For a brief moment when the Palestinian-Israel documentary “No Other Land” was announced as this year’s best documentary at the Oscars ceremony, the spotlight again shone on the daily hardships of Palestinians in the West Bank, which otherwise are generally neglected. 

For most of the past 18 months, for obvious reasons, the attention had been on the war in Gaza, at least as far as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is concerned, and there have been many other headline-grabbing issues on a packed international agenda.

Nevertheless, if there is one thing decision-makers with an interest in this conflict should have learned from events in Gaza, it is that ignoring and neglecting this conflict comes at a price — a very heavy one. 

Throughout the current extreme hostilities on both sides of the Israel-Gaza border, as well as the Israel-Lebanon border, the security situation has also been deteriorating in the occupied West Bank, especially in its northern parts, and thousands of Palestinians have already been forced out of their homes, raising the fear not only of escalation, but also of Israeli annexation.

Israel’s playbook regarding the West Bank appears to be similar to the manner in which it is currently conducting its war in Gaza. 

It is not necessarily in the magnitude and intensity of the military operations, but in the disproportionate use of force in combating militants there while being insensitive to the lives and human rights of civilians. More recently, Israel has been increasingly keen to uproot the Palestinians from their houses without setting a time frame for their return.

To make things worse, if in Gaza the far right is still only fantasising about building Israeli settlements and resettling there, Israeli settlers are already scattered all across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and have an unquenched appetite for more land and new settlements. 

The more extreme among them are constantly provoking friction with the local population, either through violence or through their representatives in government and the Knesset who have been advancing policies and legislation that are further entrenching the occupation and leaving little hope for Palestinians to believe that one day they will be free and independent on their own land.

There is no denying that Israel is facing increased threats from militant groups in the West Bank, and this can be backdated to long before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, and comes mainly from relatively recently formed groups that are not affiliated with any of the more established political organizations. 

They are mainly composed of a youth that is frustrated by living under an oppressive occupation, that does not trust its own (Palestinian Authority) leadership and consequently has been radicalized and has turned to armed resistance. 

An Israeli government that was less fanatic, less dogmatic, and capable of more nuanced policies than those of the current leadership, would have done everything in its power to reduce tensions in the West Bank, as it is overstretched on a number of other fronts, with an unfinished war in Gaza, a fragile ceasefire in Lebanon, its efforts to establish a military presence deep inside Syria, and, it has been suggested, the plans it is hatching to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. But not this government.

It did not take long after the ceasefire with Hamas in mid-January came into effect for Israeli security forces to turn their attention to the northern West Bank and focus on the towns of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas, with many of their military operations taking place in the refugee camps there. 

Mind you, these towns are in Area A, and are supposed to be under full control of the Palestinian Authority and its own security forces — the very forces that have assisted Israel in preventing an enormous number of attacks against Israelis over the years. 

But this now counts for nothing, because Israel’s government is driven by an irrational ambition to somehow bring about the collapse of the Palestinian Authority and, by extension, its security forces, while still demanding that they keep the lid on militancy, and if such incidents should take place they are to blame for not doing enough to stop them. 

What is of particular concern is that if in the past Israeli security forces’ operations in these areas were more limited in scope and duration, this no longer seems to be the case, which suggests that beyond counterterrorism there are other Israeli objectives.