Within the “Gazafació” of Israel of West Bank

The initial report of the Israeli military was brief and unequivocal. “The (Israeli Air Force) hit a terrorist cell in the Tammun area. Details to be followed.”

He was also wrong. In fact, the drone strike in the mountain city north of the occupied CIS dignitating He had killed three Palestinian cousins, eight, 10 and 23 years old, while gathering on the street inclined a few meters from the main door of Iman Bisharat.

When Bishararat rushed out of moments later, he faced a total terror scene. Her son Hamza’s body was loaded with shrapnel. The head of his cousin was cut off and part of his brain was being spilled. The third cousin, Adam, took the final breaths in his arms.

“There was a huge rise, like all the sky that exploded … there was shrapnel everywhere,” he said. “Blood … all I saw. It was like a gaza scene in front of me.”

The January 8 strike, which the Israeli army said that he had been investigated and sent to the military lawyer for his review, was part of a wider climb by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who sent the Palestinian death to the West Bank at his highest level in two decades.

Although the level of force uses Israel in the territory is not comparable to the devastation it has triggered to Gaza In response to Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, in the last 18 months the Israeli army has also drastically intensified its operations in the West Bank.

In the process, he has increasingly deployed tactics and weapons he has frequently used in Gaza, but have not been seen in the West Bank for years, causing human rights vigilantes and groups to help warn a “gazaale” of Israeli operations in the territory.

After a 17 -year break, the army has resumed air attacks on the West Bank, making dozens of drones, but also helicopter vessels and, in at least one case, a hunting aircraft. And earlier this year, he deployed tanks there for the first time in more than 20 years, as he launched an operation against militants in the refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams.

The new approach adopted by NetanyahuThe Government government, widely considered the most right in Israeli history, has affected intense weight. According to the UN Ocha Humanitarian Arm, Israeli forces have killed more than 900 people in West Bank since October 7, making the Palestinians in 2023 and 2024 since the Palestinians there since the UN began collecting data in 2005. In the same period, Palestinians in the territory have killed 32 Israelis.

But victim figures are only part of history. The Israeli operation has also destroyed the infrastructure, with forces that dull roads and demolished houses, and tens of thousands of displaced people. And it has been accompanied by movement restrictions in movement and suffocating economic pressure that have increased daily life for Palestinians of 3.3 million Cisjordan occasions.

“What the Israelis is looking for is the presentation,” said Diana Buttu, a lawyer and ex -a consultant of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “All this is a mechanism for sending a message to Palestinians who require unconditional surrender.”

Israeli officials say that the West Bank campaign is needed to take root militants in areas where Palestinian authority – which is limited self -government to some parts of the territory – has lost control.

The military said that its use of air attacks, which resumed in June 2023, but was massively climbed after October 7, was a response to the “growing threat” that militants raised, reflected in the intensity of their confrontations with Israeli forces and fulfilled international law.

Michael Milsohtein, a former IDF Intelligence Officer, said that, in addition to being a response to the greater use of weapons such as improvised explosive devices, the change in approach was also part of a wider change in thinking in Israeli security circles after October 7.

“It’s a lesson that many people learned: no challenge or threat (developing).

But others say that increasing use of force is driven by Israeli politics. The Netanyahu coalition depends on the support of two far-right groups led by ultranationalist settlers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who bowed to annex the West Bank and repeatedly demanded that Netanyahu take on a more aggressive approach to the territory.

The new campaign in the West Bank was launched only two days after the government accepted a temporary cessation in Gaza in January, which Ben-Gvir and Smotrich had been bitterly opposed.

“Some of the factors are operational, but there are also political optics,” said Ibrahim Dalalsha, director of the Horizon Political Studies Center in Ramallah. “The use of a F-16 against Tulkarem Camp was not only for operational reasons, because they could have used a drone … It was like using a cannon to kill a fly.”

In fact, human rights groups consider Israel’s actions to the West Bank as disproportionate. Last month, the UN Human Rights Office accused of showing “an alarming disregard for Palestinian life” and carried out “illegal killings” in the territory, arguing that their actions could not be justified in the applicable legal framework.

“Because there are no hostilities in the West Bank, international human rights law standards are applied on the use of force in the application operations of the law,” he said in a statement. “However, Israel routinely resorts to the use of tactics and weapons developed for the fight against war, including the deployment of attacks and air tanks.”

“Aerial attacks and this practice of moving entire communities and destroying the infrastructure on which refugee camps, roads, this is prohibited in law operations in occupied territory,” said Eitan Diamond, a senior manager and senior manager of Diakonia International Humanitarray in Jerusalem.

But it is not only the use of the largest force of the military that has transformed life into the West Bank. Since October 7, the army has also created dozens of new road barriers and locks through the territory, bringing the number of movement obstacles to more than 800, according to Ocha, and became short displacements in inadmissible hatred for hours.

Meanwhile, the violence of Jewish settlers in the West Bank has increased. According to Ocha, since October 7, the settlers have carried out more than 2,200 attacks on Palestinians who caused victims or damage to the property, disturbing the olive harvest, damaging the livelihoods and forcing the displacement of dozens of communities in Bedouina and Livestock.

Activists estimate that the violence of settlers, the expansion of the settlement, the restrictions of access and the terrestrial seizures have cut the Palestinians of hundreds of thousands of dunams from their land since October 7.

For locals like Bishararat, the combination has been overwhelming. Prior to the war, he used to make day trips to Nablus, one of the main cities in northern West Bank that is only 20 km from Tammun. But now, he does not dare. The risks, to be attacked by the settlers, to find the army or to be retained for hours at a control point, are too large.

“Any unpredictable thing can be a disaster. Every time we leave the house, even if it is only to buy something, it is like a great risk where God knows what will happen,” he said.

“But the problem is that you now have this fear even when you are at home … if they escaped to kill our children, for no reason, they can get out of anything else.”

Mapping of Steve BernardData display for Aditi Bhandari