The Palestinian government has condemned Israel’s latest military aggression in the West Bank and urged the new United States President Donald Trump to intervene amid increased deaths and injuries.
Israel pushed ahead with its military operations despite the resignation of Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi on Jan 21, over “the failure of Oct 7”, and the head of the IDF Southern Command Major General Yaron Finkelman.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the official spokesman for the Palestinian presidency, blamed the far-right Israeli government for trying to drag the West Bank into a “comprehensive confrontation through this silent war it is carrying out”, aimed at “escalation and creating a climate of violence and tension”.
Trump told reporters that he was “not confident” that the Gaza cease-fire deal would hold and that the enclave had to be rebuilt in a “different way”. He earlier revoked sanctions against Israeli settlers who had engaged in violence in the West Bank.
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Rudeineh said that Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on settlers had “encouraged them to commit more of these crimes”.
“We call on the new American administration to intervene to stop these crimes and Israeli policies that will not bring peace and security to anyone, stressing that the only way to achieve security and stability is to implement international legitimacy resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative as a basis for resolving the Palestinian issue,” said Rudeineh.
Farhan Mujahid Chak, visiting faculty at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, noted that Trump had been “instrumental in getting the cease-fire in place” but the future is uncertain.
Chak said it remained to be seen how the international community, including the UN, would intervene and make it “more difficult for Israel to continue bombing”.
He said the decisions by both Trump and Biden on getting a cease-fire deal while “enabling genocide” by sending billions of dollars and weapons to Israel highlighted the “complexity and hypocrisy” of US politics.
“So what does it mean? It means that usually there’s not a lot of consistency and not done with the support of Palestine, the Geneva Convention, or international law,” Chak told China Daily.
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Israeli rights group B’Tselem accused Tel Aviv of using the Gaza cease-fire as an excuse to increase oppression in the West Bank.
“The ink had barely dried on the cease-fire agreement before the Israeli army blocked most access points to and from Palestinian villages and all the cities in the West Bank, severely disrupting the daily lives of more than 3 million Palestinians,” they said in a statement.
“Far from holding its fire against Palestinians, Israel’s actions demonstrate it has no intention of doing so. Instead, it is merely shifting its focus from Gaza to other areas it controls in the West Bank,” it added.
The group said adding the military activity of the Israeli army in the West Bank to the war’s “official objectives” just two days before the Gaza cease-fire came into effect “speaks volumes about the Israeli government’s true intentions”.
“Forced to stop the fighting in Gaza by the Americans and Saudis, the Israeli government is using this pause as an excuse and opportunity to ratchet up the oppression of West Bank Palestinians,” said B’Tselem.
“This is not what a cease-fire looks like,” it added.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Jan 21 that on the directive of the Security Cabinet, both the IDF and the Israel Police have begun extensive and significant military operations “to defeat terrorism in Jenin” or what it called the “Iron Wall” in the West Bank.
Gokhan Batu, an analyst on Israeli studies at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies in Turkiye, told China Daily, that the resignation of senior Israeli military officials was for two reasons.
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First, their accountability at the tactical and strategic levels, with the second factor political, citing the division between military leadership and the government that emerged in early 2023 over judicial reforms.
“The strategy concerning the ongoing war in Gaza became another point of contention. Netanyahu’s reluctance to articulate a clear post-war governance plan for Gaza or propose alternatives to Hamas faced veiled criticism from the military,” said Batu.
“It is crucial to underline, however, that the ultimate political responsibility lies with Netanyahu and his national security team.
“Consequently, the government appears to be shifting the blame solely onto the military leadership as a strategy to navigate the political turbulence expected in the post-war period. The Chief of Staff is poised to become a scapegoat in this process,” he added.
