstrations and other acts that may hamper the stability of the area,” says Kuperwasser.
The Palestinian Authority is also relatively quiet: Aside from two speeches by President Mahmoud Abbas, hardly any top PA officials have given public statements on the war in Gaza.
“Israel doesn’t have enough faith in the Palestinian Authority. There’s a lack of confidence in the PA security services based on their performance. The PA isn’t strong enough to stop these demonstrations led by Hamas,” says Kuperwasser.
The West Bank did not witness an immediate escalation in violence after Israel declared war on Hamas, but Palestinians say if the army and settlers’ attacks persist, things will change.
“Israel takes advantage of international support and sympathy and uses it as a cover to purge the West Bank of the largest number of … fighters and reach them in an attempt to remove the West Bank from the equation of opening a front that distracts Israel from Gaza,” says Mansour.
“We have to take matters into our own hands; only we can protect ourselves from the occupation forces,” Abu Khaled, a resident of the Jenin camp, told The Media Line.
The arrests have been executed under Israel’s expanded “anti-terrorism” law, according to a statement from Addameer, another Palestinian prisoners’ rights organization.
“Activists, lawyers, nurses, doctors, and artists” are among those arrested over the past two weeks, according to the group. Several lawmakers have also been arrested, including Aziz Dweik, the former speaker of the Palestinian parliament and a member of the political wing of Hamas.
Even before the latest violence, 2023 had been the deadliest year for West Bank Palestinians in two decades.
In July, the army carried out its biggest raid in years on the Jenin camp, a West Bank stronghold for armed Palestinian groups, in which 13 Palestinians, including both armed combatants and children, were killed.
One IDF soldier died by Israeli fire during the raid “following an incident of mistaken identification,” the army said.