Israel, rampant in the West Bank with Trump's approval: "We've never seen this brutality"

BarcelonaWhile the Western media is focused on Gaza, Israel has intensified its occupation of the West Bank in the last two months. With the so-called Operation Iron WallSince the beginning of the war on January 21, the Israeli army has stepped up its attacks in this Palestinian territory. The military offensive began in the refugee camp and the city of Jenin, one of the strongholds of the Palestinian resistance, and quickly spread to Tulkarem and Tubas. Two months later, the death toll stands at 60 Palestinians killed by the army and settlers, more than 500 arrested, and more than 40,000 displaced, according to UN data, a figure unprecedented since the Six-Day War (1967).

"There is no one left in Tulkarem camp: they have thrown out all the families, destroyed the streets, the sewage system, the electricity, the shops, everything... and they are demolishing houses to make roads wide enough for the tanks to pass through," said journalist Mariam Barghouti, who has been covering the situation on the ground, by phone. "Now, 25 of us live in the apartment. Other families have settled in schools or mosques."

Palestinian analyst Xavier Abu Eid explains from Ramallah that they have never seen the brutality they are seeing in the West Bank on such a systematic basis. "Israel claims to have terrorist objectives, but what it has done in the last two months has been a large-scale campaign of forced displacement," explains journalist Mariam Barghouti, who has been covering the situation on the ground. The military operation, one of the longest since the Second Intifada (2000-2005), which has included the collaboration of the Palestinian National Authority police, has already spread in recent days to cities further south, such as Nablus.

The lack of water, food, and medicine is already a reality, according to witnesses consulted by this newspaper, and the army has cut off access to several health centers. "The situation is catastrophic," says Barghouti. Those who have tried to return home have found their houses "destroyed, damaged, or converted into military bases," explains Aseel Al-Bajeh of the Palestinian Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD) from Ramallah. Tel Aviv, in fact, has already announced an "extended stay" in the occupied territory "for the next year" and has ordered its troops to prevent residents from returning to the evacuated areas.

Strategies used in Gaza

"The army comes in and destroys everything: the houses they haven't bulldozed are burned or bombed, leaving no stone unturned. Jenin has become a little Gaza: they use the same tools and the same strategy," says Shebly, an IT specialist at the Jenin refugee camp.

The destruction of basic infrastructure, the siege of hospitals, the airstrikes, and above all the massive displacement of the population have led several analysts and NGOs to speak of a process of "Gazification"of the West Bank, which has been compounded by an increase in settler violence. Benjamin Netanyahu's government had long threatened to act in the occupied territory as in the Strip with the aim of advancing its annexation to Israel. And the timing of this, two days after the truce with Hamas began, was no coincidence. "The ceasefire agreement contained benefits for Benjamin Netanyahu's government," Al Bajeh affirms. Among other benefits, redoubling the offensive in the West Bank allowed the Israeli prime minister to appease the most extreme sectors of his government, who were opposed to halting the war against the Gazans. "All of this has to do with ensuring his continued rule," he emphasizes.

However, the key to explaining the current escalation in the West Bank lies in Trump's return to the US presidency. "Netanyahu now feels empowered to make all the changes he wants on the ground [...]. He assumes Trump will support his project of ethnic cleansing," Abu Eid points out. The fact that the military operation has focused on the refugee camps is precisely related to that objective: "It's an attack on the Palestinians' right to return and is also connected to the attacks against UNRWA," reflects Al Bajeh. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, which Israel banned from activities in January, He warned days ago that he no longer has "any contact with the Israeli authorities," making it impossible to raise "the urgent need to deliver humanitarian assistance."

A new Nakba

The Israeli authorities have already announced that they will not allow those forcibly displaced to return to their homes and that the army will continue to occupy the camps throughout this year. Al-Bajeh highlights the psychological impact of the expulsion on many of the camp residents, where several generations of refugees lived together. A reflection also echoed by Barghouti: "Many young people I have spoken to tell me that they are experiencing, on a more intensified scale, the trauma their grandparents experienced in 1948 [during the Nakba, the expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians with the creation of the State of Israel]." "Israel is creating the conditions for people to leave," adds Abu Eid.

For the young man from Tulkarem, "Israel wants to end the refugee issue first and then end all Palestinians: the refugee issue is what keeps the Palestinian cause alive because it reminds us that Israel was created by expelling Palestinians en masse from our lands." But he asserts that they are not willing to allow history to repeat itself: "They can destroy our home, but they cannot erase our memory."