According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israeli occupation forces killed 157 Palestinians in 2022 with live ammunition, as opposed to only three the previous year, in an attempt to "wipe out" resistance fighters in the West Bank.
In addition, the year 2022 marked the deadliest year for Palestinian children since 2002, with 35 children killed.
A 2022 UN report estimates that the occupation demolished or seized 953 Palestinian residential and commercial buildings across the occupied West Bank, usually without prior notice, displacing 1,031 people.
In the same year, Israeli authorities sealed off four artesian water wells in Area B, up from two in the previous four years. The four wells constituted the primary drinking water source for at least 3,500 Palestinian families in nine communities.
The crackdown bled into 2023. Following a series of security incidents, Israeli occupation forces launched a deadly military operation in Jenin against armed Palestinian factions.
According to Marsad Shireen [ShireenWatch], before 7 October, the Israeli occupation killed 204 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 44 children.
Marsad Shireen also reported that Israeli authorities demolished or seized 884 buildings, mostly homes, and displaced nearly 3,000 Palestinians.
The Israeli army uses bulldozers to destroy the streets and sewers of the refugee camp in Jenin. AP
The former head of Israel's Mossad, Tamir Pardo, told The Associated Press in a September 2023 interview, "There is an apartheid state here. In a territory where two people are judged under two legal systems, that is an apartheid state."
Moreover, Israel built 350 new settlements and 348 outposts in 2022 and 2023.
Marsad Shireen documented 3,607 settler attacks on Palestinians, their buildings, and their lands in 2022 and 2023.
In Tandem with the Gaza Genocide
According to Marsad Shireen, since 7 October, Israel has killed 1,000 Palestinians – including 216 children in the West Bank and 24 prisoners who succumbed under torture – between 2023 and 2024.
Similarly, Israeli forces detained thousands of civilians indiscriminately, including doctors, engineers, civil activists, academics, and students.
File Photo: Israeli soldiers detain a blindfolded man during a raid on the Askar camp for Palestinian refugees east of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. AFP
The Detainees and Ex-Detainees Commission and the Palestine Prisoners Society's latest report in November reveals that Israeli forces held over 11,000 in administrative detention [without trial] and that approximately 775 children and 435 women were arrested in the West Bank and Jerusalem since 7 October.
"Detention campaigns entail crimes and violations, including humiliation, brutal beatings, and threats to detainees and their families. They also involve vandalism, destruction of detainees' houses, and confiscation of vehicles, gold, and money," reads the report.
In a report on 6 February, Doctors Without Borders revealed that the West Bank's healthcare sector has been in a constant state of emergency since October 2023.
Targeting the West Bank
Israel launched Operation Summer Camps on 28 August 2024 in the occupied West Bank. The operation involved besieging and attacking Jenin, Tulkarm, Tubas, and several towns in the north.
The UN OHCHR reported: "[The occupation] destroyed – through airstrikes, shelling and the use of bulldozers – homes, shops, roads as well as water, sewage and electricity infrastructure, leaving thousands of Palestinian residents for days without access to essential services and supplies, including food, while stuck in their homes under curfew. This may amount to the collective punishment of the Palestinian population, which is a war crime."
Over 225 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were martyred in Jenin during the Israeli offensive. Hundreds of families were displaced from the Jenin and Nur Shams refugee camps.
Meanwhile, settlement expansion, discriminatory movement restrictions, and further unlawful annexation of large parts of the occupied West Bank aggravated the situation.
Settlers, backed by Israeli forces, terrorised and displaced numerous Bedouin communities in Ein al-Hilweh and Farisiya in the northern Jordan Valley.
Amnesty reported that Shi'b al-Butum, a herding community of 300 Palestinians and one of the 12 communities that make up the area of Masafer Yatta south of al-Khalil, has been subjected to growing state-backed settler attacks and oppressive Israeli measures for decades.
Israeli occupation forces also raided Al Jazeera's office in Ramallah during a live broadcast on 22 September. Shlomo Karhi, Israel's Communications Minister, said the channel was "the mouthpiece of Hamas and Hezbollah."
Al Jazeera's office in Ramallah remains forcibly closed to this day.
PA Confronts NSAAs
Palestinians in the West Bank are facing not only the brutality of the Israeli occupation forces but also the repercussions of armed confrontations between the Palestinian Authority security forces and armed militant groups.
On 4 December 2024, the PA launched a large-scale military operation in Jenin, codenamed Himayat Watan [Protecting Homeland], to "restore law and order" and wipe out Non-State Armed Actors (NSAAs).
Himayat Watan was the PA's most significant armed confrontation with independent resistance groups in the West Bank since 2007.
During the operation, 16 Palestinians were killed, including six members of the PA security forces, three children, a journalist, and a resistance fighter.
Brigadier General Anwar Rajab, the PA's spokesperson, said the operation was "in response to the supreme national interest of the Palestinian people and within the framework of ongoing efforts to maintain security and civil peace, establish the rule of law, and eradicate sedition and chaos."
The PA arrested over 100 Palestinians during this operation, including five journalists, in Nablus and Jenin.
On 15 December 2024, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) announced that it suspended its services in the camp due to clashes between the PA and Jenin Brigades fighters.
During confrontations between PA security forces and armed resistance groups, Israel killed 25 Palestinians, including five children, in the West Bank in the first 19 days of January alone.
In recent months, Egypt has hosted several meetings of various Palestinian factions to reach national reconciliation.
Last week, Fatah and Hamas agreed that an independent committee would run Gaza during the reconstruction of the Strip under the Arab plan proposed by Cairo.
Operation Iron Wall
Palestinian children run as Israeli tanks enter the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. AFP
On 21 January 2025, two days after the Hams-Israel ceasefire went into effect, Israel launched a major military operation in the northern West Bank, dubbed Operation Iron Wall.
This marked the occupation's most significant military operation in the West Bank since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.
Occupation forces deployed 12 military battalions, border police, military bulldozers, jeeps, armoured personnel carriers, attack helicopters, and predator drones.
For the first time since 2002, Merkava tanks were also deployed in Jenin.
According to Marsad Shireen, 134 Palestinians—including 17 children—have been martyred since the start of the operation, most of them in Jenin. Israeli forces also killed several others in Tubas, Tulkarm, and Nablus.
Laila Al-Khateeb, a two-year-old and the youngest of the martyrs, was shot in the head inside her home in Jenin.
Five other women were ruthlessly executed, including Sondos Shalabi, who was eight months pregnant. In Nablus, occupation forces shot Palestinian teenagers in the head, chest, and legs.
Asri Fayyad, a resident of Jenin camp, described the dire conditions:
"We stayed in the camp for two days. There was no electricity, no water, no bread, not even milk for the children. The first day witnessed a violent incursion to intimidate us. The Israeli forces targeted only civilians—more than fifty were injured and left in the streets."
On 29 January, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz made a live public statement from the camp: "We will not be leaving Jenin."
The Israeli army stationed tanks outside the city to prevent displaced Palestinians from returning to their homes.
More than 550,000 Palestinians live in the occupied northern West Bank. According to a 10 February UNRWA report, at least 40,000 of them have been forcibly displaced since the operation began. The region's three largest refugee camps—Jenin, Nur Shams, and Faraa—have become ghost towns.
Occupation forces have seized homes in Jenin and Tulkarm, converting them into military bases. Both Katz and Netanyahu have made public statements from these occupied buildings. The Jenin Refugee Camp Media Committee reported that 20,000 Palestinians -90 percent of the camp's population—have been forcibly displaced.
In early March, the Jenin Municipality revealed that occupation forces had bulldozed 100 percent of the Jenin refugee camp's streets and approximately 80 percent of the city's streets since 21 January.
In Tulkarm, over the past 53 days, more than 12,000 Palestinians have been displaced.
The WAFA news agency reported that on Wednesday, residents of the Al-Hadaydeh and Al-Matar neighbourhoods were ordered to leave, displacing an additional 200 families.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces raided and searched homes in the Al-Raba'a neighbourhood.
Palestinian Minister Mu'ayyad Shaaban, head of the Colonization & Wall Resistance Commission, stated that in February alone, Israeli occupation forces and settlers carried out 1,705 attacks on the West Bank.
File Photo: Smoke rises following an explosion detonated by the Israeli army, which said it was destroying buildings in the West Bank Jenin refugee camp. AP
These attacks continue across Nablus, Al-Khalil, and Ramallah, where mass arrests of youth and children, home invasions, and sudden assaults with live ammunition have become routine.
In March, the occupation expanded Operation Iron Wall to include attacks in Nablus. El-Ein refugee camp, established in 1950, has been one of the most brutal hit.
Over 80 families were forcibly displaced on Wednesday, with 10 more on Thursday.
The Old Askar, New Askar, and Balata refugee camps were also invaded, with tens of families displaced, their homes occupied by Israeli soldiers, and their rooftops taken over by snipers.
Also in early March, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported that Israeli occupation forces severely beat and hospitalised its medical crew while they were on duty in Odala, Nablus.
That same day, the UN declared that Israel's ongoing settler expansion and annexation of the occupied West Bank constituted a "war crime."
A recent OHCHR report documented that Israel has imposed 793 movement restrictions across the West Bank, including 89 checkpoints, 196 road gates, and 104 roadblocks.
The report also revealed that since the start of the operation, Israel has seized 24,193 dunams of land, in addition to the 120 dunams confiscated in Jalboun, south of Jenin, on Tuesday.
In March 2023, the Israeli government amended the 2005 Disengagement Law, allowing settlers to rebuild and reoccupy the four evacuated settlements of Homesh, Ganim, Kadim, and Sa-Nur in the northern West Bank. The introductory text to the amendment reads:
"There is no longer any justification to prevent Israelis from entering and staying in the evacuated territory in northern Samaria, and therefore it is proposed to state that these sections [of the disengagement law] will no longer apply to the evacuated territory."
In 2024, Marsad Shireen recorded 1,745 demolitions in the West Bank, including 872 homes, forcibly displacing 4,131 Palestinians. This represents the highest number of demolitions and home demolitions since the occupation of the West Bank.
Palestinian resistance to Goliath
Crowd greets Zakaria Zubeidi, a prominent former militant leader, after he was released from Israeli prison following a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, in the West Bank city of Ramallah. AP
Palestinian resilience remains despite escalating Israeli brutality.
Since 7 October 2023, the Palestinian Information Centre Moati documented 56 stabbing incidents, 615 cases of resistance to settler attacks or displacement attempts, 968 demonstrations, and 195 Molotov cocktail-induced fires by popular resistance in the occupied West Bank.
Meanwhile, Palestinian resistance factions regularly clashed with occupation forces and settlers, leading to 2,195 shootings, planting 1,182 explosives, and shooting down 18 Israeli planes.
These efforts killed 60 Israeli soldiers and settlers and injured 494 others.
In December 2023, Hamas freed 155 West Bank Palestinians and 72 Jerusalemites from Israeli prisons in the genocide's first captive/prisoner exchange.
Another 1,777 Palestinians were freed after the Israel-Hamas ceasefire-prisoner swap deal went into effect on 19 January.
Despite trying, Israel failed to suppress the celebrations in the West Bank, welcoming the prisoners home.
File Photo: Palestinian protest to Israel over the air raid to Gaza in Ramallah in the West Bank. AP
"If Gazans can refuse to be displaced despite the genocide, we can do so too," Um Rami, an elderly Palestinian woman from the West Bank, told the media in February.
Ahmad al-Jaeem added, "I've been a refugee since 1948. I will not leave until I return to the home I was initially displaced from. I will not leave Palestine."
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