After the escalation of the situation in Gaza… the West Bank will be the next stop – International Website

The author describes scenes from Gaza, explaining the pervasive smell of raw sewage, the sounds of Israeli armored personnel carriers, and trucks filled with children. In addition, checkpoints with Israeli flags dot the roads and intersections. Colonial settlements – illegal under international law – occupy the hillsides above Palestinian villages and towns. In this arid region, settlers also enjoy security and abundant water sources, which Palestinians are deprived of.

In the same context, the author explains that the 26-foot-high concrete wall (the Apartheid Wall) that stretches 440 miles along occupied Palestine, with graffiti calling for liberation, murals of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and faces of martyrs, gives the West Bank the feel of a prison in fresh air.

The wall has devastated the landscape, separated Palestinians from their families, and split Palestinian villages in half, meaning it has trapped Palestinians in a Jewish state (an updated version of the Bantustans).

“I was sitting in a battered black Mercedes driven by a friend in his thirties, whom I will not name for his protection,” the author said. He had worked in construction in Israel but, like nearly all Palestinians working in Israel, lost his job on October 7. He has four children. Life has been tough, his savings dwindling, and it has become difficult to buy food and pay for electricity, water and gas. “He feels like he is under siege, and he is.”

The author added that he will meet his friend, novelist Atef Abu Saif, who was in Gaza on October 7 with his 15-year-old son Yasser. They were visiting their family when Israel began its “scorched earth” policy. Abu Saif spent 85 days enduring and writing daily about the nightmare of genocide, and these painful memoirs were published in his book “Don’t Look Left” (to Counter Israeli False Propaganda).

In Ramallah, the author describes what happened after he met his novelist friend, saying, “We walked to a kebab shop and sat at a small table in the open air.” The scars from the recent Israeli army invasion were palpable. At night, Israeli soldiers burned down shops that processed foreign remittances. They were charred ruins. “It’s very difficult to get money from abroad now, and I think that was the goal.”

Israel has dramatically tightened its grip on more than 2.7 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, who are surrounded by more than 700,000 Jewish settlers who live in about 150 strategic projects with their own shopping malls, schools and medical centers.

In addition to all these previous crimes, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 528 Palestinian civilians, including 133 children, and injured more than 5,350 in the West Bank since October 7, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Israel also holds more than 9,700 Palestinians, including hundreds of children and pregnant women. Many of them have been severely tortured, including a doctor who was tortured to death in an Israeli prison cell and an aid worker who was killed after his release. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir has also called for the execution of Palestinian prisoners to make room for more.

In the past, Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, was spared the worst of the Israeli violence. But since October 7, that has changed, with raids and arrests occurring almost daily in and around the city, sometimes accompanied by deadly shootings and aerial bombardments.

Additional information: Since October 7, Israel has bulldozed and confiscated more than 990 Palestinian homes in the West Bank, in some cases forcing owners to demolish the structures or pay heavy fines.

Heavily armed Israeli settlers carried out bloody attacks on villages east of Ramallah, including one attack near the village of Al-Mughayir on April 12, following the killing of a 14-year-old settler. In response, settlers burned Palestinian homes and vehicles in 11 villages, killing one Palestinian and injuring more than two dozen.

Israel has ordered the largest confiscation of West Bank land in more than three decades, expropriating large tracts of land northeast of Ramallah. Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in the Jewish colony and oversees colonial expansion, has pledged to inject a million new colonists into the West Bank.

Smotrich pledged to eliminate the distinct areas created by the Oslo Accords in the West Bank. Area A, which makes up 18 percent of the West Bank, is under full Palestinian control. Area B, which makes up about 22 percent of the West Bank, is under the security control of the Israeli military occupation. Area C, which makes up more than 60 percent of the West Bank, is under full Israeli occupation.

Jenin and its neighboring refugee camps come under daily attacks by Israeli armed forces, covert commandos, snipers and bulldozers that raze entire communities to the ground. Drones equipped with machine guns and missiles, as well as warplanes and Apache attack helicopters, fly overhead and destroy homes.

The dramatic escalation of violence in the West Bank has been overshadowed by the genocide in Gaza. But if Israel were to withdraw from Gaza, the next stop would be the West Bank.

“Israel’s goals have not changed: it seeks to reduce the Palestinian population, confiscate ever larger tracts of Palestinian land and establish more colonies,” Abu Seif said. “It seeks to Judaize Palestine and deprive the Palestinians of all means of self-sufficiency, with the ultimate goal of annexing the West Bank.”

Bottom line: The Jewish settler colonial project is changing, but only in form, not in substance, and differs only in the tactics of oppression and their intensity. The Israeli occupiers’ rhetoric about peace hides dark intentions. Israel is continuing its murderous, deviant, racist logic. Yet, the Palestinians are resilient, refusing to surrender, resisting against overwhelming odds, clinging to a ray of hope in an endless well of despair. There is a word to describe this act: “heroic.”

Chris Hedges

Consortium News Website

Translated and summarized by: Wafa Hani Omar