Katherine Hearst
Middle East Eye / August 28, 2024
Since declaring war on Gaza, Israeli forces have killed at least 582 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, according to an MEE tally.
Israeli forces have conducted near daily raids on towns and cities across the West Bank since declaring war on Gaza last October, killing 582 Palestinians according to a Middle East Eye tally, and detaining over 10,000 according to Palestinian advocacy groups.
The military escalation has been accompanied by a surge in Palestinian detentions, evictions, housing demolitions, Jewish settler violence and Jewish settlement expansion.
MEE details the surge in Israeli aggression in the occupied West Bank under cover of its war on Gaza:
How many military raids have been conducted since October ?
Since 7 October, Israeli forces have conducted near daily raids on towns and villages across the occupied West Bank. Al-Jazeera correspondent, Nida Ibrahim, estimated that the number of raids has “more than tripled” since Israel launched its war on Gaza.
Most of the raids target refugee camps, which Israel views as militant strongholds, with Jenin and Nur Shams enduring repeated incursions.
Here are a few examples:
On 19 October, Israeli forces besieged Nur Shams, bulldozing its infrastructure and killing at least seven Palestinians.
On 9 November Israeli forces conducted a deadly raid on Jenin city and refugee camp, killing at least 11 people.
Just over a week later, Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians during a 15-hour raid in Tulkarm in an incursion that involved bombing a home with a drone strike, tear-gassing a hospital, obstructing ambulances from reaching the wounded, and inflicting mass destruction to roads and shops.
In late December, Israeli forces launched a days-long assault on cities across the West Bank, including Hebron/Al-Khalil, Halhul, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, Al-Bireh, Jericho and Ramallah.
In January, Israeli commandos disguised as medics, patients and other Palestinian civilians raided a hospital in Jenin killing three people.
In April, Israeli forces launched another days-long assault on Jenin refugee camp, killing 14 Palestinians and leaving scores wounded.
This was followed by another large-scale incursion on the camp in June, in which Israeli forces killed five Palestinians, including a child.
How many West Bank Palestinians have been killed ?
According to an MEE tally, 582 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank since 7 October. The Palestinian health ministry puts the figure at 652.
According to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 120 Palestinian deaths were the result of settler attacks.
This is up from a death toll of 199 Palestinians killed in the first nine months of 2023.
How many have been detained ?
According to advocacy group, the Palestine Prisoners Society (PPS), Israeli forces have detained over 10,200 Palestinians in the West Bank since October.
In March, the prisoner rights group Addameer reported that 9,100 remain captive, up from 5,200 that were held in Israeli prisons before 7 October.
According to Addameer, the nature of arrests of Palestinians has become more violent since October, reporting that Israeli forces often raid and vandalize detainees’ homes, assaulting them and threatening their families.
Detainees then face dire conditions in Israeli prisons, with multiple reports detailing the systematic torture and sexual assault of Palestinians in Israeli custody.
Addameer reported that as of March this year, 10 West Bank prisoners have died in detention.
How much land has Israel seized ?
Israel has used its war on Gaza as cover for a dramatic escalation in land seizures in the occupied West Bank.
According to the Jewish settlement watchdog, Peace Now, Israel has seized 23.7 sq km (9.15 sq miles) of Palestinian land this year, exceeding the total land seized over the past 20 years combined.
Housing demolitions have also soared. Since October, Israeli authorities have punitively demolished or sealed off 38 structures, displacing 170 people. This is double the figure recorded in 2023.
According to OCHA, Israeli forces and settlers have destroyed 1,429 structures and displaced 3,244 Palestinians.
The destruction has paved the way for massive settlement expansion.
According to Peace Now, 44 settler outposts were established in 2023 and 2024, up from eight in 2022.
In 2023, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was handed sweeping powers over civil issues in the West Bank, giving his new settlements administration the power to expedite demolitions and the establishment of new settlements.
In late June, Smotrich approved five Israeli outposts, saying the move was in response to legal action by the Palestine Authority (PA) against Israel at international courts, and the recent recognition of Palestine’s statehood by five European countries.
Earlier this month, Smotrich said on X that Israel has expanded the construction of settlements “to remove the threat” of Palestinian statehood.
How many settler attacks have targeted Palestinians ?
Settlement expansion has been accompanied and enforced by a spike in settler attacks, which help to displace Palestinian herding communities in the South Hebron hills, Jordan Valley and East Jerusalem, and consolidate settler outposts.
According to OCHA, between 7 October and 12 August this year, there were around 1,250 attacks by Jewish settlers against Palestinians, resulting in at least 120 deaths, and 1,000 incidents of property damage.
The West Bank has seen a years-long increase in settler violence targeting Palestinians, with far-right groups armed by successive Israeli governments.
But according to Haaretz, since October, the attacks have intensified and received increasingly overt state backing,
The attacks often receive military supervision and have become increasingly formalized through the creation of the Israeli army’s Desert Frontier unit, which recruited members of the violent far-right settler group the Hill-Top Youth.
In May, Haaretz reported that at least 17 Palestinian farming communities had been “erased” amid ratcheting settler attacks.
On 26 February, settlers launched an attack on the town of Huwwara, setting homes and cars ablaze and killing one Palestinian.
The attack followed the fatal shooting of two Israeli settlers and was preceded by calls from several Israeli politicians for the village to be wiped out.
Katherine Hearst is a writer, film maker and organiser
