The Gaza Ceasefire Does Not End Israel's Regional War That Now Targets West Bank

Written by Robert Inlakesh

The ceasefire/prisoner-exchange agreement struck between Hamas and Israel went into effect on January 19, yet was immediately violated by Israel. Despite it now appearing to hold for the most part, Israeli forces continue to commit daily violations, while deciding to announce a new military operation in the West Bank. It now appears as if Israel decided to freeze the fighting in Gaza in order to focus on other fronts.

The Gaza-Israel ceasefire was set to go into effect at 8:30 AM (Jerusalem time) this past Sunday, however, at the last moment, the Israeli military began claiming that it had the right to continue bombing the Gaza Strip until it had been handed a list of three Israeli prisoners that were set to be released in an exchange later that day. Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari held a briefing at the exact time that the ceasefire was supposed to go into effect, declaring that his army would continue its assault due to the list not being handed over.

No such clause existed in the ceasefire agreement, yet Israel chose to use this claim to continue killing innocent Palestinians until the very last moment. Hamas immediately issued a clarification saying there was a technical issue that caused the delay in the sending of the list, yet this did not stop Israel. The IDF initially held fire for around 15 minutes after 8:30 AM, allowing for Gaza's civilians to gather and celebrate, before cynically beginning their airstrikes once again. It appeared as if this was calculated to prevent major celebrations from Palestinians who had endured 15 months of what both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called a Genocide.

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Israel continued to launch airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, targeting groups of Palestinians who had gathered to celebrate the ceasefire and shot civilians returning to their destroyed homes, particularly in Rafah City area. According to the Mayor of Rafah, 90% of the city's residential complexes had been destroyed, in addition to 15 water wells. This kind of destruction was inflicted with the specific purpose of making the territory uninhabitable. On top of this, upon returning to the locations where their homes were once located, Palestinians began discovering the remains of their family members, most of whom were reduced to bones; some skulls were found laying in the streets with bullet holes in them.

The Destruction Of Gaza

Later that day, fighters of the Qassam Brigades [Hamas' armed wing] emerged from their tunnel complexes dressed in military overalls (including their special forces units) in order to coordinate the handover of the three Israeli captives. The scenes served as a shock to Palestinians and Israeli alike, who did not expect to see Hamas fighters in such numbers and in full form after having fought for so long, without any supply lines to the outside. The Israeli female captives were handed over safely and appear to have been in good health, but the scenes of thousands gathering and congratulating the Hamas fighters in the streets of northern Gaza proved embarrassing for Israel.

The difference is clear. pic.twitter.com/oKMgUtO3bJ

— Suppressed News. (@SuppressedNws) January 20, 2025

When it came time for Israel to follow up on its end of the agreement and release 90 women and children that it had been holding captive, it decided to impose strict conditions and demanded no celebrations. Israeli forces delayed the handover of the prisoners for around 7 hours, shooting tear gas, in addition to live ammunition, at families and journalists awaiting the release. Eventually, when buses filled with women and child prisoners were arriving to an area called Beitunia, in the West Bank, celebrations took place despite Israeli repression. Yet the conditions of the Palestinian hostages appeared to be dire in many cases. According to a lawyer representing Palestinian political prisoners, many of the women and children had been subjected to torture.

The War Is Not Over

While the fighting in the Gaza Strip may have ended for now, Israel's war is raging on.

According to Tel Aviv's propaganda, it would have you believe that the Hamas-led October 7 attack of 2023 was the reason it was fighting a war in Gaza, which then expanded when "Iranian proxies" attacked them, forcing them to defend themselves. This is why the reporting on what has been happening inside the West Bank has been so limited, if not non-existent in the Western corporate media, because it contradicts that narrative.

And the illegal West Bank annexation that was reportedly part of the deal Trump made with Netanyahu (allowing Israel to violate the ceasefire in the 2nd phase w/ full US backing) is now underway. This appears to all be a ruse, as reported. https://t.co/mScoLM6gfx https://t.co/kBcLNhQ7bG

— The Last American Vagabond (@TLAVagabond) January 20, 2025

In the mainstream media, the scarce number of critical reports on Israel's war crimes have been largely reduced to critiques of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, employing a "bad apples" kind of argument. However, the overwhelming majority of the coverage has worked to craft a false narrative that paints Israel's actions as completely or somewhat justified and to be targeting Hamas.

On January 14, only days before the ceasefire agreement between Gaza and Israel was announced, Israel launched three drone strikes against a group of civilians in the Jenin Camp, killing 6. This came shortly after the Jenin Brigades resistance group had announced that it had reached an agreement to end a battle in the refugee camp, following a 40 day siege of the camp by the Palestinian Authority's security forces; during which the PA had sought to work on Israel's behalf to root out that anti-occupation fighters.

On January 21, only two days after the Gaza ceasefire, Israel then decided to declare a new military operation that could last months, specifically designed to target anti-occupation armed groups in the northern West Bank. The occupied territory is not ruled by Hamas, which has supporters and members in the area but is severely repressed by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has limited control over the major Palestinian population hubs. On the first day of the operation, 9 Palestinians were killed in the Jenin Governorate alone and 35 were wounded, most of them civilians.

BREAKING: The same day they release 90 Palestinians they storm a mosque in the West Bank and abduct over 60.

lsraeI is replacing released hostages with new ones… And the world is silent.

It’s disgusting.

Zionist lsraeI deserves to be dismantled. This is what they do when… pic.twitter.com/gDcb1UeXGH

— ADAM (@AdameMedia) January 21, 2025

The violence in the West Bank has exploded since the implementation of the Gaza ceasefire. On Monday, the Israeli occupation forces ordered a complete closure of the entire territory, locking down all the major checkpoints and preventing travel between cities and villages. This occurred right after Israeli illegal settler militia groups began launching assaults on Palestinian towns across the West Bank, burning homes, vehicles and agricultural lands; the worst attacks occurring around the Palestinian city of Qalqilya. Many of these settlers have been receiving training and arms from the Israeli government/army, even integrating some of their extremists into a specialized military unit known as the 'Desert Frontier'.

Israeli violence is so normalized in the West that pogroms against Palestinians in the West Bank isn’t even newsworthy. https://t.co/RkRmXhHxsa

— Assal Rad (@AssalRad) January 20, 2025

In the immediate aftermath of the Gaza war, Israel's former Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, declared that he had intended to hand out 200,000 rifles to Israelis. Upon his resignation from Netanyahu's government, coming out in opposition to the Gaza ceasefire deal, Ben Gvir declared that this goal had been reached. The massive hand outs have even sparked anxiety amongst some Israelis, as untrained and radical individuals had been handed free weapons with no little to no oversight. In the case of the Israeli settler extremists who took these guns, it is speculated that many of them are intended for use against Palestinians.

Upon US President Donald Trump's arrival to office, not only did he decide to lift all restrictions of weapons transfers to Israel, but also made his priority to immediately rescind Joe Biden's executive orders that imposed sanctions upon settler extremists in the West Bank. It is also notable that Israel's richest billionaire, Miriam Adelson bankrolled the Trump campaign with 100 million dollars, the quid pro quo being that as President he would permit the Israeli government's planned illegal annexation of the West Bank.

Tellingly, Trump's pick for US Ambassador to the United Nations, Elise Stefanik, recently refused to answer whether she believed Palestinians have the right to self determination, while affirming she believes Israel "has a biblical right to the entire West Bank", when being questioned by US Senators.

It is therefore clear where this is all heading. Tel Aviv has set its sights on the West Bank, something that even the spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida, specifically addressed during his post-war speech in Gaza. Yet, despite the explicit intentions to launch a massive military campaign in the West Bank, which will precede the annexation of large swathes of the territory, as per the pledge of the Israeli Premier himself, the issue is not receiving the attention it deserves. In fact, the past 15 months has been the deadliest period in the territory's recorded history, following 1967. Around 800 Palestinians have been killed there since October 7, 2023, despite there being no war or significant Hamas presence in the area.

In addition to the escalation in the West bank and continued slaughter of civilians in Gaza that violates the ceasefire agreement, there are the additional fronts to the war in Lebanon and Syria. The new HTS-led Syrian government has not dared to threaten Israel over its ongoing invasion of its territory (which has been happening now for more than a month) and it openly proposes normalizing ties with Tel Aviv. Despite the inactivity of the Syrian government, there may still be a resistance force that rises inside Syrian territory that could cause enormous issues for the Israeli soldiers stationed there. This resistance is not likely to come from the HTS-government, which appears to be prostrating before the West and attempting to reach out to the Israelis, refusing even to congratulate Gaza on its ceasefire agreement -- yet deciding to issue a congratulatory message to Donald Trump.

While Syria remains occupied by a pro-Western government that refuses to act, neighboring Lebanon actually has a fighting spirit and groups that work to protect Lebanese territory from the Israeli occupation forces, also aligning themselves with the Palestinian cause. Hezbollah entered into a 60-day ceasefire agreement with Israel on November 27, which will soon expire if Israel refuses to withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon. Hundreds of Israeli violations of the ceasefire have been committed, in fact, there has not been a single day that has passed whereby the Israeli military has abided by the deal. All with zero coverage of this fact by the corporate media.

The Lebanese front to the war is relatively unpredictable. Either Israel or Hezbollah could end up reopening the war at any time, while it is still possible that Israeli-allied Syrian al-Qaeda linked groups may be weaponized against Lebanon too. What's certain is that the war between Lebanon and Israel is far from over.

Israel's withdrawal of forces from the Gaza Strip, under the ceasefire agreement, now frees its troops and tanks for redeployment in the north and West Bank. This is one of the major reasons why the ceasefire made sense for them, as explained in my last article for TLAV on the topic. After 15 months of war against Gaza, the Israeli military has been stretched thin and faces a recruitment crisis, meaning that its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip will allow for it to properly focus on other fronts.

Despite having committed genocide and destroyed most of Gaza's civilian infrastructure, the Israeli military failed to defeat Hamas and the other Palestinian armed groups operating in the besieged coastal territory. It is unlikely that they could pull off a victory there, and even the Israeli army's spokesperson admitted as such months ago. The best result that the Israelis could hope for is a stalemate, which is exactly what just occurred. That is why they focused on attacking the civilian population, hoping to sufficiently batter them into submission.

🚨Israeli media claims Trump promised to allow Netanyahu to violate the Gaza ceasefire & resume the war after signing a deal

Trump's "gift bag" also includes lifting all sanctions on Israel's spyware Pegasus & Israeli settlers & extremists & allowing major West Bank land theft pic.twitter.com/KOeQT9jld4

— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) January 14, 2025

There is also quite a bit of talk from the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist ministers, like Bezalel Smotrich, about returning to the war in phase two of the ceasefire agreement. Many are claiming there was in fact a deal struck between Trump and the Israeli government that secretly allows the violation of the deal in the second phase with full US backing, and the allowance of West Bank annexation. Yet this will heavily depend upon regional developments, and as we can already see, the violations began on day one. Iran is also in the crosshairs. Tehran knows this and could therefore see an Israeli return to the war in Gaza as a direct threat, and launch its "Operation True Promise 3" that it has repeatedly threatened to do, triggering another exchange with the Israeli military.

This war shouldn't be seen as over, but rather as having now reached a new phase. It is only a matter of time before the next major eruption of violence, which appears to be already taking shape in the West Bank.