When the Gaza ceasefire was announced on January 15, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank were overjoyed that Israel’s devastating war against the besieged enclave was finally over.
But violence by the Israeli state has rapidly escalated across the West Bank, with local observers and analysts describing it as a clear attempt to formally annex more land. are.
The sudden escalation in attacks on settlers and military operations by Israel has scared Palestinians in the occupied territories that they too may face the same kind of violence inflicted on their compatriots in the Gaza Strip. I believe there is. Israel has killed more than 46,900 Palestinians in Gaza since the war began in the enclave in October 2023.
“We have watched genocide occur in Gaza for 14 months and no one in the world did anything to stop it. I think they will suffer,” said Shadi Abdullah, a journalist and human rights activist from Tulkarem.
“I know we are all concerned that the situation here in the West Bank could worsen further,” he told Al Jazeera.

A changing battlefield
Hours after the Gaza ceasefire began on January 19, Israel began constructing dozens of new checkpoints in the West Bank to prevent Palestinians from gathering to celebrate the release of political prisoners. Political prisoners were released in exchange for Israeli prisoners held by Hamas. transaction.
Checkpoints also prohibited farmers from accessing their fields and sealed off civilians across cities including Hebron and Bethlehem.
Israeli settlers then expanded their illegal outposts in the West Bank and began attacking Palestinian villages. Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law, and many haphazardly constructed outposts are also illegal under Israeli law, although in many cases measures to remove them are illegal. It is rarely taken, and many become formalized later.
Tahani Mustafa, an Israel and Palestine expert at the International Crisis Group, said: “The implication of violence is that it leads to direct or related displacement, and that it prevents an incursion into the territory of a Palestinian state.” It is consistent with Israel’s objectives.”
Additionally, the Israeli military announced plans to carry out large-scale operations in the West Bank, starting with a major invasion of the Jenin camp on January 21, ostensibly to eradicate insurgents. Israel’s attacks on the West Bank predate the Gaza war, but the violence and intensity increased with the outbreak of the war.
“The settler violence and infiltration that we are seeing… shows where we are heading now,” Mustafa told Al Jazeera.
trade off?
The escalation in violence has led some to believe that new President Donald Trump may have struck a deal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to suspend the war in Gaza instead of stepping up aggression in the West Bank. .
“The ceasefire in Gaza – which looks like a humanitarian pause and a ‘hostage and prisoner deal’ – comes at a price. “Israel will never give up anything without a price, and I think you’ll see that in the West Bank, given the kind of (officials) that the Trump administration is made up of,” Mustafa said. Ta.
President Trump has not suggested there is any agreement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would allow violence to escalate in the West Bank, but he has also refused to commit to a two-state solution, and several opponents of Palestinian statehood have refused to commit to a two-state solution. appointed a person. He holds an important position within his administration.
A possible intensification of crackdowns on Palestinian fighters in the West Bank, the expansion of illegal settlements and even annexation have led Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to threaten Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fragile coalition government. This appears to be an incentive for them to stay rather than withdraw. and collapse the government as a means of protesting the ceasefire in Gaza.
Under Smotrich, Israel seized more land in the West Bank last year than in the previous 20 years combined, according to Peace Now, an Israeli nonprofit that monitors land grabbing. It was said to have been secretly confiscated.

Both Mr. Smotrich and the broader settler movement have long considered the occupied West Bank an integral part of “Greater Israel,” referring to the territory as Judea and Samaria.
Smotrich’s rapid annexation of the West Bank received little attention because of the mass killings of Palestinians and the larger crisis in Gaza, where nearly the entire pre-war population of 2.3 million people was uprooted and displaced. It wasn’t done.
settler attack
Palestinians across the occupied West Bank now claim that settlers are stepping up attacks in coordination with Israeli forces to confiscate and seize more land.
On January 20, settlers violently attacked two villages in the northern West Bank, Fandouk and Zinasuft, and further south around Masafah Yatta and Ramallah.
Local human rights groups said the settlers torched homes and cars and assaulted Palestinians under the full protection and surveillance of Israeli forces.
However, General Avi Brus, commander of the Israeli army’s Central Command, said in a statement that “any violent riot undermines security and the military will not tolerate it.”
The attack took place during President Trump’s inauguration. As one of his first acts as president, he lifted sanctions against groups and individuals the United States had previously deemed part of the “extremist settler movement.”
“We know what the settlers are aiming for,” said Abbas Milhem, secretary general of the Palestinian Farmers’ Union. “They want to move the Palestinians out of the West Bank, annex the land to Israel and impose Israeli laws.”
Ghassan Aliyan, a Palestinian living in Bethlehem, expressed his frustration to Al Jazeera.
“What these people are doing is illegal, but they don’t care about international law, Palestinian law or Israeli law,” he told Al Jazeera. “They don’t even care about God’s law.”
Attack on Jenin
In early December, armed groups in Jenin began clashes with the Palestinian Authority (PA), the government established as a result of the 1993 Oslo Accords.
The agreement revitalized a currently defunct peace process ostensibly aimed at establishing a Palestinian state across the occupied Palestinian territory, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
A key element of the Oslo Accords was to oblige the PA to eradicate and disarm armed groups as part of its security cooperation with Israel.
But as hopes for statehood waned and Israel consolidated its occupation, Palestinian camps across the West Bank were joined by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and even loosely affiliated with Fatah, the faction that controls Palestine. Numerous neighborhood armed groups have emerged.
Israel launched a major operation on January 21 after the PA failed to quell the militants in the Jenin camp, which has already left at least 10 people dead.
Local observers told Al Jazeera that even though the West Bank’s armed groups are far less capable and organized than Hamas in Gaza, Israel has strengthened its security and continued to strengthen its defense against attacks such as the one on October 7. He said he justified the operation in the name of preventing attacks from happening again. .
Murad Jadallah, a human rights monitor at the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, said: “We believe that Israel’s plan is to attack the northern West Bank in the same way it invaded Palestinian camps during the second intifada.” “There is,” he said.
Israel previously occupied the Jenin camp for 10 days during the second intifada in 2002, destroying about 400 homes and displacing about a quarter of the population, according to the United Nations Palestine Refugee Agency (UNRWA). I let it happen.
ICG’s Mustafa believes Israel will carry out further incursions and large-scale military operations across the West Bank in the coming days to crush all forms of resistance.
“The battlefield is moving from Gaza to the West Bank,” she said.