While an unstable ceasefire took effect in war-ravaged Gaza, violence against Palestinians by illegal Jewish settlers and the Israeli occupier forces went on unabated in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Ever since Israel and Hamas announced a temporary ceasefire and a hostage and prisoner release deal, Israel intensified violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Widely condemned, the onslaught can be understood in several ways. A combination of more illegal land theft, internal turmoil in the Benjamin Netanyahu government over the ceasefire deal.
And the security coordination between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government to crush armed Palestinian resistance groups. It is a complex interplay of political motivations and military actions one analyst told The Final Call.
“We have to see this in the broader context of Israel’s determination to annex the West Bank eventually, and to eliminate any resistance to its annexationist agenda,” said Mouin Rabbani, Middle East analyst and commentator.
“And given that the most intense resistance to its annexationist agenda is located in the northern West Bank, and particularly in the area of Jenin, that’s one explanation for what’s happening,” he said.
“The second explanation is the recent suspension of hostilities in Gaza and the opposition to Israel’s agreement to this deal by parties to the right of Netanyahu and his coalition government,” Mr. Rabbani reasoned.
Far-right pro-annexation members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government who wanted the Gaza war to continue threatened to quit the government if the ceasefire deal was signed.
Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, and his “Jewish Power” Party left the government in protest of Israel signing the deal. In contrast, Bezalel Smotrich, a staunch advocate for illegal settlement expansion, remained in the government. Some see the heightened attacks in the northern West Bank as a possible political appeasement to keep Mr. Smotrich in the coalition.
Israel has dubbed its attacks the “Iron Wall” claiming it aims to preserve its military’s “freedom of action” in the Occupied West Bank, neutralize the infrastructure of resistance fighters and eliminate imminent threats.

Israel removes all restraints on violence
Media reports said the incursion has expanded to the Shu’ fat camp in Jerusalem, to Hebron, and parts of Ramallah. Since the war in Gaza began, the Israeli regime has removed all restraints on its violence towards Palestinians in the entire area it controls.
Observers warned that the escalation in the West Bank will lead to devastation on the scale of what happened in Gaza where more than 47,000 people were slaughtered, 100,000 injured, with multiple thousands missing and presumed dead in the rubble.
On her X page, Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories said “Israel’s death machinery escalated its firing in the West Bank. … If it is not forced to stop, Israel’s genocide of Palestinians will not be confined to Gaza. Mark my words.”
A statement from the Jerusalem-based human rights organization, B’Tselem pointed out that although agreeing to the ceasefire, Israel’s actions demonstrate it has no intention of doing so. Instead, it is merely shifting its focus from Gaza to the West Bank.
“This is not what a ceasefire looks like,” said B’Tselem in the statement.
The ink had barely dried on the ceasefire agreement before the Israeli army blocked most access points to and from Palestinian villages, and all the cities in the West Bank, severely disrupting the daily lives of more than three million Palestinians, the statement continued.
Israeli occupier forces unleashed an air attack on the Jenin Refugee Camp in the Occupied West Bank on Jan. 21. Israel argues the attack targeted terrorists and extremists in the area. However, launching such an assault on a refugee camp bodes the question, will the real extremists please stand up?
“The attackers themselves have declared these pogroms were an act of revenge for the release of Palestinian prisoners as part of the deal,” said B’Tselem, and added, “Settlers have also blocked major intersections across the West Bank, pelting passing Palestinian vehicles with stones.”
The shelling sent occupants of the camp into a state of terror. As the operation continued, many Palestinians fled their homes in the crowded township, where descendants of Palestinians were driven from their homes during the 1948 war of Israel’s creation.
“Thank God, we were at home, we went out and asked an ambulance to take us out,” a woman who gave her name as Um Mohammad, told Reuters.
The occupier forces targeted the Jenin Government Hospital destroying roads leading to the facility and obstructing medical personnel from entering or leaving.
Multitudes of displaced Palestinians began using the hospital for refuge, fearing that Israel’s genocidal slaughter that had befallen Gaza reached them. Iyad Salahat, who was accompanying his ailing mother at the hospital during the attack, recounted the fear and uncertainty of the moment.
“We didn’t know what to do and began to imagine what happened in Gaza’s hospitals,” Mr. Salahat told Middle East Eye. “Will they storm the hospital? Will they evacuate us? Will they kill the doctors or arrest them? Everything seemed possible,” he said.
Israeli assaults on Palestinians in the West Bank are not unique. There has been ongoing agitation and gang-like intimidation of Palestinians by Israeli settlers over time.
However, Israel’s current military offensive in the West Bank stepped up two days after the Jan. 19 start of the ceasefire in Gaza, and one day after President Donald Trump revoked U.S. sanctions placed on ultranationalist Israeli settlers who attacked Palestinian villages.
In the same week of severe violence, on Jan. 20, mobs of Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians, vandalizing vehicles and burning property, near the village of al-Funduq, an area where three Israelis were killed in a shooting earlier in the month.
The military said it had opened an investigation into the incident, which it said involved dozens of Israeli civilians, some in masks, reported Alarabiya.net.
Settler violence equals state violence
Observers and analysts contend that “settler violence equals state violence” because the criminal actions of Israeli settlers occur under the supportive eye of the Israeli government. Moreover, despite Israeli settlements being illegal according to international law, settlers are allowed carte-blanche behavior with impunity toward Palestinians.
Upwards of 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, land Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war. Most countries deem Israel’s settlements on territory taken in war to be illegal. Israel claims historical and biblical ties to the land. Analysts and observers dispute that claim.
Notwithstanding, since the earliest years of the last century, European Zionists encroached on the land and entered armed aggression against the Palestinians with the implicit backing of the international community.
Voices of reason warned what the consequence would ultimately look like for such injustice.
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam, warned that bloodshed is the bitter fruit of Israel’s U.S.-backed occupation. Over several decades, he warned that usurping, forcefully removing, and illegally occupying Palestinian lands would result in bloodshed.
“America and England deposited their little brother, Israel, on foreign soil, Palestine, which is Arab land. They deprived the Arabs of their own land and sent them into exile,” said Minister Farrakhan, quoting the Honorable Elijah Muhammad from his book, “The Fall of America,” published in 1973.
The Minister made the remarks on Feb. 25, 2024, in his Saviours’ Day address titled: “What Does Allah The Great Mahdi And The Great Messiah Have To Say About The War In The Middle East.” Continuing to quote from “The Fall of America,” Minister Farrakhan discussed the consequences of these actions:
“This injustice against the Arabs is now costing America the power and authority that she once exercised in the [Middle] East. … She is on her way out of the Near East,” and “This means bloodshed and plenty of it,” said Minister Farrakhan.