The West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, is anything but a peaceful place. More than three million people live on its barely 5,600 square kilometers, nominally under the government of the Palestinian Authority, although in practice it is Israel that determines what happens there, socially, politically, economically and security-wise.
Currently, although the media’s attention is focused on the Gaza Strip, it is evident that the violence also affects the West Bank, so that, if in 2022 the number of Palestinians violently killed on its soil was around 150, in the first nine months of last year this figure already exceeded 200, and since last October 7, Israeli violence in the region has only increased, exceeding this week 660 murdered (128 in the first three weeks of August).
Added to this is now the Israeli announcement of the summer camps military operation. The area of action currently extends to the northern part of the West Bank, particularly in the cities of Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas, including the refugee camps. According to Israeli sources themselves, this is the largest operation due to the volume of troops involved since the Defensive Shield of 2002 and includes the participation of ground troops (two brigades), with air and helicopter support and with massive use of drones.
Its objective, according to Tel Aviv, is to eliminate the armed groups that have been established in the area for three years. In reality, one does not have to go very far to understand that the aforementioned operation is one more step in a plan that seeks to eliminate the very idea of a sovereign Palestinian state or, seen from the other side, that seeks the complete abolition of the Palestinian state; annexation by Israel of all the territory between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.
To this end, the governments led so far by Benjamin Netanyahu have taken care to ignore to the extreme the Palestinian Authority (also discredited in the eyes of the Palestinians due to its own mistakes and weaknesses), expanding the colonies in which they live to 700,000 settlers (including those in East Jerusalem) and humiliating its inhabitants on a daily basis, violating their most fundamental rights with impunity and hindering their development. All this, with broad international approval.
Israeli repression is structural. Starting from this tragic reality, the formation of the current government – notably with the presence of figures such as Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – has led to the acceleration of a process that leaves little doubt as to its ultimate objective: the emptying of the Palestinian population from Gaza and the West Bank to definitively form the Jewish State of Israel on the entire 22,000 square kilometers of historic Palestine.
In this sense, we understand both the intensification of violent actions by settlers inspired by their own government – it is grotesque that, drop by drop, some Western governments are beginning to approve (useless) sanctions against some of them, without wanting to go further -, as well as the Israeli armed forces.
Summer Camps – beyond a somewhat sarcastic name – is not an isolated military operation. On the contrary, it completes a scenario in which statements such as those of Foreign Minister Israel Katz must be included, openly expressing his desire for actions on the ground to be similar to those that the Israeli army is currently carrying out in Gaza, that is, with identical or similar war crimes and violations of international law. Including the “temporary evacuations” of the civilian population, that is, the expansion of the same conceptual framework of ethnic cleansing that inspires what Israel is already doing in the Gaza Strip.
Along the same lines, one must understand the measure adopted last May by the Israeli cabinet, under direct pressure from Smotrich, to transfer responsibility for managing Area B of the West Bank (established in the failed Oslo Accords and which comprises about 25% of its total extension) to the civil administration, replacing the military administration, which for decades had been responsible for managing what until now had been considered occupied territory.
The measure represents in practice a de facto annexation, added to what already exists in Area C (63% of the West Bank, under absolute control of Tel Aviv). It follows that the Palestinian Authority retains only minimal powers over the remaining 12% of the territory, which includes the cities of Bethlehem, Hebron (partially), Jericho, Nablus, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Tulkarem and Jenin, which Israeli forces have been entering at will for years.
All these are indications that highlight the growing power of the Ben Gvir-Smotrich tandem within an executive as extremist as the current one and which therefore opens up more options for them to continue expanding the settlements and massacring the Palestinians. Even if they ultimately fail to realize their delusional dream, they have sufficient means and will, as well as international political leeway, to continue to make many people suffer for a long time to come.
