The Israeli security establishment is alarmed by the latest intelligence assessments about the deteriorating situation in the occupied West Bank, as the region is likened to a powder keg waiting to explode.
According to Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor-in-chief of the online newspaper Rai al Youm, the number of Palestinian youth participating in confrontations with Israeli forces has surged dramatically and is swiftly sweeping the West Bank. Today, armed conflicts with Israeli troops have spread beyond flashpoint cities like Jenin and Nablus; rather becoming a daily phenomenon in other villages and refugee camps. [1]
This was not the case in the past, when any Israeli patrol of up to 10 soldiers could raid any Palestinian village or camp, assault, beat, and even murder any number of Palestinians in cold blood, and then walk away as if nothing had occurred. Today, however, the reality on the ground is radically different, to the extent that Israeli commanders must ponder a thousand times before deploying their troops to any city or camp in the West Bank simmering with fury.
Indeed, the heroic strikes against the Zionists have shaken the regime to its core, prompting Aviv Kochavi, the Israeli Chief of Staff, to threaten senior Palestinian Authority (PA) officials at the beginning of this year that if the wave of assaults on the Zionists did not cease, his forces would launch a large-scale operation in the northern West Bank. [2]
“We observe an escalating unrest in “Judea and Samaria” particularly in northern Samaria, which might lead to a violent popular uprising,” Ron Ben Yishai, a renowned Israeli military analyst known for his close ties to the Israeli security decision-making centres, quoted a top unidentified Israeli security officer. Judea and Samaria is a fictitious term used by the Zionists to refer to the occupied West Bank.
Yishai argues that the scenario of a full-fledged uprising in the West Bank worries the Israeli Army and Shin Bet [the Zionist regime’s internal security service] more than the looming Iran nuclear agreement and the threats from Hezbollah, adding that “currently, most nighttime gunfire, stone-throwing, and Molotov cocktail attacks are carried out against Israeli army posts and checkpoints on the streets of the West Bank. According to estimates, the assailants of these assaults are untrained and do not affiliate with any particular Palestinian organisation. [3]
On August 19, 2022, in response to the recent Zionist onslaught on the Gaza Strip, the Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Major General Hossein Salami, gave an interview to the official website of the Iranian Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
MG Salami noted that despite the geographical separation between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and the Israeli relentless efforts to cut Gaza off from the outside world, over the past year, the Palestinian resistance in the West Bank has enhanced its military capabilities against the Zionist regime. IRGC’s top commander added that the West Bank can arm itself, just as Gaza did, and that this development has already begun and is ongoing. [4]
Even Israeli security commentators acknowledge now that despite the massive arrests, there has been a discernible uptick in tension and skirmishes, indicating that Israeli efforts to quell the emerging uprisings in the West Bank have failed. For instance, Dana Ben-Shimon, Israel Hayom’s correspondent for Palestinian affairs and the Arab world, stated in her Twitter account:
“Regarding the nature of the assaults and the probable escalation of the conflict, we approach a gradual and organised uprising in the West Bank. Assaults with firearms, violent pursuits, and armed clashes have already retuned, and now the fear of stabbings—which characterised the 2015 uprising—is also resurfacing.”[5]
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