Earlier this week, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched an offensive in the West Bank that is being described as its largest operation there in years. In Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas, Israeli drones and snipers killed at least 17 Palestinians, reported the Middle East Eye. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said late yesterday that 20 people had been killed, including a person with disabilities and several children. Military bulldozers ploughed into critical infrastructure, cutting off communications and resources from several Palestinian cities and refugee camps. This is the latest move in a broader Israeli offensive, marked by almost daily arrests and killings in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since the war on Gaza began in October 2023.
MEE notes that for many Palestinians, the latest Israeli raids on the West Bank are a manifestation of far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s plan to annex the territory to Israel. “They are doing the same policies as in Gaza: besieging the hospitals providing medical care for injured people, cutting electricity and water, and destroying infrastructure.”
“They asked the residents of the refugee camp to leave,” he added, referring to comments made this week by Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz urging Palestinians to “evacuate” their homes. Katz claimed in an Aug. 28 posting on X that Israel was fighting an Iranian terror network in the West Bank. “We must address this threat by all necessary means, including, in some cases of intense combat, allowing the population to temporarily evacuation from one neighborhood to another within the refugee camp to prevent civilian harm and to enable the dismantling of terror infrastructures established there,” he argued. He later responded to accusations from EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell that he was calling for displacement of the Palestinian population from Gaza, “I oppose the displacement of any population from their homes,” he claimed.
A senior Fatah figure nonetheless told MEE that “empty[ing] a large number of the residents from the West Bank” is a key objective of Israel’s far-right government. In other words, ethnic cleansing.