The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has taken very little time to fulfill his counterpart to the main far-right coalition partner, Religious Zionism, by remaining in the Government, despite opposing the ceasefire in Gaza. Last week, the Government already added the “reinforcement of security” in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank (of particular importance for religious nationalism and where half a million settlers reside in the Jewish settlements built in the last half century). Israeli troops began there, in the city of Jenin, this Tuesday a large-scale operation with aerial bombardments that Netanyahu has defined as “large and significant.” According to the army, “it will last as long as necessary.” In the first hours, eight Palestinians have died and another 35 have been injured, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported. Hamas has called for general mobilization in the West Bank.
Israeli troops entered Jenin at noon. In the videos recorded at the scene, you can hear shootings with automatic weapons and see Apache helicopters flying over the city. The Palestinian Red Crescent reports that soldiers are preventing ambulances from accessing the site, a common practice. The army has placed shooters on roofs and buildings so that no one can enter or leave the refugee camp, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Bezalel Smotrich, the Finance Minister to whom Netanyahu gave broad prerogatives over the West Bank in exchange for his parliamentary support and who has defined 2025 as the year of its annexation, has applauded the start of a “strong and continued” campaign for “the protection of settlements and their inhabitants.
In the city’s refugee camp there are local militias that respond less to traditional acronyms and are more closely linked to Islamic Jihad. For weeks they maintained clashes with the security forces of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), which Israel and the United States are pressuring to exercise their authority in the cities of the West Bank, particularly in the north. They ended up reaching an agreement that fell apart on Monday. The ANP forces have abandoned Jenin before the arrival of Israeli troops.
Hamas has called on the population of the West Bank “and its revolutionary youth to mobilize and intensify confrontations against the (Israeli) occupation army at all points, and to work to thwart the extensive Zionist aggression against the city of Jenin.”
Iron Wall
The army has named Operation Iron Wall, after the concept coined by the revisionist leader Zeev Yabotinsky, the ideological line to which Netanyahu’s Likud is heir. It is the idea, prior to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, that the Palestinians will fight Zionism—like any other native population faced with a colonial project—and will not seek motu proprio an agreement, because their objectives are antagonistic and they both understand it. The Zionist movement, therefore, had to develop a “strong power”, which it called the Iron Wall, that would take away all hope of stopping the process and accept negotiating from that position.
The extensive raid comes just two days after the beginning of the ceasefire in Gaza and one day after the new president of the United States, Donald Trump, lifted the sanctions against violent Jewish settlers in the West Bank that his predecessor, the Democrat Joe Biden, last year.
On the same Monday, on the eve of announcing his resignation for his responsibility in the errors that allowed the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, the Chief of the Israeli General Staff, Herzi Halevi, predicted “significant operations” in the West Bank “in the next few days in order to prevent and catch the terrorists before they reach our civilians.”
The army has been closing military checkpoints, access to roads used by both Israeli and Palestinian settlers, and barriers to prevent entry or exit from Palestinian towns. The difficulties in accessing Jerusalem and moving between West Bank cities have left endless traffic jams since Monday, with drivers detained in their vehicles for up to 10 hours.
