From a Palestinian home illegally turned into a military base in Tulkarm, occupied West Bank, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared last week he had ordered his army to intensify military raids in the occupied West Bank, ongoing since January 21.
Netanyahu’s escalation followed bombing incidents in Tel Aviv on February 20. While no Palestinian political faction has claimed responsibility for the bombing, Israeli police have reportedly arrested an Israeli Jewish suspect engaged in the bombing and subsequently enforced a gag order on the incident.
The PM’s call for escalation comes amid an ongoing month-long military operation in the West Bank dubbed “Iron Wall,” launched just 48 hours after the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel went into effect on January 19th.
Operation Iron Wall involves more than 12 military battalions, the Israeli Shin Bet (intelligence), and border police in one of the largest and most expansive military operations to take place in the West Bank since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.
The offensive has brought death, destruction, and mass displacement into this side of the Palestinian occupied territories, threatening a repeat of the carnage in Gaza and paving the way for ethnic cleansing and Israeli annexation of illegally occupied Palestinian territory.
The Gaza doctrine
In the span of four weeks since, Israeli forces and intelligence units have killed more than 57 Palestinians in the West Bank, of those 8 were children, including two-year-old Laila Al-Khateeb, who was killed with a bullet to the head while in her home in Jenin.
Beyond this, Israeli forces have deployed Merkava tanks to Jenin while the use of airstrikes, quadcopters, drones, armored vehicles and snipers has become common practice in the West Bank.
According to the Israeli Minister of Defence, Israel Katz, the operation serves as a “shift in security strategy,” in the West Bank signalling a more aggressive approach to target what Israel claims as “Iran-backed terrorists.”
Operation Iron Wall began with undercover Israeli special operations units entering Jenin in the early hours of dawn on January 21. Their first kill was 16-year-old Mutaz Abu Tbeikh and within hours, another 11 Palestinians were killed.
According to residents from the camp, the majority of resistance fighters had left the camp within the first few days of the invasion. At that point, Israeli forces began forcing families out of their homes using quadcopters, shoulder-propelled grenades, airstrikes, and live ammunition.
Mothers that were trying to escape report being shot when trying to leave the camp along with their children.
The operation initially focused on the northern areas of the West Bank, namely Jenin, and Tulkarm. However, on January 29th, just a week into the operation, and after Israeli forces had effectively depopulated Jenin and Tulkarm refugee camps, Israel’s minister of Defence, Katz arrived to Jenin refugee camp to make a public statement. “We will not be leaving Jenin,” Katz said via video.
Shortly after, the army began expanding operations towards Tubas, 22 km southeast of Jenin. Hours after Katz’s statement, the Israeli army bombed a building in Tamoun, south of Tubas, and killed 10 people in a single strike. Following the attack, the army took hold of Faraa refugee camp 4 km southwest Tubas, waging another depopulation campaign.
In three weeks, more than 45,000 Palestinians were displaced in the north of the West Bank, and while the Israeli army focused on the refugee camps, no one was spared in Jenin and Tulkarm.
Israeli forces not only forcibly displaced families from the camps, but in turn turned the entire West Bank to a hostile environment and a warzone.
In a similar fashion to Israeli practices in Gaza, the army employed a series of punitive measures against the entire Palestinian population in the north of the West Bank, which is home to more than 550,000 Palestinians (nearly 17% of the West Bank).
Israeli bulldozers destroyed civilian infrastructure, including the intentional demolition of homes, and streets as well as targeted destruction of water pipes, electric wiring, and telecommunication towers.
War on Palestinian health
Hospitals and medical personnel were attacked and treated with ruthlessness, noting that the besiegement of the only public hospitals available in each district, effectively left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians without access to medical care.
“They’re unlike anything I’ve ever seen before,” Ahmad Zahran, a paramedic in Tulkarm tells TNA. “I’ve seen them during Operation Summer Camps last August, and they were vicious, but this time it’s another insanity,” he said.
In Tulkarm, I witnessed a woman in labor holding her belly as she waited outside in the cold. “I’m waiting for the army to allow the ambulance to pick me up,” she said, holding a bag and sitting on the concrete in the street.
It was hours until Israeli soldiers allowed paramedics to coordinate an ambulance to pick her up and take her to the hospital, which was only a few meters away.
Unlike Tulkarm, in Jenin, the only public hospital was intentionally put out of function. It nearly ran out of water and fuel within the first week, and it took days of coordination to convince the Israeli army to allow water and fuel into the hospital. Patients, including those who needed life-saving care were evacuated as a result of the continued bombing campaign Israel raged inside Jenin refugee camp- which is adjacent to the hospital.
“You need to understand that Israel is impacting medical access for more than 350,000 Palestinians in the district of Jenin,” Dr. Wasim Bakr, the director of Jenin public hospital told TNA. “With the attack, patients began to leave and you can see that the entire road leading to the hospital has been destroyed,” Bakr explained.
Mohammad Fahmawi, 72, was on kidney dialysis when he evacuated the first week of the operation as the hospital became dangerous. His face pale and on a wheelchair his family hauled him through the bulldozed streets towards a private car to take him home. I asked him what will do now for treatment, in a weak voice he said, “there’s not much to do.” Two days later, Fahmawi died.
Even before Operation Iron Wall, Israeli forces have been on a killing spree in the West Bank. In the first 19 days of January, Israeli forces killed 25 Palestinians in the West Bank, five of whom were children or minors. Beyond this, the last 15 months in the West Bank were marked by death at an average rate of two Palestinians killed every day, while thousands- of mostly boys and men- were being hauled en masse to Israeli torture camps.
“Look, I think that’s my house,” Abu Imad, 60 tells TNA. Standing on a hill overlooking Jenin refugee camp he watches as the bangs of bombs persist followed by clouds of black smoke. It’s just the second week of the operation and Abu Imad has been displaced along with his family. Unable to do anything to stop the attack, he, like the thousands like him, are instead left to watch as the army destroys what remains of the camp.
While armed resistance groups in areas such as the Old City in Nablus, Jenin refugee camp and Tulkarm refugee camp were able to obstruct Israeli incursions for two years between 2021 and 2023, Gaza offered Israel a new precedent to unleash a wrath of violence never witnessed.
Hundreds of emptied homes and residential buildings were bombed to rubble in Jenin and Tulkarm, while dozens others were burned by Israeli soldiers.
“The Israeli army is a vengeful one,” Abu Imad says. Still watching the clouds of smoke ahead, he holds his tears and says “they see Jenin as Gaza,” he said.
Annexation rehearsal
At the same time, the Palestinian Authority’s security forces are not only greenlighting the violence, but actively participating in it. When Israeli forces entered Jenin refugee camp on January 21 PA security forces were still inside. Operation Iron Wall was waged while the PA was finishing its six-week long Operation Protect Home, in which at least 11 Palestinians, including children were killed in Jenin refugee camp.
That same day, the Palestinian Security Forces spokesperson Col. Brig. Anwar Rajab said in a statement that PSF forces left the camp to “avoid direct confrontation with the Israeli army.” However, within days, PSF were back inside Jenin refugee camp participating in the aggression as PSF security heads stationed in Jenin through direct coordination with the Israeli intelligence.
Throughout Operation Iron Wall, dozens of Palestinians, suspect in being fighters with the Jenin Brigade, as well as others who held no affiliation were arrested by the PA and subject to torture and ill-treatment.
The PA also used parts of the public hospital as torture and detention rooms. At the same time, the PSF did nothing to protect civilians or the civilian infrastructure which is de jure under their full military and administrative jurisdiction according to the Oslo agreements.
It is noteworthy that Jenin, Tulkarm, Tubas, and Nablus are significant geopolitical locations bordering the northern areas of the Jordan Valley- a key area for Israeli settler-expansion.
Since 2020, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has been vowing for annexing the Jordan Valley, and in March 2023 Israeli government officials have amended the Disengagement Law of 2005 to allow for legalizing the Israeli settlements of Sa-Nur, Homesh, Kadim, and Ganim- all of which are within the district of Jenin.
For Palestinians it has been clear that this is not like any other previous aggression by Israel, but an intentional and explicit declaration of war in the service of Israel’s larger settler expansionist project.
Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich has characterized Operation Iron wall as an “intense and prolonged operation,” and is “part of the war objectives added to the Cabinet at the request of the Religious Zionism party.”
According to the Israeli minister of defense, Israeli forces will remain in the camps throughout the upcoming year. More than four weeks into the operation, inside Jenin refugee camp, Israeli forces have begun erecting new street signs in Hebrew, deploying E-Lynx SDR mobile radio station signalling a longer presence.
At the same time, Israeli police have begun fining civilian cars in Jenin for having shaded windows, a statement of de facto administrative control over the area.
The Operation also comes months after the UN General Assembly voted to deem Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza illegal under international law. This means that not only are these offensives, such as Operation Iron Wall, and the dozens of operations which precede it, are illegal, but Palestinians have the right to resist and fight back by all means necessary under international law.
Mariam Barghouti is a writer and journalist based in the West Bank. She has been covering the region as a reporter and analyst for ten years, served as the senior Palestine correspondent for Mondoweiss, and is a member of the Marie Colvin Journalist Network.
Follow her on X: @MariamBarghouti
