Will the West Bank be the next Gaza?

Magdaline Boutros

Published at 0:00

• Middle East

The military operation carried out by the Israeli army in the West Bank over the past week has focused the attention of the international community on this territory, which has been focused on the Gaza Strip since last October. However, the West Bank has been experiencing an exacerbation of the climate of violence for 11 months, which has led to the death of 637 Palestinians (including 146 children), 1,270 attacks by settlers, the destruction of nearly 1,450 Palestinian homes and structures, and 10,400 arrests.

This dark portrait, drawn up in Devoir by Canadian Bill Van Esveld, deputy director in Israel and Palestine for Human Rights Watch (HRW), is accompanied by an amplification of the means used by the Israeli authorities.

“It is worrying to see the same military tactics deployed in the Gaza Strip being increasingly imported into the West Bank,” he notes, recalling that about a hundred people have been killed in airstrikes in recent months.

HRW has long been concerned about Israel’s “excessive use of force” in the West Bank, a territory it has occupied since 1967 — an occupation that violates international law, the International Court of Justice ruled in a recent opinion.

“That meant, until two years ago, shooting people unnecessarily with assault rifles or sniper rifles. […] But now we’re talking about drones firing missiles at people, helicopters,” Van Esveld said. An escalation that is all the more “dramatic and worrying” because the West Bank is not a war zone under international law, he specifies.

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For its part, Israel claims to be thwarting attacks targeting its civilians and military personnel in the Palestinian territory. According to the Hebrew state, 23 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in the West Bank since October 7.

For the past week, the Israeli army has been conducting a major “anti-terrorist” military operation in the northern West Bank to eliminate Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants who have fomented violence against Israel. According to the latest report, around thirty people have been killed in Israeli raids, including children.

In an occupied territory, the use of lethal force is nevertheless restricted to situations where there is “an imminent threat of death or serious injury,” Mr. Van Esveld points out. “The combination of excessive use of force and lack of accountability creates a vicious circle,” he denounces. According to a UN count, at least 637 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 7.

What has been most serious since October 7—in addition to the burning of villages and homes and attacks on Palestinians—is the arming of settlers

— Ahmad Melhem

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Settler Attacks

Alongside the military violence, a record number of attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank have been recorded since the Hamas attacks. In the past 11 months, the UN has documented 1,270 attacks, killing at least 11 Palestinians. This is a sharp increase from the 856 recorded in 2022. These attacks have displaced 1,566 Palestinians, according to HRW.

About 490,000 Israeli settlers live in the territory, which is home to 3 million Palestinians. “What has been most serious since October 7 — in addition to the burning of villages and houses and the attacks on Palestinians — is the arming of settlers,” Palestinian journalist Ahmad Melhem, based in Ramallah, told Le Devoir.

In addition, “the establishment and legalization of informal outposts, the confiscation of Palestinian land, and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank have accelerated,” he notes. According to the Israeli organization Peace Now, since October 7, 23.7 km² of Palestinian land has been seized for the expansion or creation of settlements.

Arrests and destruction of homes

Since the launch of the response of the Hebrew state to the Hamas attacks — which left 1,199 Israelis dead and 251 hostages — an increase in arrests has also been noted. According to Palestinian authorities, in the past 11 months, 10,400 Palestinians, including minors, have been arrested in the West Bank by Israeli security forces. The UN says that about a third of them have not been charged or tried. Israel considers these prisoners criminals or terrorists; Palestinians consider them political prisoners.

Bill Van Esveld also reports that the conditions of detention of these prisoners have deteriorated. “They do not receive enough food, they do not always have access to a lawyer or they cannot receive visits from their families. And cases of torture are increasing.”

According to Ahmad Melhem, the climate of repression is constant. “Israel has transformed the West Bank into a large prison […] with the establishment of dozens of fixed military checkpoints and dozens more mobile military checkpoints between cities and villages.”

Also since October 7, nearly 1,450 Palestinian structures and homes have been destroyed by Israeli authorities, displacing 3,300 people, half of them children, Van Esveld said. “In most of the West Bank, Palestinians must have a permit from the Israeli military to build a structure,” he said. However, these permits are difficult to obtain, and some of the destroyed houses were built even before the start of the Israeli occupation in 1967, he specifies.

A violence that risks spreading

In a statement published Monday, the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, Italy's Francesca Albanese, warned “that Israel's genocidal violence risks spreading from Gaza and spreading to the entire occupied Palestinian territory,” referring to a “global process of elimination, replacement and territorial expansion.”

A concern shared by Sophia Al-Issa, a researcher and advocacy officer for the BADIL Center, a Palestinian human rights NGO based in Bethlehem. “If no one stops [Israel], if they continue to receive billions in military aid and if they know they can do all this with impunity and no accountability, of course [what is happening in Gaza] will spread to the West Bank,” she told Devoir.