Israel Launches A War On The Northern West Bank
Written by Robert Inlakesh
Last week, on Wednesday morning, the Israeli military announced that it had initiated the largest military assault in the West Bank since the early 2000s, declaring it "Operation Summer Camps" that ostensibly seeks to crush a range of Palestinian armed groups that are currently operating in the north of the occupied territory. Using thousands of soldiers, suicide drones, Apache helicopters, and armored vehicles, the Israeli military are launching their offensive operation using the excuse that they are "acting in self-defense" and fighting "terrorists". As usual, the Western corporate media is lying to provide them cover, by claiming that Hamas militants are being slain.
SELF-DEFENSE?
Israel claims that what it is doing in the West Bank is justified under the law of self-defence. This claim has no validity.
Twenty years ago the @CIJ_ICJ determined that Israel could not invoke self-defence under article 51 of the UN Charter to justify its Wall in… https://t.co/81dSjf5rxW— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) August 30, 2024
If we are to look at the way this military operation is being covered, it is being completely separated from the war in Gaza, yet using similar excuses where it serves the argument of the Israelis. Take a recent report from the Associated Press (AP), which is regarded as one of the most trustworthy sources in Western corporate media, they open their article with the following paragraph:
"Israeli forces launched a large operation in the occupied West Bank overnight and into Wednesday, killing at least 10 Hamas militants, carrying out arrests and sealing off the volatile city of Jenin."
To begin with, at the point when the article was published there were actually 11 who were killed, six of whom were fighters and only one of them was claimed by Hamas. Shortly after, an elderly man named Ayed Abu Al-Haija was shot in the head and murdered at his home in Nour al-Shams refugee camp, located in Tulkarem. The fighters who were killed were assassinated in drone and suicide drones strikes, which also inflicted civilian casualties. If you read the AP piece, which is a masterclass in distortions, you will come away with the assumption that Israel is conducting a military operation that is somehow targeting Hamas and that only "Hamas militants" have been killed so far. Not even the Israeli army has said that all its victims were Hamas fighters, despite having labelled them all as militants. The piece states that Hamas claimed them all, which never happened and is misinterpretation of Hamas statements.
Nowhere in the piece is it mentioned that Israeli militarized bulldozers were brought into three refugee camps and cities in order to destroy roads as a form of collective punishment, or that the Abu Bakr Mosque in al-Faraa refugee camp was blown up for absolutely no reason. There's no mention of the context, or the way this is connected to Gaza in a meaningful way.
In the first three days of their military operation, the Israeli Army and Air Force have killed dozens of Palestinians in West Bank, destroying the streets around 50 homes in the three cities they have targeted. This, as the operation began to extend into refugee camps in Nablus, outside of the intended operation zone. On top of this, raids were carried out throughout the occupied territory, as two Palestinians carried out a joint car bomb and shooting attack against Israeli soldiers at two separate settlements near the southern West Bank city of Al-Khalil, killing at least two soldiers and injuring four others. It suffices to say, that the Israeli assault on the north of the territory has only created further tension and so far failed to serve its stated goals.
The Context
In May of 2021, following continuous Israeli provocations during the Islamic Holy Month of Ramadan, in and around the Old City of Jerusalem, a mass Palestinian uprising occurred and was combined with an 11-day war between Gaza and Israel. At this time, a small group of fighters banded together under the leadership of Jamil Al-Amouri, a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement.
These fighters, from the Jenin refugee camp, started off as a small group and began growing in numbers secretively until September of 2021, when they officially declared themselves the Jenin Brigades. This development was the first of its kind since the Second Intifada (Uprising), which took place between 2000-2005. In 2002 the Israelis had launched what they called "Operation Defensive Shield", which focused heavily on the northern West Bank and brutally crushed the range of armed resistance groups that were operating in places like Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nablus.
The most infamous chapter of the operation, which ultimately led to the murder of around 500 Palestinians, was the Jenin Refugee Camp massacre. Israeli soldiers rampaged through the refugee camp, murdering anyone in site, blowing up homes, leveling much of the camp's infrastructure and committing countless war crimes.
Unlike was the case in the lead up to 2002, the Palestinian armed resistance groups that began forming in 2021 are not well armed and possess nothing more than semi-automatic rifles and crudely put together home-made explosive devices that they plant in the streets or hurl at military vehicles. The re-emergence of the Palestinian armed resistance groups came out of a position of absolute desperation and, also unlike the early 2000s, the Palestinian Authority (PA) is not on their side.
The PA's security apparatus, which is comprised of around 70,000 trained men, is in full collaboration with the Israeli military occupation forces. It arrests and kills resistance fighters in the West Bank, attempts to cut off their supplies, raids their homes, and dismantles explosive devices that are planted in roads to combat Israeli military incursions into Palestinian cities, towns, and refugee camps. In the early 2000s, the Palestinian resistance groups were commanded in places like Jenin by experienced commanders and were armed with weapons like RPG's, in addition to high-explosive bombs. Today, most commanders of the small resistance cells in places like Jenin will range between the ages of 18-25 on average, with some older fighters participating.
The Israeli military operation which has been launched in the northern West Bank is for now focused on three key areas, Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas. More specifically the Israeli military has announced that its operation is "Divisional", meaning that an entire Israeli military division -- between 10,000 to 30,000 soldiers strong -- has been dedicated to carrying out the assaults focused on the Jenin refugee camp, Nour al-Shams refugee camp (Tulkarem), and al-Faraa refugee camp (Tubas). The goal is to crush the armed groups, who have a combined size of a few hundred fighters organized into smaller cells; who operate in their own independent areas but have the largest presences in the refugee camps. In 2002, the Israelis used around 20,000 soldiers to combat thousands of Palestinian resistance fighters who were backed by elements of the Palestinian Authority's security apparatus.
While in the Second Intifada, the Palestinian resistance groups in the West Bank were carrying out frequent armed attacks against Israeli settlers and soldiers, posing a direct threat to the Israeli security establishment, the groups in the West Bank today are primarily focused on protecting their areas and responding to Israeli aggression locally. In some cases, one or two of the fighters from different armed groups will carry out a shooting attack against settlers or soldiers outside of their own area, but for the most part they don't clash with Israeli forces until the occupiers invade first.
The excuses provided by the Israeli military, political, and intelligence establishment as to why they are conducting this large-scale operation (which it is feared will end up looking like "Operation Defensive Shield") is that it has been done for security purposes and to defeat "terrorists", particularly Hamas. In reality, the armed wing of Hamas, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam brigades, are barely even present anywhere in the West Bank currently and are super secretive about their activities, as they are cracked down upon the hardest by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and are only believed to have a few dozen fighters in the entire territory. There is also no immediate threat to Israeli security from these groups, with the exception of a threat to Israeli invading soldiers when they raid areas like Jenin, Tulkarem, Tubas, and elsewhere that are supposed to be under PA security control anyway.
What Are Israel's True Goals?
This military offensive comes at an interesting time. Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is receiving significant pushback from his generals and intelligence heads, who are urging him to de-escalate tensions and take a ceasefire deal in Gaza for at least a limited duration of time. Interestingly, the exact same day that Netanyahu ordered his military operation in the northern West Bank, the US officially announced a new batch of sanctions against Israeli government-funded settler groups in occupied al-Khalil (southern West Bank). This came as the Israel's Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar, wrote a letter to the Israeli Premier, urging him to act against extremist Israeli settlers who are committing "terror" in the West Bank and are undermining Israel, making it look bad as a result of their unhinged campaign of violent pogroms against Palestinians throughout the occupied territory.
The Israeli Prime Minister is now in a difficult situation; he is faced with a reality of defeat in Gaza as he has failed to achieve any of the goals that he put forth at the beginning of the war. Hamas is still alive and well, it can still fire rockets at Tel Aviv, the Israeli captives haven't been returned by force, the Palestinian tunnel system is still in tact under Gaza, and Israeli soldiers are being killed and injured on a daily basis there. Yet Benjamin Netanyahu will not dare sign a ceasefire agreement with Hamas at this time, as this will be interpreted a large portion of Israeli society, and most importantly the members of his ruling coalition, as a surrender.
If you look at the current Israeli coalition, they are fanatical Israeli settlers, many of whom live in the West Bank and want to see a change on the ground there. For the likes of Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, they see the West Bank as "Judea and Samaria", the biblical heartland of Greater Israel and constantly urge the Israeli PM to annex the territory. To these extremist settlers, they don't care about the strategic security relationship between the PA and Israel, they don't want any Palestinian group operating in the West Bank, even if they are helping to protect them while preventing resistance to settlement expansion.
The West Bank resistance groups are not powerful enough to stand a chance against an Israeli military onslaught that will replicate the 2002 "Operation Defensive Shield" and unlike the resistance groups in Gaza, can be quickly defeated. So, in the mind of Benjamin Netanyahu, crushing the armed groups in the West Bank will be an easy victory to hold up to his own people, as it can be a military campaign that will also end up targeting more areas, like the refugee camps around Nablus, Qalqilya, Jericho, and even further south to Ramallah, Bethlehem, and al-Khalil. Ultimately, such a campaign will kill fighters and collectively punish Palestinians who live in the areas where they operate. This is why the Israeli soldiers are now blowing up Mosques, attacking hospitals, ambulances, civilian homes, and are using militarized bulldozers to destroy the roads surrounding the areas they enter.
Therefore, the military operation will work to try and scare West Bank Palestinians from resisting the occupation, for fear that they will see their neighborhoods given the Gaza treatment. It will also work to expel civilians from entire neighborhoods and appease the settlers in Netanyahu's coalition, who want to see Palestinians driven from their homes and killed for daring to stand up to them.
In Gaza, at the very least, the dozen armed groups operating there have the ability to fight back, however little that resistance may seem in the face of an ongoing genocide. Yet in the West Bank, they are largely defenseless. Already, Israel has murdered over 663 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, including over 140 children. It is not a fair fight, it has nothing to do with Hamas and the majority of the resistance fighters there belong to the secular-nationalist Fatah-aligned Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades or the PIJ movements armed wing, known as Saraya al-Quds. What this will eventually lead to is the annexation of large swathes of the occupied territory, and the same genocidal ethnic-cleansing and mass displacement campaigns that have been ongoing for decades, with little to no push back from the so-called "rules-based international order."