( Middle East Monitor ) – As its armed forces intensify their assault on the northern West Bank, concerns are mounting over Israel’s broader objectives: further territorial expansion, forced displacement of Palestinians and the annexation of occupied land.
Israel has killed at least 60 Palestinians, arrested around 365, displaced over 40,000 and destroyed scores of homes and properties in the occupied West Bank since it launched so-called “Operation Iron Wall” on 21 January, just two days after a ceasefire took effect in the Gaza Strip. On Sunday, Israel deployed tanks in the West Bank for the first time in more than 20 years as Defence Minister Israel Katz said the army will remain in some refugee camps “for the next year” to ensure that residents cannot return.
As the operation, which began in the city of Jenin and its adjacent refugee camp, spreads across several West Bank cities and camps, analysts say that Israel’s long-standing aim to annex the occupied Palestinian territory is now more evident than ever.
“Israel has plans to annex the West Bank and to squeeze the Palestinians into the smallest areas possible, particularly to expel them from Area C,” British Palestinian academic Kamel Hawwash told Anadolu, referring to the division that makes up some 60 per cent of the Palestinian territory. “The Israelis have also armed the settlers so that they can terrorise residents, and burn and destroy homes and cars.”
Hawwash expressed his fears that US President Donald Trump may recognise Israel’s annexation of the West Bank, just as he did for Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights, both occupied by Israel since 1967.
Abdaljawad Omar, a lecturer at Birzeit University, suggested that annexation would primarily be a symbolic move aimed at securing American recognition of Israel’s de facto control over the West Bank, where it already exerts power over 62 per cent of the territory.
Annexation would signal the end of the two-state solution, while demonstrating that the US is “completely on the side of Israel in terms of the expansion of illegal colonies within the West Bank,” explained Omar. “In terms of annexation, in the long term, what is really being placed on the agenda — specifically through Trump — is this notion of ethnically cleansing the Palestinians and driving them from the land of Palestine.”
As the Israeli military operation escalates, Palestinian academic Muhannad Ayyash warned that illegal settlers are also expected to push further into Palestinian territories.
“Area C is basically what the Israeli settler movement and the Israeli state view as ultimately theirs,” said Ayyash, a professor of sociology at Mount Royal University in Calgary. “That’s over 60 per cent of the West Bank. They’re also creeping into Area B, which is approximately 22 per cent of the West Bank.”
The illegal settlers, he explained, are not acting independently but are backed by the Israeli state.
This backing provides them with military, economic and political support across the political spectrum, not just from right-wing factions.
“These are people from across the world – from Russia, from the US – coming into Palestine and claiming that the land is theirs. Their claim is based purely on force and their ability to steal the land violently from the Palestinians,” he told Anadolu.
In January, the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now warned that the Israeli authorities were planning to approve the construction of 2,749 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank. The group said that 2025 could see “record numbers” of settlement expansions, an average of 1,800 units per month.
Settlers backed by the Israeli state believe that all of the West Bank should be theirs, and that they are the “rightful” owners of the land, explained Ayyash. However, all of Israel’s settlements and settlers are illegal under international law.
Hawwash highlighted the fact that Israel’s aggressive assault on refugee camps, particularly in Jenin and Tulkarem, aligns with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal to end the concept of a Palestinian refugee.
“That is why the attacks at the moment are really focused on the refugee camps in the West Bank, as well as on UNRWA,” he said, referring to the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees. “They want to eradicate the notion that there are, first of all, refugees living in parts of historic Palestine, and even the name ‘Palestinian’… They continue to use words like ‘Arabs’. They don’t want to acknowledge a distinct people called Palestinians.”
As reports surface that Israel is preparing to set up a military base in the Jenin camp, Hawwash believes that this is part of Israel’s strategy to eliminate the refugee identity.
“In Jenin, they have instructed the Palestinian mayor to rename the camp as part of the city rather than as a refugee camp,” he said. “I think they will do the same thing in all other areas where there are refugee camps, right up to Ramallah, Bethlehem and Nablus.”
Amid Israel’s ongoing offensive, Palestinian civilians face an increasingly dire humanitarian situation.
“More Palestinians will be killed and imprisoned, and more will lose all of their life savings, their livelihoods, their homes,” said Ayyash. “Infrastructure in their towns and districts will be utterly destroyed, and Israel is not being held to account for its crimes.”
Omar, who is based in Ramallah, argued that Israel’s actions are part of a broader strategy enacted by the far-right government, aiming to isolate Palestinians economically and socially.
Their objective is “delinking Israel from the Palestinian territories in the West Bank by preventing the entry of Palestinian labour into Israel, a deliberate policy of impoverishing Palestinians that is intended to create harsher conditions in the West Bank,” he said. “The intention of this policy is to create harsher economic conditions on an everyday level, restricting travel within the West Bank to choke the Palestinian population and, slowly but surely, cleanse Palestinians from the land of Palestine.”
Hawwash noted that Israel has increased restrictions on Palestinian movement by installing new gates at village entrances and expanding the number of military checkpoints. “The number of checkpoints has gone up to over 900. People can spend hours just trying to get from one place to another… This also has an impact on business and the economy. People’s disposable income is shrinking and they can’t buy things. Prices are also increasing, which again means that they are out of reach for many people.”
Moreover, Israel has also withheld tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority, crippling its ability to pay salaries and provide basic services.
File. Israeli Siege of a Hospital in Tulkarm, 17 January, 2024. Public Domain. Via Wikimedia.
Hawwash pointed out that unlike Gaza, where aid agencies are still allowed to operate, the West Bank has been largely cut off from humanitarian relief.
“UNRWA was the main agency providing for Palestinians in the refugee camps, but Israel has banned it from East Jerusalem and is making it nearly impossible for it to operate in the West Bank,” he pointed out. “This is having a huge impact, not only on the well-being of people, but also on the economic situation.”
The ongoing West Bank military operation is seen as part of Israel’s plan to establish an exclusively Jewish state.
“We’ve seen this across the political spectrum in Israel for decades,” said Ayyash, who is also a policy analyst at Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka. “Their ultimate goal is to establish Israel as the exclusive sovereign authority from the river to the sea. That would be exclusive Israeli-Jewish sovereignty… over 100 per cent of historic Palestine.”
This would require reducing Palestinians to a minority of the total population, who would end up under Israeli rule, he said.
“Right now, it’s about 50 per cent. They don’t want that. They want to bring the number of Palestinians down to about 15 or 20 per cent, so that they become a minority in their own land and lose all claims to sovereignty,” said Ayyash. “Ultimately, all of Israel’s actions and policies throughout the past several decades have been geared toward the ultimate goal of creating ‘Greater Israel’ across all of historic Palestine.”
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.
Rabia Ali is a journalist for the Anadolu Agency.
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