Israel has made the most important demolitions for years in the West Bank
The Israeli forces carried out an unprecedented climbing in the West Bank during the weekend by exploding 20 residential buildings in the Jénine refugee camp, in the north of the West Bank. According to some observers, this is the largest demolition operation carried out in the West Bank since 1967.
Local journalists report that the Israeli army warned the Israelis of the neighboring colonies that they would hear strong explosions, while the troops exploded an entire residential block in the Damaj district in Jenine. Local residents and media sources have compared the effect of destruction to the “fire belt” strategy used by Israel in Gaza, which consists in bombing in a concentrated and repetitive way of small areas, destroying whole residential islets.
This massive demolition is the latest of the Israeli offensive underway in the north of the Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Israel has so far killed 25 Palestinians as part of the Jénine offensive launched two weeks ago and baptized “Iron Wall Operation”.
The Israeli army claims to have killed 50 Palestinian “terrorists” and have arrested more than 100. However, the figures from Palestinian sources indicate that the majority of people killed are civilians. The armed branch of Hamas, the Qassam brigades, recognized only three of its members as having been killed during the operation – two in Tulkarem and one in Jenine.
Among the victims of this vast offensive, a two-year-old girl, Leila al-Khatib, was killed by Israeli fire during a raid near Jénine. The last victim is an elderly man, Waleed Lahlouh, 73, who was killed on Sunday by an Israeli sniper while he returned to inspect his house in the camp.
Israel started his offensive in mid-January with a vast attack on Jenin, but has since extended it to Tulkarem and Tubas, also located in the north of the West Bank. In Tulkarem, Israeli forces continued to demolish houses in the Tulkarem refugee camp and other infrastructure in the city, including the external staircases of the Tulkarem courthouse. In Tobas, Israeli forces have descended in the Faraa refugee camp and arrested a number of Palestinians, while in the neighboring city of Tammoun, Israeli troops forced the inhabitants to leave the periphery of the city. Still in Tammoun, Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians during an air strike last Thursday, marking one of the heaviest balances of a single air strike in the West Bank so far.
The forced displacement of the Palestinians of their cities and their refugee camps is the main characteristic of the current offensive. In Jénine, almost 90 % of the 17,000 residents of the camp left him, according to the mayor of Jénine, Muhammad Jarrar. In Tulkarem, around 75 % of the 9,900 inhabitants of the camp were forced to leave, according to the governor of Tulkarem, Abdallah Kameel. In Tammoun, the Israeli army warned forced families from not returning for three weeks, reports the governor of Tobas, Ahmad Asad.
The United Nations Agency for Aid for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA, said in a statement on Monday that it was unable to provide its services in the Jénine refugee camp for months and that 13 of his schools in the north of the West Bank remained closed.
At the beginning of last week, Israeli Minister of War, Israel Katz, said in a television intervention from Jénine camp that Israeli forces would not leave Jénine, even after the end of the offensive. Katz also said that Israel would extend the offensive to the rest of the West Bank.
Israeli climbing in the West Bank comes when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives in Washington to meet US President Donald Trump. The two men are expected to meet on Tuesday to discuss the second to come from the ceasefire in Gaza, among other subjects, such as politics towards Iran and the situation in the West Bank.
In the past two weeks, Trump has repeatedly asked Jordan and Egypt to welcome mass The Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, which was criticized as a call for ethnic purification. Although Egypt and Jordan officially expressed their rejection of this proposal, Trump insisted that he was convinced that the two Arab countries “will do it”. Trump’s appeal to the massive movement of Gaza Palestinians was welcomed by far-right Israeli leaders, including former Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and the current Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich.
Mr. Smotrich had declared in a speech delivered at a meeting of the Yesha council of the colonists last November that Israel should “encourage” the emigration of 2.2 million Palestinians from Gaza (that is the entire population of Gaza), adding that such a massive expulsion “would create a previous one” to do the same thing in the West Bank. Some analysts believe that Netanyahu could ask Trump to leave his hands free in Israel in the West Bank in exchange for the continuation of the second phase of the talks on the ceasefire in Gaza.
Smotrich greeted the appointment by Netanyahu on Monday on Monday of a new Chief of the Israeli Army, Eyal Zamir, who was described as close to Mr. Netanyahu and the Israeli right. Zamir said last Sunday that 2025 “will be a year of war”, echoing the previous statements of Smotrich according to which this year will be that of the annexation of the West Bank by Israel.
These developments take place at the same time as the official ban by Israel of UNRWA in Palestine, which entered into force last Thursday. This plan threatens to make one of the last rescue buoys disappear from the Palestinian refugee communities, which are simultaneously the subject of a brutal military campaign. On Sunday, UNRWA said that he had not received any warning from the Israeli army concerning its operations in the West Bank and that it could not contact the Israeli army, Israeli law prohibiting any state organization communicate with the agency.
Qassam Muaddi is Palestine specialist editor for Mondoweiss. Follow it on Twitter/X to @Qassammuaddi.
Translation: JB for the media agency Palestine
Source: Mondoweiss
