Israeli human rights group B’Tselem warns of ‘Gazafication’ of occupied West Bank

As soon as the ceasefire in Gaza went into effect on 19 January, the Israeli government declared that it was adding the demand for “increased offensive activity” in the occupied West Bank to its official list of “war objectives”. This, said the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem on its website today, was merely a formal affirmation of Israel’s treatment of the West Bank since 7 October 2023 as another front in the “all-out war declared on the Palestinians” since the Hamas attack.

“In keeping with this approach, the Israeli regime has ramped up its oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank and adopted more extreme measures,” said B’Tselem. “These measures include extreme arbitrary violence against innocent civilians; further loosening of the permissive open-fire policy; severe movement restrictions and disruption of daily life; blanket cancellation of permits to enter Israel; and extreme limitations on access to farmland that are critically damaging livelihoods, mass arrests and the transformation of detention facilities into a network of torture camps.”

The human rights group said that, with the intensified oppression, in the northern West Bank Israel has begun replicating tactics and combat doctrines honed in its current offensive on Gaza. “This includes increased use of air strikes in civilian population centres, widespread and deliberate destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, and displacement of civilians from areas designated by the military as combat zones.”

These actions, said B’Tselem, suggest that Israel is working towards the “Gazafication” of the West Bank.

It has already been implemented in the north and, according to statements by government officials, is expected to spread to other parts of the occupied territory.

“As of March 2025, the implementation is centring on the northern West Bank, and primarily refugee camps in the Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas Districts. The military conducted a series of invasions into these camps at the start of the war, followed by Operation Summer Camps launched in August 2024, and a further escalation after 19 January 2025,” explained the organisation. “Israeli troops invaded several towns and refugee camps in the north in great numbers with bulldozers, deliberately and indiscriminately destroying civilian infrastructure, including roads and electricity, water and sewage networks.”

Hundreds of homes were bombed and partially or completely destroyed without any concrete threat associated with them, said B’Tselem. “Medical aid for residents was disrupted, and there has been massive and indiscriminate gunfire. Recently, tanks and armoured personnel carriers have been used for the first time since the second intifada.”

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Another element of Gazafication, the rights group pointed out, is the increasing use of air strikes, targeting some of the most crowded areas in the West Bank and gravely endangering civilians. From 7 October 2023 to 8 March 2025, B’Tselem documented 69 air strikes, which killed 261 people, including at least 41 children. In stark contrast, air strikes in the West Bank killed 14 people in the preceding 18 years, from 2005 to 7 October 2023.

“The lethal activity is also reflected in the permissive open-fire policy implemented by the military, which has claimed the lives of many Palestinian children. In 2024, B’Tselem monitored the killing of at least 488 Palestinians in the West Bank, 90 of them children. In 2023, 498 Palestinians were killed, 120 of them children and four of them women.”

With constant public statements about plans to expand this military activity to the rest of the West Bank, the past two years – the deadliest since the second intifada peak of 2002 – may be a preview for greater bloodshed to come.

An especially blatant manifestation of the Gazafication, noted B’Tselem, is the mass displacement of residents from refugee camps in the northern West Bank, where residents fled or were forced to leave home due to the threat of military activity.

According to UNRWA, since “Operation Iron Wall” began on 21 January 2025 in Jenin refugee camp, later expanding to the Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Al-Far’ah camps, roughly 40,000 residents have been displaced. Some have found temporary housing solutions, but many remain in makeshift Internally Displaced Persons’ camps, relying on local communities for their basic needs.

“Based on Gaza’s bitter experience,” said B’Tselem, “there is grave concern that this displacement will not be short. Recently, Defence Minister Israel Katz clarified that Israeli forces would remain in Jenin refugee camp for the coming year, during which residents would not be allowed to return.”

As stated by Israeli public figures, Israel’s war on the Palestinians following Hamas’s October 2023 attack is not confined to Gaza, but targets all Palestinians living in the various areas under Israeli control. Since the war began, the Israeli apartheid regime has radically escalated its oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank.

The occupation state is operating in the northern part of the West Bank as though it is a combat zone.

“Since the ceasefire was declared on 19 January 2025, Israel has shifted the focus of its onslaught on the Palestinians on the West Bank, and is acting there in disregard for its obligations under international law while trampling basic moral principles underfoot,” warned B’Tselem. “These actions on the ground and statements by government officials, coupled with Trump and Netanyahu’s declared plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza, raise grave concern that Israel intends to use the shift in combat to establish irreversible facts on the ground: reshaping the West Bank to further its aspiration of permanently displacing some Palestinians and forcing others into living conditions that will eventually drive them to leave.”

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