Just two days after the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel went into effect on 19 January this year, the Israeli regime declared war on the West Bank, dubbed Operation Iron Wall.

Though barely covered in mainstream media, Israeli military and intelligence have killed more than 56 Palestinians and displaced 40,000. Among those killed are five children, including two-year-old Leila Al-Khateeb, shot in the head by Israeli forces in Jenin on 25 January.

The images coming out of the West Bank horrifyingly resemble those that have come out of Gaza – indeed, many Palestinians now describe the West Bank as a web of mini Gazas. The Gaza ceasefire has proven an opportune time for the Israeli regime to turn its attention to the West Bank, and to pave the way for what its cabinet ministers call Greater Israel.

The wasps’ nest.

Nominally, the reason Israeli forces began Operation Iron Wall in Jenin refugee camp is that as well as housing 20,000 refugees, the roughly half-square-kilometre plot of land has historically acted as a stronghold of Palestinian armed resistance. Dubbed “the wasps’ nest” by the Israeli government, resistance groups from the camp have been some of the only barriers to Israeli settler expansion north of the West Bank.

Yet previous Israeli efforts to crush Palestinian resistance in areas such as Jenin – including Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, Operation Brother’s Keeper in 2014, Operation House of Cards in 2018 and Operation Black Belt in 2019 – have failed, and in fact have only galvanised Palestinian armed resistance.

It is not a coincidence that Operation Iron Wall began during a fragile ceasefire agreement with Hamas in Gaza. Long before the events of 7 October, Israeli policymakers had been calling for a large-scale military reinvasion of the West Bank – and now, they are beginning to enact it.

In 2020, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu revived Israel’s plan to annex the Jordan Valley. After Operation Guardian of Walls the following year, Palestinian armed resistance began to materialise in areas such as Jenin refugee camp and Tulkarem in the north. However, this only happened after witnessing a crushing response by Israeli forces (including the army, police, and special operations units), to “the uprising of hope and unity” where Palestinians mobilised non-violently across Haifa, Ramallah and Gaza, demanding an end to settler-colonial violence and expansion.

The emergence of armed resistance in Jenin and Tulkarem refugee camps in 2021 scuppered Netanyahu’s plans, though he and his colleagues did not give up on their dream. In the spring of 2022, Israel formally declared Operation Break the Wave, in which thousands of Palestinians were detained – including those with Israeli citizenship.

The issue of invasion and annexation of the West Bank has regained prominence in recent years. In February 2023, Israel’s then-minister of national security Itamar Ben-Gvir promised to reinvade the West Bank. At the same time, illegal settlers in the West Bank- notorious for their violence against Palestinians – were further armed by the government with new M-16s and assault rifles.

Calls for the reinvasion of the West Bank have resurfaced since 7 October. In November last year, perhaps emboldened by the re-election of Donald Trump as US president, Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich stated that “the time has come” to take over the West Bank – making clear that Israel’s aims are not narrowly targeting resistance fighters, but something much more expansive.

‘Jenin refugee camp will not be what it was.’

For the first three days of Operation Iron Wall, Israeli forces displaced families from the camp both at gunpoint and with quadcopters – a practice Israel standardized in Gaza. Families in Jenin, including children and the elderly, were denied the ability to even pack their belongings; soldiers fired live rounds at them as they escaped the camp. People I spoke to repeated the same story: “We left with nothing except the clothes on our backs.”

Within a week, the majority of the camp was emptied, families scattered between schools, mosques, non-profit organisations and the homes of relatives in neighbouring towns. Meanwhile, Israeli forces bombed and bulldozed up to 120 residential buildings and homes inside the camp and in its outskirts, including – according to the governor of Jenin – all of the roads leading to the only public hospital in the city.

Indeed it soon became clear that this was not a targeted operation designed specifically to root out resistance fighters. Shortly after it began, Israeli defence minister Israel Katz arrived at Jenin refugee camp, publicly stating that “Jenin refugee camp will not be what it was”. Katz emphasised that “after the operation is completed, IDF forces will remain in the camp to ensure that terrorism does not return”.

While the Israeli government purports to target terrorism, its near-total emptying of the Jenin camp reflects a clear depopulation campaign, one that aligns with the overarching goals of the Israeli regime: settler expansion.

The threat of return.

It is not merely because they are hubs of resistance that refugee camps are the primary targets of Operations Iron Wall. As of 2019, 26% of the population of the West Bank were refugees (in Gaza, that proportion was 64%). These people still carry memories of earlier rounds of displacement and destruction during Plan Dalet, the operation executed in 1948-49 in which a group of pre-state Zionist militias cleared Palestinians from the land during the British mandate to prepare it for Jewish settlement.

These refugees also hold a legally enshrined right of return, one Israel deems a threat to its ethnostate project.

At the same time, while the operation initially focused on refugee camps, within three weeks it had expanded across the entire northern West Bank, including Tulkarem, Tubas and Nablus.

In Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas, airstrikes have become commonplace, while soldiers and quadcopters fire live rounds indiscriminately. The Israeli army is also targeting civilian infrastructure, damaging water and sewage pipes and cutting off water, food, medical supplies, aid and electricity.

The Israeli army has also deployed seemingly every weapon at its disposal, including airstrikes, drone strikes, quadcopters, Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopters, Caterpillar D-9 and D-10 bulldozers, as well as the new Eitan armoured fighting vehicle.

Israeli forces are also detaining Palestinians en masse, including minors, adding to its already impressive hoard of Palestinian prisoners. In the first week of February, Israeli operations have expanded to the centre of the West Bank. On February 15, undercover Israeli forces raided the heart of downtown Ramallah, detaining one Palestinian and shooting another.

As of June 2024, Israel held 9,440 Palestinians in detention, including 3,340 in administrative detention (without trial or charge). Detainees have been subjected to brutal interrogations, including sexual assaults, and the unleashing of y attack dogs.

The Operation is not merely a show of force, but of collective punishment.

Leave or die.

The operation builds on Israel’s sustained attack on the West Bank it has maintained for decades, though with particular ferocity since 7 October. In the last 16 months lethal military raids have become commonplace for the 3.2 million Palestinians in the West Bank. Thousands of people, including children and pregnant women, have been arrested. Many of them have been taken to prisons described by the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem as “torture camps”. Hundreds have been killed, including over 180 children and, recently, a 23-year-old pregnant woman. In all this, the Palestinian leadership has not only been useless but has actively abetted Israeli violence.

Throughout Operation Iron Wall, the Palestinian Authority (PA), the ruling body in the West Bank and the only Palestinian organisation Israel authorises to possess arms, has refused to protect the civilian population. PA spokesperson Anwar Rajab made a statement at the beginning of the operation noting that PA security forces have withdrawn from the camp to avoid direct confrontation with the Israeli army.

At the same time, the PA has been engaging in joint missions with Israeli intelligence to attack Palestinian refugee camps and towns, effectively leaving the population defenceless in front of one of the most militarily advanced regimes in the world.

Now in its fourth week, Operation Iron Wall has expanded to include operations in Ramallah, Jericho, Nablus, Hebron and Jerusalem. With the operation, Israel is paving the way for the full conquest of what remains of the West Bank – which, since it contains the sacred East Jerusalem, is widely considered the centre of historic Palestine and thus a critical target for Israel, which is currently built largely around the coastal areas of Tel Aviv and the Galilee.

The aims of Operation Iron Wall are patently not defensive but expansionist. Whether or not Palestinians fight back, all face the same choice: leave or die.