Violence surges in the West Bank following Gaza attack on Israelis

Concerns are rising that the clashes could spill over into an all-out confrontation between Palestinians and Israel in the territory.

Tires are torched at the end of a Palestinian solidarity rally in Hebron. Picture: AFP

Israel’s devastating bombing campaign on Gaza after last week’s Hamas attack has fuelled deadly violence in the West Bank, where concerns are rising that the territory could erupt into another front in the war.

In the wake of the Hamas attack that killed 1400 Israelis, most of them civilians, in southern Israel, Jewish settlers have attacked Palestinians and security forces have clashed with protesters, as Israel tightens its grip on the area to prevent further attacks.

At least 56 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian health authorities. The United Nations said the past week has been the deadliest for West Bank Palestinians since at least 2005. More than 1100 have been injured in the West Bank.

Since the attack by Hamas, a group that is designated by the US as a terrorist organisation, Israel says it has dropped about 6000 bombs targeting the group in the Gaza Strip and is preparing for an invasion of the enclave. That could fuel further confrontations in the West Bank and push the territories closer to an all-out confrontation with Israel.

More than 2300 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the past week, about half of them women and children. The casualties have triggered protests across the West Bank, including in Ramallah and the towns of Jenin and Nablus.

“The grief and anger is palpable,” said Yara Hawari, Ramallah-based senior analyst of the think tank Al-Shabaka: the Palestinian Policy Network. “Gaza and the West Bank are not separate entities. They are divided, but culturally and socially they belong very much together.”

The current hostilities come after a prolonged Israeli military operation in the West Bank, in response to a series of attacks inside Israel, including in Tel Aviv, earlier this year. A total of 35 Israelis, including 26 civilians, were killed this year as of August, according to Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service. Despite international efforts to ease tensions, violence had continued to escalate leading up to the Hamas attack from Gaza.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government has included ultranationalist parties that have pushed for expanding Jewish sovereignty in the West Bank. Settlers have in turn characterised clashes with Palestinians as self-defence.

The first two months of this year were the deadliest start to any year in the West Bank in over two decades, as a result of Israeli military raids deep in Palestinian-administered territory in what Israeli officials say was a response to terrorism.

Moreover, Palestinian militant groups in the West Bank have stockpiled caches of illegal weapons, some from Iraq and Syria, that have helped destabilise the territory. The increase in weapons smuggling also reflects the weakening of the Palestinian Authority’s grip on security over the territory, as new militant groups jockeyed for power in recent months.

“I’m very concerned about what’s happening in the West Bank,” said Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Centre, but added that another intifada, or uprising, wasn’t “inevitable.” “The question is whether the Palestinian people in the West Bank will be deterred by the dramatic visions they will see in Gaza, or whether they will demonstrate their solidarity,” said Milshtein, who is also former head of Palestinian affairs in the military intelligence of the Israel Defence Forces.

For two years across the West Bank, Palestinians have experienced a surge in armed settlers attacking their homes and destroying property, according to the United Nations.

Sixteen Palestinians were killed on Friday across the West Bank. Earlier in the week, three Palestinian men were killed in a settler attack in the village of Qusra near Nablus, according to Palestinian authorities. The day after, settlers attacked the funeral, killing another two men.

The IDF didn’t reply to requests for comment.

In a video shared by the Israeli human-rights organisation B’Tselem, a man who the group said was an Israeli settler, accompanied by an Israeli soldier, is seen entering the West Bank village of Tuwani near Hebron and shooting an unarmed man in the stomach from close range. Storyful, which is owned by The Wall Street Journal’s parent company, News Corp, confirmed the location of the incident in the video and corroborated the date. The Israeli military didn’t reply to a request for comment.

Since the Hamas attack, the Israeli military says it has arrested 330 people in raids across the West Bank, including 190 alleged operatives of Hamas, which is present but not dominant in the territories. The IDF says it has thwarted more than 10 terrorist attacks in the West Bank since the start of the war.

Israeli forces have closed crossings into the West Bank and used checkpoints and roadblocks to cut the northern and southern parts of the territory off from each other. Access has also been blocked to sites that have been flashpoints in past protests, such as the town of Huwara, where only Israelis now have access to the road. Wajih Odeh, a resident of Huwara, said shops there had been closed for a week and residents needed permission even to take the garbage out.

In the Bedouin community of Wadi al-Siq east of Ramallah, settlers drove all the residents out with force, attacking them as they left, said Abdallah Abu Rahmeh of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, who said settlers attacked the community late Wednesday. The attackers looted a home, broke solar panels and threatened to set the encampment on fire, Abu Rahmeh said.

“Under the cover of what’s happening in Gaza, settlers and soldiers feel emboldened to commit violations of Palestinian rights in the West Bank,” the think tank’s Hawari said. “The atmosphere that the Israeli government is creating is encouraging settlers to take matters into their own hands.”

The Wall Street Journal