For years, the West Bank has witnessed a noticeable escalation of military resistance against the occupation. Over these years, environments and incubators of resistance have grown, especially in the cities and camps of the northern West Bank. Several military formations and groups affiliated with Palestinian and cross-factional factions have also emerged.
These groups have posed a real challenge to the occupation in recent years, which prompted it to launch military operations to confront the growth of military groups, similar to Operation Breakwater, which began at the end of March 2022 with the aim of dismantling the resistance structure in the northern West Bank.
With the start of Operation Flood Al-Aqsa – launched by the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the Gaza Strip – and despite the major shock suffered by the Israeli security services, they kept their eyes open on the West Bank, strengthened their procedures, and carried out thousands of arrests in the first days of the Battle of Flood. Al-Aqsa.
Occupation operations
In light of the continued fear that the situation would explode in the West Bank, the occupation forces carried out a series of special operations and raids into the camps and cities of the West Bank, which are home to resistance groups.
These raids and attacks resulted in more than 371 martyrs and approximately 3,720 wounded. The Prisoners’ Club and the Prisoners’ Affairs Authority reported – last Sunday – that “the number of arrests rose after last October 7 to about 5,875 people.”
More than 100 days after the start of the aggression on the Gaza Strip and the accompanying massive attack by the occupation army in the West Bank, the Chief of Staff of the Israeli occupation army Herzi Halevy and a number of senior officers repeated their warnings to the occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the war ministers on several occasions that the West Bank The West is about to explode.
According to a report by Israeli Channel 12, the military level specifically warned of the explosion in the West Bank, which means another front that the occupation must deal with with high intensity.
Senior officials in the military establishment told the political echelon in closed rooms that “the West Bank is on the verge of exploding in a third and comprehensive intifada, due to the deterioration of economic conditions and the prevention of workers from entering to work in Israel.”
Warning implications
The main significance of the repeated warning by the military and security levels about an imminent “explosion” in the West Bank is based on the limited military and security operations carried out by the occupation in the West Bank in eliminating the Palestinian resistance as a national culture and groups as organizational formations.
The basis for the assessment of the Israeli security services is their realization that the military solution is not effective in light of the continuing settler attacks, the continued aggression against the Gaza Strip, the deteriorating economic conditions in the West Bank, and the decline of the Palestinian Authority’s control in the camps in the northern West Bank, which witness the presence of resistance groups.
This warning also comes after a noticeable increase in the number of operations carried out by resistance fighters in the West Bank, in addition to the development witnessed in operations to confront Israeli incursions into camps and cities in the northern West Bank, as a noticeable increase began months ago in the use of homemade explosive devices by resistance factions, which began It poses a real threat to the invading forces.
The operation to detonate a homemade explosive device in Nour Shams camp resulted in the death of a female soldier and the wounding of a number of other occupation soldiers as the resistance confronted them.
The West Bank and Jerusalem also witnessed a number of specific operations carried out by the resistance, some of which carried signs of organized action, instead of the Qassam Brigades in the West Bank adopting a number of these operations.
The most prominent of these operations, according to data from the Palestinian Information Center, were:
- On October 19, the resistance fighters carried out a shooting operation and detonated an explosive device in an occupation army force near the town of Burqa, north of Nablus, wounding a number of its soldiers.
- A resistance cell from Tulkarm carried out a shooting operation on November 2, followed by an operation to lure and detonate an explosive device with occupation soldiers near the Beit Lid settlement near Tulkarm, which resulted in the killing and wounding of 6 soldiers and settlers. The Qassam Brigades claimed responsibility for the operation in a video recording.
- On November 6, the martyr Muhammad Omar Al-Faroukh (16 years old), from the town of Sa’ir, north of Hebron, carried out a stabbing attack near a police station at Bab Al-Sahira in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem, which resulted in the death of a female soldier and the serious injury of another.
- A resistance group that included Abd al-Qadir Abd Allah al-Qawasmi, Hassan Mamoun Qafisha, and Nasr Abd al-Af al-Qawasmi carried out a shooting operation at the military tunnel checkpoint separating the city of Bethlehem and southern occupied Jerusalem, which resulted in the death of a soldier and the injury of 6 others – some of them in serious condition – and the perpetrators were martyred by bullets. The occupation forces, and the Al-Qassam Brigades claimed responsibility for the operation.
- The freed prisoners, brothers Murad and Ibrahim Nimr, carried out a shooting operation in occupied Jerusalem that resulted in the killing of 4 settlers, the injury of 12 others – including serious cases – and the martyrdom of the perpetrators. The operation was claimed by the Al-Qassam Brigades.
- It was followed by a ramming attack near the Baqaot settlement in the northern Jordan Valley, carried out by the martyr Karem Bani Odeh from Tammoun in Tubas, which resulted in two soldiers being injured.
- On December 28, the martyr Ahmed Adeeb Alyan carried out a stabbing attack in occupied Jerusalem, which resulted in two occupation soldiers being moderately injured and the perpetrator being martyred.
- It was followed by a ramming attack carried out by the martyr Amr Abdel Fattah Abu Hussein, targeting occupation soldiers near Dura, south of Hebron, resulting in the injury of 4 of them.
- On December 30, the martyr Muhammad Hussein Masalmeh carried out a run-over attack targeting occupation soldiers at the entrance to Al-Fawwar in Hebron, resulting in the injury of two soldiers.
- On January 13, three Palestinian youths carried out a storming operation into the Adora settlement, west of Hebron, which resulted in the death of the three young men and the wounding of a number of settlers.
- On January 15, a female settler was killed and 4 were seriously injured and 9 were moderately injured in stabbing and ramming attacks in the city of Raanana in Tel Aviv.
Palestinian workers
Warnings from the security and military levels of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the situation in the West Bank indicate a difference in views within the Israeli government about allowing Palestinian workers to enter to work.
The Israeli Channel 13 published a report talking about a “dramatic warning from the Shin Bet to Netanyahu” indicating “the fear of an immediate escalation in the West Bank.”
This dispute comes in a broader context of disagreements and discrepancies between the leaders of the government and the war council in the Israeli occupation state.
The security services are exploiting the escalation of resistance in the West Bank to put pressure on Netanyahu’s allies from the extreme religious right who want to put more pressure on the Palestinians in the West Bank and expand settlement projects.
The assassination of Al-Arouri
The assassination of Sheikh Saleh Al-Arouri, Deputy Head of the Political Bureau of the Hamas movement, constituted a defining moment in the course of the war on Gaza and in the confrontation related to the West Bank, as he heads the West Bank “region” in Hamas.
The Israeli occupation accuses Sheikh Al-Arouri of being responsible for restoring the resistance infrastructure in the West Bank and arming resistance groups and formations in the West Bank, instead of accusing him of direct responsibility for a number of operations that targeted settlers and occupation soldiers in the West Bank and the formation of cells spread throughout all West Bank cities.
Given the symbolism and status of Sheikh Al-Arouri among the resistance movements in the West Bank, it is expected that the West Bank will witness more operations in response to his assassination, the harbingers of which began with the “Adora” and “Raanana” operations, which is the opposite of the trend promoted by the Israeli political and security leadership that The assassination of Sheikh Al-Arouri will weaken the resistance in the West Bank.
In this context, the continued warning by the military and security institutions of the imminent explosion in the West Bank indicates the limited impact of the assassinations on the rising trend of resistance, rather than considering them among a large sector of Palestinians as a reason for continuing and escalating resistance.
The future of the West Bank
All the drivers for the escalation of resistance action in the West Bank remain present and their influence is strengthening, but the two factors of the war on Gaza and the escalation of settler attacks will make the West Bank an arena of open confrontation between the Palestinians and the occupation.
In previous experiences, such as in the 2014 war, the West Bank witnessed a major popular uprising in the summer of the following year, and in analyzing the outbreak of the uprising, the effects of the war on Gaza in 2014 were one of the most important inspirations for young Palestinians who took the initiative to carry out operations in the following months.
The Palestinians in the West Bank receive two images from the war in Gaza: the massacres, killing, siege, and humiliation to which the Palestinians are exposed in the Gaza Strip, and the images of battles and targeting published by the resistance factions and the inspiration they represent for youth in the West Bank.
In light of the growing conviction among Palestinians that the security system and the Israeli army failed miserably on October 7 and beyond, the courage of Palestinian youth to carry out more operations increases.