When a ceasefire was announced in Gaza on January 15, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank were thrilled that Israel’s devastating war on the besieged Strip would finally end.

However, the State of Israel Violence escalated rapidly throughout the West Bank This is what local observers and analysts described as a clear attempt to officially annex more territory.

The sudden rise in settler attacks and Israeli military operations has panicked Palestinians in the occupied territories, who believe they may now face the same kind of violence to which their countrymen and women are exposed in Gaza. Israel has More than 46,900 Palestinians were killed in Gaza Since its war on the enclave began in October 2023.

“We watched genocide “It has been happening in Gaza for 14 months and no one in the world has done anything to stop it, and some people here believe we will suffer a similar fate,” said Shadi Abdullah, a journalist and human rights activist from Tulkarm.

“We all know that we fear that the situation will get worse here in the West Bank,” he told Al Jazeera.

The changing battlefield

Hours after Ceasefire in Gaza On January 19, Israel began erecting dozens of new checkpoints in the West Bank to prevent Palestinians from gathering and celebrating the release of political prisoners, who were released in an exchange of Israeli prisoners held by Hamas as part of the deal.

Checkpoints also prevented farmers from accessing their agricultural lands and closed off entire cities to civilians, such as Hebron and Bethlehem.

Israeli settlers then began expanding illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank and attacking Palestinian villages. Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank Illegal under international lawMany of the randomly constructed outposts are as well Illegal under Israeli lawalthough often little is done to remove them, and many of them later become official.

Tahani Mustafa, an expert on Israel and Palestine affairs at the International Crisis Group, said, “The repercussions of violence are that it leads to direct or related displacement, which is in line with Israel’s goal of preventing the establishment of any Palestinian state on its territory.”

In addition, the Israeli army announced plans to carry out large-scale operations in the West Bank, which began on January 21 with a military operation A major incursion into Jenin campOstensibly to eliminate armed groups. Israeli raids on the West Bank preceded the war on Gaza, however The pace of violence and intensity escalated with the beginning of the war.

“The settler violence and incursions that we are witnessing… are an indication of the direction we are heading now,” Mustafa told Al Jazeera.

trade off?

The escalation in violence has led some to believe that new US President Donald Trump made a trade-off with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the war on Gaza in exchange for escalating aggression in the West Bank.

“The ceasefire in Gaza – which looks more like a humanitarian truce and a ‘hostage and prisoner trade’ – has a price. Israel never gives up anything without paying a price, and I think we are seeing that in the West Bank, given this type of conflict. [officials] “The Trump administration consists of,” Mustafa said.

Trump did not indicate that there was any kind of agreement with Netanyahu that would allow him to increase violence in the West Bank, but he also refused to commit to the two-state solution, and nominated several figures opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state to head the government. Prominent positions in his administration.

The prospect of increased repression against Palestinian fighters in the West Bank, as well as the growth of illegal settlements and even possible annexation, appear to have motivated far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to remain in Netanyahu’s weak coalition, rather than withdraw. The collapse of the government as a means of protesting the ceasefire in Gaza.

Under Smotrich, Israel did just that It quietly confiscated more land in the West Bank over the past year than in the past 20 years combined, according to Peace Now, an Israeli nonprofit that monitors land grabbing.

Both Smotrich and the broader settlement movement have long viewed the occupied West Bank as an integral part of “Greater Israel,” and refer to the area as Judea and Samaria.

Smotrich’s rapid annexation of the West Bank went largely unnoticed because of the much larger crisis in Gaza, where, in addition to the mass killing of Palestinians, the entire pre-war population of 2.3 million was uprooted and displaced.

Settler attacks

Palestinians across the occupied West Bank now say settlers are escalating their attacks in coordination with the Israeli army to confiscate and seize more land.

On January 20, Settlers violently attacked two villages In the northern West Bank, Al-Funduq and Jansafut, in addition to villages further south in Masafer Yatta and around Ramallah.

Settlers set fire to homes and cars and beat Palestinians under the full protection and watchful eye of the Israeli army, according to local human rights groups.

But the commander of the Israeli army’s Central Command, General Avi Bluth, said in a statement that “any violent riots that harm security and the army will not allow this.”

The attacks came during Trump’s inauguration as US president – one of his first actions as president He abolished the penalties imposed on groups and individuals Which the United States previously considered part of the “extremist settlement movement.”

Abbas Melhem, executive director of the Palestinian Farmers Union, said, “The settlers’ goal is known.” “They want to move the Palestinians out of the West Bank, annex the lands to Israel, and impose Israeli law.”

Ghassan Alyan, a Palestinian living in Bethlehem, expressed his frustration to Al Jazeera.

“What these people are doing is illegal, but they don’t care about international law, Palestinian law, or Israeli law,” he told Al Jazeera. “They don’t even care about God’s law.”

Raid is Jane

In early December, armed groups in Jenin began clashing with the Palestinian Authority, the administration created as a result of the 1993 Oslo Accords.

These agreements marked the beginning of the now-stalled peace process that was ostensibly aimed at establishing a Palestinian state throughout the occupied Palestinian territories, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

A key element of the Oslo Accords was the Palestinian Authority’s mandate to root out and disarm armed groups as part of security coordination with Israel.

But as hopes for statehood faded and Israel consolidated its occupation, a number of neighborhood armed groups loosely linked to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas and even Fatah – the faction that controls the Palestinian Authority – have emerged in Palestinian camps across the West Bank.

With the Palestinian Authority unable to crush the armed groups in the Jenin camp, Israel launched a large-scale operation on January 21, killing at least 10 people.

Local observers told Al Jazeera that Israel justifies its operation under the pretext of supporting Israel’s security and ensuring that another attack does not occur like what happened on October 7, even though the armed groups in the West Bank are much less capable and organized than Hamas in Gaza. .

“We believe that Israel’s plan is to attack the northern West Bank in the same way it did during the second intifada when it invaded the Palestinian camps,” said Murad Jadallah, a human rights monitor at Al-Haq Foundation, a Palestinian rights group.

Israel had previously occupied Jenin camp for 10 days in 2002, destroying about 400 homes and displacing about a quarter of the population during the second intifada in 2002, according to the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA).

Mustafa, of the International Crisis Group, believes that Israel will carry out further incursions and major military operations across the West Bank in the coming days in an attempt to crush all forms of resistance.

“The battlefield is about to shift from Gaza to the West Bank,” she said.