People inspect a completely burned and destroyed vehicle following an Israeli drone strike in the northern West Bank city of Tubas on 3 December 2024. Two Palestinians were killed in the Israeli attack. [Getty]
Ibtisam Darwish sits every day at the graves of her four sons who were killed by Israel in a single air strike near the city of Jenin in January last year.
Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, it also increased air strikes on the occupied West Bank after pausing them for nearly two decades.
The Israeli army recently announced that it had killed 770 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the war on Gaza, and launched 110 air strikes during which nearly 200 Palestinians were killed and 6,000 others were arrested.
‘With one missile’
On 7 January 2023, Ibtisam woke up to a phone call. One of her sons was asking her to check on his four brothers, who had gone out to spend the night with their relatives in the Muthalath Alshuhada area, west of Jenin, after he heard the sound of an explosion nearby.
She tried to call them, but their phones were off, then she browsed social media sites to find circulating videos of four young men lying on the ground covered in their blood.
“I knew they were my sons. I recognised them by their clothes. One missile killed them all. Alaa, 29, Hazza, 26, Ahmed, 25, and Rami, 22. I ran screaming outside the house and went on foot to the place, which is hundreds of meters away from my house.”
When she arrived to the site, the ambulance had taken them to the hospital. This was the first time the area had been targeted by an air strike.
Of the eight sons, only three remained for Ibtisam, one of them is Hazza’s twin, and because the place of the bombing was a main public street, she is forced to always pass by it and remember what happened.
“The hole where the missile was located is still there. Whenever I pass by, I remember that black day when Israel killed my sons without any fault,” Ibtisam said.
Akshaya Kumar, crisis advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, wrote in an article last year that the fighting in the occupied West Bank has reached the level of an armed conflict, and therefore, Israeli forces must comply with rules governing humanitarian law, which permit the use of lethal force only in very limited circumstances, and only when less aggressive methods are insufficient to achieve these goals.
Kumar further elaborated that the United Nations found that Israel was returning to “what resembles more lethal war tactics.” After years without any attacks from the sky, hundreds of Palestinians were killed by Israeli air strikes in the occupied West Bank, nearly 40 of whom were killed in just one month.
“Any intentional use of deadly force that is not strictly necessary in each case to prevent an imminent threat to life is inappropriate as a law enforcement tool. According to the United Nations, Israeli air strikes in refugee camps killed children in their homes and on the street, and a man preparing milk for his child in his kitchen,” Kumar wrote.
“The world’s eyes have been on Gaza for months, but preventing atrocities is necessary in the West Bank as well,” she concluded.
Security pressure
With the air strikes, the Israeli army also intensified raids on cities and villages in the occupied West Bank, and recently announced additional regular forces will be brought to fight there.
The Palestinians in the occupied West Bank argue that the aim of the increase in Israel’s aerial bombardment seeks to reassure the illegal Israeli settlers that the Israeli air force is capable of pursuing Palestinian armed resistance.
An expert on Israeli affairs, Jalal Rummana, told The New Arab that the security situation is the main priority for Israelis, and that feeds into recent months’ events on several fronts, including the occupied West Bank.
“Israel had partial success in controlling the security situation in the occupied West Bank, and is resorting to ensuring its security even though it knows that the situation is heating up due to the continuation of its war on the Gaza Strip,” according to him.
“The use of drones and warplanes are field military methods determined by the Israeli military commander because they are the least harmful and dangerous in removing what they consider a threat to them,” he added.
The success of some Palestinians in the West Bank in resisting Israel’s security from time to time puts it under security pressure, especially since it believes that it’s fighting in Gaza has not resolved anything.
“Israel is afraid of an escalation due to the continued aggression against Gaza, so it is trying to pursue any form of resistance in the West Bank, even if it is by intensifying air strikes,” Rummana concluded.
