Israel’s annexation drive: The West Bank and expelling Palestinian refugees

It has the feeling of a ghastly ending, one pushed along by desperation and eagerness. First, levelling Gaza and turning it to an uninhabitable moonscape, with the promise of a territory free of Palestinians. Then, displacing and destroying the already precarious holdings of Palestinian residents in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, all the time subjecting them to curfews, arrests and detentions while aiding vigilante Jewish settlers, firming up the system of segregation and snuffing out any prospect of autonomy.

The campaign of rendering the Palestinian cause for sovereignty extinct has become an article of faith for Israel’s security forces, and spectators stare, glumly, at its crude, unceasing momentum. On 23 February, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) announced that tanks from the 188th Armoured Brigade were being deployed in Jenin as part of what it claims are “counterterrorism efforts”, a feature of an operation dubbed “Iron Wall”. The justification for the decision lay in the planting of three bombs on empty buses in the Tel Aviv area. These detonated prematurely on 20 February. Two further explosive devices were discovered on additional buses, but there were no casualties.

The impetus for the failed bombings, it was argued, came from the West Bank, although we are none the wiser about any further details, since a gag order was imposed on 21 February, intended to last until 12 March.

The move is ominous, as it is the first time that tanks have been used in the West Bank since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002. Defence Minister Israel Katz also issued a chilling instruction to the IDF to clear “nests of terror”, to eliminate infrastructure and destroy weapons “on an extensive scale.” But this operation, as with others conducted by the IDF, is characteristically brutal, involving the effective forced displacement of 40,000 Palestinians from refugee camps. According to Katz, “40,000 Palestinians have so far been evacuated [emphasis added] from the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps, and are now empty of residents. UNRWA [UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees] activity in the camps has also been stopped.”

The measure taken here has the rank smell of permanent displacement, albeit dressed up as a calculated, temporary action intended to protect Israel’s security.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates was in no doubt that the latest efforts perpetuated Israel’s “genocide, displacement and annexation” policy. The Knesset’s Cabinet Committee for Legislation has also expressed its proprietary feelings towards the territory this month by approving a bill replacing the term “West Bank” with “Judea and Samaria”. On 29 January, the Knesset passed a preliminary reading of a bill permitting Israeli settlers to register themselves as legal owners of property in the illegally-occupied West Bank.

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The IDF, according to Katz, has been “instructed… to prepare for a long stay in the camps that were cleared, for the coming year, and not allow residents to return and the terror to return and grow.” He spoke of not returning “to the reality that was in the past”, suggesting an even more radical targeting of Palestinian refugees, blended, as they are, in the mash of “terror centres” and “battalions and terror infrastructure” aided by “the Iranian evil axis, in an attempt to establish an eastern terror front.”

The Israeli operation has also involved raids against Kobar and Silwad north of Ramallah, the Beitunia neighbourhood of Ramallah, and Hebron. The long term plan here is to establish corridors similar to the Netzarim Corridor in Gaza, intended for the movement of IDF personnel and equipment. Al Jazeera reports that the IDF, in addition to conducting mass expulsions, is also engaged in destroying roads, imposing and enforcing lengthy curfews, blocking critical access points to towns, executing arrests and seizing homes for military use.

No arrangements have been put in place for the displaced Palestinians, leaving them to seek temporary and precarious shelter in community centres, event halls and mosques.

The blocking of UNRWA activity in the West Bank camps has also effectively concluded the most vital supply of humanitarian aid to the refugees.

The Israeli advocacy group, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), has noted shortages in food, power and medical supplies, along with incessant IDF efforts to obstruct “Red Crescent vehicles and humanitarian services, delaying their ability to provide first aid or transport patients for… treatment.”

The blunt savagery of these latest actions, as with the broader campaign against resistance groups by Israel, continues the reductive logic that celebrates force over peace, the use of weapons over considerations of diplomacy. The direct targeting of refugee camps in the West Bank shows that the Israeli method is one distinctly hostile to the approach advocated by Winston Churchill: “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.”

In doing so, Israeli is fecundly engendering the next generation of fighters that will, in due course, return the deadly serve with remorseless dedication. In the short term, there is also a serious risk that the West Bank operations will fray an already withering truce between Hamas and Israel in Gaza. Not that this seems to bother Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who promises a return to full scale war in Gaza if necessary.

OPINION: Israel’s West Bank offensive looks very much like a prelude to annexation