Occupation forces intensify West Bank offensive as concerns grow over illegal settlement expansion
JENIN – “Israeli” occupation forces continued their large-scale assault on the city of Jenin and its refugee camp for the 13th consecutive day, carrying out airstrikes, raids, and demolitions while displacing thousands of residents and escalating violence across the area, WAFA news agency reported on Sunday.
The latest violence comes after a deadly escalation on Saturday, when “Israeli” forces bombed a group of teenagers in the eastern neighbourhood of Jenin and carried out drone strikes. This brought the toll of martyrs to 24 since the start of the offensive, with dozens more injured, according to WAFA.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops continued to flood into Jenin and its refugee camp, carrying out widespread demolitions and forcing residents to evacuate numerous buildings before converting them into military outposts, the source said.
Mohammad Jarrar, head of the Jenin Municipality, said approximately 15,000 people have been displaced from the Jenin refugee camp and the Al-Hadaf neighbourhood, seeking refuge in surrounding villages and towns.
Jarrar also reported a severe water crisis impacting the city’s hospitals and nearly 35% of its residents, following the occupation forces’ targeting and destruction of water lines. Moreover, he stated that nearly 100 homes in the Jenin refugee camp have been completely demolished, describing it as a humanitarian catastrophe.
On Sunday morning, hundreds of occupation soldiers, accompanied by dozens of military vehicles and heavy bulldozers, reportedly launched an extensive raid on the town of Tammoun in the northern West Bank province of Tubas. According to WAFA, citing local sources, the occupation forces seized the keys to Palestinian families’ properties after forcing them to evacuate.
Ethnic Cleansing and Settler Expansion
As “Israel” intensifies its “Iron Wall” military operation, launched on Jan. 21 following the Gaza ceasefire, experts warn that Palestinians in the occupied West Bank could face devastation similar to the coastal enclave.
The occupying forces have been conducting an offensive using tactics similar to those employed in Gaza, raising fears of a broader campaign to forcibly displace Palestinians from the northern West Bank to make way for illegal settlements.
“The ongoing and expanding onslaught on Jenin and its camp is different than previous attacks as the Israeli regime is using the same playbook as in Gaza: decimation of vital infrastructure, destruction of houses, denying access to health care, forced displacement of the population,” Shatha Abdulsamad, a policy analyst at think tank Al-Shabaka, told Anadolu Agency.
Abdulsamad explained that Israel’s actions in Jenin, alongside similar patterns in Jerusalem, Masafer Yatta, and other areas, aim to “make life unbearable for Palestinians, pushing them to leave their land and fragmenting Palestinian territorial continuity.”
“This strategy is reinforced by Israeli legal and military policies designed to control Palestinian demographics while expanding Israeli settlements,” she added. The mass displacement, home demolitions, arbitrary arrests, and severe restrictions on movement, including access to health care and education, are part of a systematic policy to erase Palestinian presence.
“This deliberate destruction of property and denial of basic rights meets key criteria of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing,” said Abdulsamad.
The timing of the offensive has raised questions, with experts linking it to broader political dynamics, as Benjamin Netanyahu tries to appease Zionist settlers and their leaders following the Gaza ceasefire agreement, while expecting support from the new US administration.
“These factors suggest that the Israeli attack on Jenin—which is already expanding to other Palestinian cities, villages, and refugee camps in the north of the West Bank amid a wider Israeli military operation in the West Bank—offers a political opportunity, aligned with Zionist expansionist motives, to lay the ground for an annexation of the West Bank,” said Abdulsamad.
