Israeli security forces and settler groups have engaged in attacks against Palestinians across the occupied West Bank since the Israel-Hamas ceasefire came into effect on Sunday.
The settler attacks erupted almost immediately after the ceasefire began, with members of Israel’s far-right reportedly targeting some of the villages where released Palestinian women and child prisoners had homes. Other Palestinian homes appear to have been randomly targeted.
Separately, the Israeli military launched an operation, called “Iron Wall”, in the city of Jenin and the adjacent Jenin refugee camp.
The military assault comes after a weeks-long raid by Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces on the Jenin refugee camp, where it targeted local Palestinian fighters in what it defined as an attempt to restore law and order, but which many Palestinians see as a crackdown on independent Palestinian armed groups resisting the Israeli occupation.
How many people have been killed?
The Israeli military’s attacks in Jenin have killed 12 people – 10 during raids across Jenin governorate on Tuesday and two on Wednesday night.
It is still unclear how many of those killed on Tuesday were civilians, but a PA statement said that Israeli forces had “opened fire on civilians and security forces, resulting in injuries to several civilians and a number of security personnel”. The PA added that at least 35 people had been wounded.
The deaths on Wednesday occurred in Burqin, a town just to the west of Jenin city. Palestinian news network Al Quds Today reported that Muhammad Abu al-Asaad and Qutaiba al-Shalabi were killed in “an armed clash with the [Israeli] occupation forces”. Hamas’s armed wing said the two men were members of Hamas, although the Israeli military said they were affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
Meanwhile, at least 21 Palestinians have been injured in attacks committed by Israeli settlers across the West Bank since the ceasefire began on Sunday.
Where is the violence happening?
The settler violence appears to be focused on at least six villages: Sinjil, Turmus Aya, Ein Siniya and al-Lubban Ashaqiya (near Ramallah) and Funduq and Jinsafut, (both near Nablus). According to the Guardian, the six villages were identified as the homes of women and children released by the Israeli government as part of the ceasefire.
In Jenin city, the army has surrounded the government-run hospital and the nearby refugee camp, reportedly ordering the evacuation of hundreds. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz described the operation in Jenin as a “shift in… security strategy”. He said the effort was part of Israel’s military plan for the occupied West Bank and was “the first lesson from the method of repeated raids in Gaza”.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has said that it is being prevented from reaching the wounded and the bodies of the dead by the Israeli military.
Dozens of military checkpoints and barriers have been erected across the West Bank, leading to tailbacks for civilians lasting between six to eight hours.
Has Jenin been targeted before?
It has.
Israel has long accused Iran of funneling weapons to armed groups in Jenin and, specifically, its refugee camp. Jenin has long been a hotbed of Palestinian resistance, and the growth of an independent armed group, the Jenin Brigades, has particularly concerned Israel.
In December, the PA launched what was reported as the largest and most violent confrontation with armed groups in the West Bank since its expulsion from Gaza by Hamas in 2007.
Thought by many analysts to have been positioning itself as the natural administrator of post-war Gaza, the PA was accused of replicating the tactics deployed by Israeli forces in past attacks upon Jenin and elsewhere: surrounding the camp with armoured personnel carriers, firing indiscriminately at civilians, summarily detaining and abusing young men, and cutting off water and electricity supplies to the civilians inside.
Prior to the attack by the PA, there were numerous assaults upon Jenin by the Israeli military. Al Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israel in one such raid, in May 2022.
Israel targeted Jenin in July 2023, before the outbreak of the war in Gaza. During that attack, Israel’s army killed 12 people and wounded around 100, one of the most significant losses of life since an infamous military operation in 2002, during the second Intifada. Fifty-two Palestinians, half of them civilians, and 23 of the attacking Israeli soldiers were killed during that assault.
Amnesty and Human Rights Watch both accused Israel of committing war crimes during the 2002 attack.
Is this latest violence about the Gaza ceasefire?
Yes and no.
While the bulk of the Israeli army was occupied in Gaza and Lebanon, Israeli settlers launched the most violent year of attacks on record within the West Bank.
“The ceasefire wasn’t enough for the Israelis,” Murad Jadallah of the rights group Al-Haq said from Ramallah in the West Bank. “The hostage deal didn’t feel like the victory they’d been promised,” he added, suggesting the consequences of the apparent disappointment following the deaths of more than 47,000 people were now being played out across the West Bank and in Jenin.
Overall, according to statistics from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israeli settlers staged at least 1,860 attacks between October 7, 2023 – the day of the Hamas-led attack on Israel – and December 31, 2024.
“This is not what a ceasefire looks like,” Shai Parness of the Israeli rights group B’Tselem told Al Jazeera. “Ever since Israel and Hamas announced a temporary ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and a hostage and prisoner release deal, Israel has intensified its violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Parness added: “Far from holding its fire against Palestinians, Israel’s actions demonstrate it has no intention of doing so. Instead, it is merely shifting its focus from Gaza to other areas it controls in the West Bank.”
What are Israel’s plans for the West Bank?
Factors including the far-right makeup of Israel’s government and the coming to power of the overwhelmingly pro-Israel administration of United States President Donald Trump augur tough times ahead for the West Bank.
While Trump’s predecessor President Joe Biden offered unequivocal support for Israel’s war on Gaza, which has so far killed 47,283 people, some concern was expressed by his administration over the unrestrained violence meted out by settlers within the West Bank, which the Biden administration saw as having the potential to destabilise the region.
But Trump’s lifting of sanctions imposed on the settlers by the Biden administration offered a potential early glimpse of what many within Israel’s far-right have hoped for – a more indulgent US policy toward settler ambitions for the West Bank.
Within Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has found himself facing a rebellion from the right, with ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir resigning from Netanyahu’s coalition cabinet over the ceasefire deal. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has made no secret of his ambition for the West Bank to be annexed, has stayed in the government, but has promised to resign if the Gaza ceasefire leads to an end of the war.
“Smotrich has more power and influence than ever before,” Jadallah said of the negotiations to keep Smotrich on board.
“Ultimately he wants to sideline the Israeli civil administration and have the West Bank administered exclusively by settlers,” Jadallah added, detailing his view of the early steps towards the West Bank’s complete annexation by Israel.
Evidence of that new approach to the West Bank and its settlers was already becoming evident before both the ceasefire and the Trump presidency.
On Friday, Katz announced that all remaining settlers held under administrative detention, a process for individuals to be detained indefinitely without charge, would be released. Administrative detention has largely been used for Palestinian detainees, although it had previously been applied to some Israelis.
On releasing the settlers, Katz wrote in a statement that it was “better for the families of Jewish settlers to be happy than the families of released terrorists”, referring to the Palestinian women and children freed by Israel on Sunday as part of the ceasefire deal.