By Alex Rutherford
AT THE end of August, the Israeli military launched its largest assault on the occupied West Bank for two decades, involving hundreds of soldiers supported by aircraft, drones and bulldozers. So far at least 20 Palestinians have been killed in the attacks, and key infrastructure such as roads and water lines has been destroyed by IDF bulldozers. The Israeli military is conducting raids in Jenin, Nablus, Tubas and Tulkarem.
In scenes reminiscent of the prelude to the horrifying attack on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, Israeli troops have cut off access to hospitals in Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas. There are also reports of a raid on the al-Ansar mosque in Jenin, where 70% of the infrastructure has been destroyed.
Meanwhile, Israel continues its genocide of the people of Gaza, with the population having been forcibly transferred into an area one tenth the size of the Strip.
This dramatic military escalation is not taking place in a vacuum. Since Israel began its campaign of genocide against the people of Gaza on 7 October 2023, there has been a marked uptick in the growth of illegal Israeli settlements. Far-right Zionist settlers are on the rampage.
According to human rights organisation B’Tselem, Israeli settlers have forced Palestininans out of at least 18 villages and over 600 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank. Even before the genocide began, only 3% of official investigations into settler violence resulted in a conviction. Meanwhile, more than 9,300 Palestinians living in the West Bank have been arrested.
Colonisation
Israel’s war against the Palestinian people has been ongoing for decades before the October escalation; in fact attacks have been increasing in ferocity ever since Netanyahu returned to power in 2022, supported by the far right. His cabinet includes representatives of the West Bank settler movement, such as Belazel Smotrich (now responsible for construction in the West Bank) and Itamar Ben-Gvir (now responsible for its policing).
A huge source of fear for many Palestians, especially in the West Bank, has been the land grabs that force Palestinians out of a town or village and sees them taken over and occupied—or in many cases destroyed. This tactic has been used for years to attempt to any place Palestinians can call home.
Their fears have been amplified further by the provocative remarks of Ben Gvir, who has promised to build a synagogue on the al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site.
In the midst of the Israeli assault on the West Bank, Foreign Minister Israel Kats has called for the ‘temporary’ evacuation of Palestinians from the West Bank. As seen in Gaza, such calls for evacuation are in reality legal cover for ethnic cleansing and annexation. There will be nothing ‘temporary’ about it; any Palestinian who is forced to leave their home in the West Bank will not be returning—at least not without a fight.
As more and more Palestinian land is strangled by the tendrils of the far-right settlements, the people are under greater and greater threat of being rendered entirely stateless, paving the way for their total and permanent removal. That is called genocide in any language. Resisting this threat is the urgent task of the Palestinian people and their supporters, wherever they live.
However, the Palestinians do not have access to the arsenal of global imperialism to defend themselves with. The toothless Palestinian Authority has lost all credibility, and the people of the West Bank cannot rely on it to protect them from the Zionist war machine. Instead, they must rely on the mass struggle of the working class, by carrying out another uprising, a Third Intifada. In imperialist countries like Britain that back Israel we must win workers to taking action to put a stop to all aspects of support – economic and military – which fuel the Zionist war machine
