EDITORIAL: Just a couple of days after Gaza ceasefire, Israel intensified military operations in the occupied West Bank, especially in and around the refugee camp in Jenin, where the descendants of Palestinians dispossessed during the fateful events of 1948 have been living.
According to media reports, Israel announced evacuation orders for the residents forcing hundreds of men, women, and children to leave for an unspecified destination while its troops entered Jenin city and its refugee camp backed by drones, helicopters, and armoured bulldozers, which the occupation forces have regularly been using to demolish Palestinian homes and tear down agricultural farms for land confiscations.
At least 12 Palestinians have been killed and many others injured in the first few days of ongoing raids into Jenin.
Time and again, Israel has kept targeting Jenin, where many young men have joined resistance groups to challenge the broadening occupation of their lands. During the second Intifada in 2002, it was the scene of a major Israeli attack that claimed 52 Palestinian lives, half of them civilians; 23 Israeli soldiers were also killed.
Soldiers and settlers have since ramped up raids in the occupied West Bank. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, settlers staged at least 1,860 attacks between October 7, 2023 — when Hamas launched forays into Israel — and December 31, 2024.
In the first three weeks of the current years, Israeli forces killed 34 people, including six children, during incursions in the occupied West Bank. In Jenin, 12 people were killed and about 50 injured.
Besides, some 2000 families have been displaced, much of infrastructure destroyed, and access to Jenin’s main hospital also remains restricted.
Some see all this as an effort by Prime Minister Netanyahu to pacify far-right members of his coalition government who opposed the ceasefire deal with Hamas. But that colonial settler state harbours more sinister designs.
Its defence minister Israel Katz has made it clear that the current campaign of killings and dispossessions is not going to stop, saying it is part of the military plan for the West Bank, over which Israel claims to have biblical rights.
It is incredible that in this age and time anyone should assert ownership of another people’s lands on the basis of a religious claim and in it have the support of a modern superpower.
Included in a raft of administrative orders President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office was reversal of sanctions the previous administration had slapped on far-right settlers perpetrating violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
He thus gave the thumbs up to Israel for annexation of Palestinian lands it occupies since 1967 in blatant violation of international law.
What that meant was made plain by his nominee for UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik, during Senate confirmation hearings when she endorsed Israeli claims of biblical rights to the entire West Bank. The days ahead are fraught with trouble and uncertainty for the Middle East.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025