Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau
Mondoweiss / January 8, 2025
The Palestinian Authority’s deadly military operation in Jenin continues to fan the flames of internal tensions in the West Bank. Meanwhile, Israeli leaders are calling for ‘Gaza-like’ operations in the West Bank, and to cut all ties with the PA.
The occupied West Bank has returned to the headlines in recent weeks, as tensions spurred on both by Israel and the Palestinian Authority threaten to destabilize an already volatile situation in the territory.
On Tuesday, tensions flared after the killing of three Israelis and the wounding of eight in a shooting attack near Qalqilya, in the north east of the Palestinian territory. The shooting provoked a series of Israeli reactions, with high-ranking officials calling for large-scale “Gaza-like” Israeli military actions in the West Bank.
Following the shooting near Qalqilya, Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich stated that Israel should “pass from defense to offense” in the West Bank, adding that “Jenin and Nablus must look like Jabalia so that Kfar Saba wouldn’t look like Kfar Azza.” Jabalia is the city in northern Gaza that was the target of a massive ethnic cleansing campaign by the Israeli military late last year, resulting in the near total de-population of the area, widespread destruction, and the killing and abduction of hundreds. Kfar Saba is a city in central Israel, and Kfra Azza is the Israeli kibbutz in the south that was attacked on October 7, 2023.
Far-right Israeli National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, commented on the shooting in Qalqilya saying that “those who seek to end the war in Gaza will have a war in the West Bank,” and called to “cut all ties with the Palestinian Authority,” which according to him “supports terror.”
The head of the Israeli settlements’ councils, Yossi Dagan, called upon the Israeli army to increase its crackdown on Palestinians, arguing that “if the army had sealed off Nablus and inspected every person going in and out of it, the attack wouldn’t have happened,” calling the state of Israel to “confiscate all Palestinian weapons and fight Abu Mazen [the president of the Palestinian Authority] who allows these acts.”
On Monday, the Israeli cabinet met to discuss the situation in the West Bank, upon the request of Bezalel Smotrich. Following the meeting, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu announced that Netanyahu had approved “new defense and attack measures in the West Bank.” Israel’s war minister Yizrael Katz also said that Israel “will not tolerate a reality in the West Bank similar to the one in Gaza,” adding that the Israeli army “will conduct wide operations in the [Palestinian] towns where terrorists come from.”
Israel has been carrying out large military offensives in the West Bank, especially its northern part for more than three years. However, these new threats are especially alarming as they come only two weeks before the inauguration of the Trump administration, believed to be supportive of Israeli plans to annex the West Bank. In November, Smotrich said that 2025 will be the year of Israel annexation of the West Bank.
Palestinian Authority continues deadly Jenin operation
The Israeli calls for escalation in the West Bank come amidst an ongoing military campaign by the Palestinian Authority, the body that has limited governance in areas of the West Bank, against Palestinian armed resistance groups the Jenin refugee camp.
The clashes between Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF) and the Jenin Brigade fighters have so far left 14 Palestinians killed, including six PASF members, one Jenin Brigade fighter, and seven civilians, including children and a journalist. Throughout its operation, which the PA launched in early December 2024, it has cut off electricity and water to the camp, drawing backlash from residents and the resistance fighters alike, who accused the PA of “enforcing a siege” on Jenin. The spokesperson of the PA security forces, Anwar Rajab, has rejected the accusations, saying that “circulation in and out of the camp” continues normally, and accused the Jenin Brigade fighters of shooting at electricity and water maintenance teams.
“We’ve been living for a month without electricity,” a resident of the Jenin camp who requested anonymity told Mondoweiss. “People gather at night around fire stoves, while some young men try to extend electricity cables from poles outside of the camp,” they described. “Clashes erupt suddenly and then calm down, but people prefer to stay indoors to avoid stray fire, and they avoid going on the roof after a man and his son were shot on the house roof.”
“Many people left the camp entirely, and only those who have no relatives outside the camp remain,” they went on. “I myself left to my aunt’s house in the city, and when I came back to the camp to check on the house, the PA security forces inspected my identification document and kept it before letting me in, and gave it back to me when I came back to leave the camp again,” they said. “Life inside the camp is paralysed, everything is closed, and those who can leave are leaving,” they added.
According to the Jenin camp’s popular services committee, around 3,000 out of the 15,000 residents of the camp have left due to the fighting. Such mass exoduses from the camp have previously been witnessed during similar days-long operations by the Israeli military, which frequently attacks Jenin and the refugee camp to target the resistance fighters there.
The escalation of events in Jenin has raised tensions in the West Bank, with Palestinians outraged at the PA’s actions. On social media, many Palestinians have called the operation “a shame” and accused the PA of fighting the resistance for political gains, either to make itself relevant to the coming Trump administration, and to Israel, in order to maintain some power in the West Bank under a potential annexation, or in post-war governance in Gaza.
The PA, for its part, has continued to insist that its operation is aimed at “taking the Jenin camp back from outlaw elements,” and “preventing turning the West Bank into Gaza,”. PASF spokesperson Anwar Rajab also said that “the outlaws in Jenin want to weaken the PA to fulfil regional agendas and destroy the Palestinian national project.”
Meanwhile, the PA has extended its crackdown to other areas of the West Bank, conducting a series of arrests in the West Bank, targeting resistance fighters and Palestinian citizens who have criticized the PA’s operation in Jenin. Ammar Dweik, the head of the Palestinian independent commission for human rights, the official Palestinian human rights watchdog, said on Sunday that there have been “at least 150 arrests, some of them of Jenin Brigade members, but some of their family members.” Dweik also said that there have been reports of mistreatment of detainees documented in video footage.
The PA also ordered the shutdown of Al-Jazeera’s office in Ramallah and banned its activities in the territories controlled by the PA. The widely criticized move came after the channel aired critical coverage of the PA’s Jenin operation. After the ban, which has been compared to a similar shut down of Al Jazeera by Israel last year, Palestinian internet providers blocked Al Jazeera’s stream from their services in compliance with the PA’s order. The decision received backlash from local and international media and human rights organizations, including Reporters Without Borders, the Palestinian human Rights Center, and the UN secretary General Antonio Guterres.
In response to the PA’s crackdown, the human rights commission called upon the PA to open an investigation into all the cases of killed Palestinians in Jenin from both sides, and to release the results to the public. Meanwhile, a coalition of Palestinian political parties, civil society bodies, unions, and public figures including some members of Fatah, the PA’s ruling party, launched a “social initiative” to end the crisis in Jenin, calling on both sides to show self-restraint and resort to dialogue. The initiative presented a proposal for a “holistic national dialogue” to contain the crisis and prevent its expansion to other parts of the Palestinian territory.
The internal Palestinian escalation in Jenin comes on the heels of several years of rising social tensions in the West Bank. While armed resistance groups in the West Bank, which have seen a resurgence over the past three years, have received widespread public support and popularity, the PA has witnessed the opposite. The PA has grown increasingly unpopular, in part due to policies like security coordination with Israel. Unfavourable attitudes towards the authority have only grown since October 7, 2023, and what has been perceived as inaction by the PA to stop the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
Internal tensions in the West Bank have only been exacerbated by Israeli threats of annexation and increasing its violence against Palestinians, as the PA increases its oppression. Since the beginning of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, in October 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 821 Palestinians, while Israeli settlers have displaced some 25 Palestinian Bedouin communities in the West Bank’s rural areas.
The Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau are the Mondoweiss staff members based in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip
