In Gaza, the guns remain silent. But the Israeli war machine has migrated, not retired. On 21 January, 48 hours after Gaza’s ceasefire, Israel launched “Operation Iron Wall”, which, using ground forces and airpower, seeks to eliminate armed Palestinian groups. The campaign’s focus is mainly on Jenin (home to a large refugee camp) in the northern West Bank but also extends to other areas, such as Tulkarm in the north-west. And the appearance of hundreds of checkpoints across other West Bank towns, as well as mass detentions, could portend a wider offensive across the territory. Gaza has been allowed to exhale, but Israel’s offensive against the Palestinian people continues – and risks provoking an Intifada-style mass revolt in response.
The West Bank has been roiled by occasional violence since 7 October 2023, but this represents a decided and strategic shift from Israel. Operation Iron Wall may be the result of a deal that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the far-right Religious Zionist Party. Netanyahu was desperate to prevent him from resigning in protest at the Gaza deal, following the security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. It’s also possible that President Trump, whose ultimatum apparently led Netanyahu to accept the Gaza ceasefire, gave him carte blanche in the West Bank: on Friday (24 January) the United States dropped its sanctions against West Bank settlers who used violence against Palestinians.
Whatever the catalyst for Iron Wall, Jenin in particular is under massive attack, and not just in the past few days. Since December, it has been raided and blockaded by the security forces of the Palestinian Authority (PA) – the Palestinian political representation now derided by its people as Israel’s gendarme. Their goal was to root out the Jenin Brigades, a coalition that includes Hamas, the Al-Quds Brigades, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. But Operation Iron Wall opens a new chapter because the Israel has far more firepower and troops than the PA.
The IDF has laid siege to Jenin’s hospitals, surrounded its sprawling refugee camps, bulldozed homes and stores, destroyed water and sewage mains, displaced as many as 3,000 families, and disrupted electricity and water supplies (including to the Jenin Government Hospital). Israel’s offensive is nowhere in the league of its Gaza War. Still, the West Bank Palestinians worry, based on the remarks of Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz and the hardline Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, that some parts of the IDF’s Gaza playbook could be used in Jenin as well as other towns.
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