Ramallah- By announcing the Israeli occupation targeting the northern West Bank with a large-scale military operation, it is targeting areas, some of which touch the 1948 borders to the west and north, such as Tulkarm and Jenin, or extend to the Jordan Valley and the Jordanian border to the east.
To what extent does the overlap of geography constitute an obsession and a source of concern for the occupation? Especially since the large-scale operation comes days after the bombing operation in central Israel on August 19, and the threat of Palestinian factions to return to bombing operations as they were in the Al-Aqsa Intifada, in which the northern governorates stood out due to geographical proximity, although all governorates participated in it.
At dawn last Wednesday, the Israeli army began a large-scale military operation in the governorates of Tulkarm, Jenin and Tubas, which resulted in 16 martyrs by Thursday evening, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Geography overlap
Saeed Shaheen, a media professor at Hebron University, says that Israel is concerned about the growing resistance activity in the northern West Bank, which threatens the settlement presence, pointing to “a series of successful operations carried out by armed groups.”
He added that the Minister of Internal Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, distributing more than 100,000 weapons to extremist groups of settlers reflects the growing concern. On the other hand, military formations and battalions affiliated with the resistance factions have emerged, specifically the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the Al-Quds Brigades, and groups affiliated with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
He added that “the geography’s overlap with the occupied interior lands makes the growing role of these military formations a great danger to the occupying state, and may reproduce the experience of the resistance in the Gaza Strip, which prompted Israel to launch repeated military operations under the title of “uprooting and eradicating” the resistance hotbeds in the northern West Bank, the most famous of which is Operation Mowing the Grass, which failed to suppress the resistance.”
Shaheen believes that the large-scale Israeli operation is “a desperate attempt to uproot the resistance and terrorize its popular incubator through a policy of collective punishment, destroying the infrastructure, and giving the extremist settlers a free hand to repeat the Gaza model and implement the settlement project aimed at swallowing up the West Bank and East Jerusalem and killing the dream of a Palestinian state.”
Urgent | Israeli Foreign Minister: Construction of the eastern barrier along the border with Jordan must be accelerated to prevent arms smuggling into Israel pic.twitter.com/KqLoWJuT4S
— Tel Aviv Tribune Egypt (@AJA_Egypt) August 12, 2024
Weapon source
Regarding the truth of what the occupation is promoting about smuggling operations from Jordan, which may have reached the Palestinian factions, the Palestinian academic says that supplying the resistance with weapons does not necessarily happen by smuggling them through the Jordan Valley and the Jordanian-Palestinian borders.
He added, “It has been proven over the years that most of the weapons that reach the Palestinian military formations are locally made or smuggled from the occupied interior via soldiers affiliated with the occupation army, which poses a major challenge to the army and its false claims.”
Recently, the Israeli media repeatedly talked about thwarting attempts to smuggle weapons across the Jordanian border, and talked about thwarting 16 attempts during 2023, during which 153 weapons were seized, in addition to attempts to smuggle weapons that it described as “breaking the tie”, as 12 explosive devices were confiscated.
According to the Israel Hayom newspaper, which published the news last May, every piece of weapon could reach Palestinians who would carry out operations with it, and therefore there is a “joint war with the Israeli army, the Shin Bet, and other agencies” to track it down.
Shaheen believed that the occupation’s exaggeration of events has a central goal, which is “to block the possibility of implementing the two-state solution by keeping the Jordan Valley under the control of the occupation army in the event that a peace process is initiated aimed at establishing a Palestinian state, in accordance with the relevant international resolutions and recent recognitions of the Palestinian state. Therefore, Israel, as usual, uses a false and fabricated narrative to justify its crimes against the defenseless Palestinian people.”
After adopting the bombing operation in Tel Aviv in cooperation with the Al-Quds Brigades, the Al-Qassam Brigades publishes via its Telegram channel: “We are coming”#image #Aljazeera pic.twitter.com/LQsI0RMz8F
— Tel Aviv Tribune Palestine (@AJA_Palestine) August 19, 2024
Sagging home front
For his part, political analyst Samer Anabtawi believes that the main factor for the concentration of operations in the northern West Bank is its transformation into hotbeds of resistance more than any other region.
In his interview with Tel Aviv Tribune, he referred to the experience of the Jenin camp and its historical events since the invasion of 2002 and the occupation’s attempts to curb the resistance there until it became stronger and its experience spread to the rest of the northern camps.
Regarding the overlap of geography and proximity to the 1967 borders, Anabtawi said that it is a present factor and has an impact, as there are areas close to the occupation where operations similar to those in the north of the West Bank do not occur.
He said that the factions’ threat to repeat the recent bombing in Tel Aviv, which had stopped 20 years ago, “posed a threat to the Israeli home front, which was already suffering from pressures, and this may have been a factor that helped to expedite the operation.”
In the opinion of the Palestinian analyst, the Israeli operation in the northern West Bank was planned long ago since the far-right government came to power in late 2022, and that despite Israel’s preoccupation with the Gaza front, it has not stopped being targeted in various ways, such as escalating settlements, deducting funds, military operations, and checkpoints.
Regarding the allegations of smuggling through Jordan, the political analyst said that it is a record repeated by the media and the Israeli security services for the occupation to achieve two goals: the first is to hold Iran responsible and accuse the resistance fighters of having external connections and of obtaining weapons through Jordan as a passage, and the second is to pressure Jordan to control the borders more.
He concluded that placing responsibility on Iran is a pretext for Israel to go to the world to say that Iran is responsible for smuggling through Jordan in order to create a rift in the relationship between Jordan and Iran.
