On 19 January 2025, once the ceasefire in Gaza went into effect, the Israeli government declared it was adding the demand for “increased offensive activity” in the West Bank to its official list of “war objectives”. The addition was merely a formal affirmation of Israel’s treatment of the West Bank since 7 October 2023 as another front in the all-out war declared on the Palestinians since the Hamas attack. In keeping with this approach, the Israeli regime has ramped up its oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank and adopted more extreme measures, including extreme arbitrary violence against innocent civilians, further loosening of the permissive open-fire policy, severe movement restrictions and disruption of daily life, blanket cancellation of permits to enter Israel, and extreme limitations on access to farmland that are critically damaging livelihoods, mass arrests and the transformation of detention facilities into a network of torture camps.
Along with the intensified oppression, in the northern West Bank Israel has begun replicating tactics and combat doctrines honed in its current offensive on Gaza. This includes increased use of airstrikes in civilian population centers, widespread and deliberate destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, and displacement of civilians from areas designated by the military as combat zones. These actions suggest Israel is working toward “Gazafication” of the West Bank, already implemented in the north and, according to statements by government officials, expected to spread to other parts.
As of March 2025, the implementation is centering on the northern West Bank, and primarily refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas Districts. The military conducted a series of invasions into these camps at the start of the war, followed by Operation Summer Camps launched in August 2024, and a further escalation after 19 January 2025: massive troops invaded several towns and refugee camps in the north with bulldozers, deliberately and indiscriminately destroying civilian infrastructure – including roads and electricity, water and sewage networks. Hundreds of homes were bombed and partially or completely destroyed without any concrete threat associated with them. Medical aid for residents was disrupted, and there has been massive and indiscriminate gunfire. Recently, tanks and armored personnel carriers have been used for the first time since the second intifada.
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www.btselem.org/gaza_doctrine_west_bank_under_fire
