As the United States focuses on prolonging Israel’s invasion of Gaza with a ceasefire, a new war is brewing in the West Bank.
Over the past two years, Israel has stepped up its “counterinsurgency operations” in the West Bank to “stop Palestinian terrorism.” The use of terms like “counterinsurgency” is no coincidence. Israel uses military terminology to hide its intentions and fabricate reality. From Operation Ironclad to Operation Summer Camp, Operation Five Stone, and most recently the “counterterrorism” operation in Al Khalil (Hebron), these are presented and reported as temporary, targeted, and reactive.
But that’s not the case. The escalation of military aggression, together with the violence by settler militias, the destruction of infrastructure, the destruction of homes, and the ever-increasing number of barricades and checkpoints, is aimed at creating a reality on the ground that, as in Gaza, makes life impossible for Palestinians.
West Bank combat zone
In 2025, an onslaught of Israeli forces in the West Bank resulted in the largest mass displacement movement Palestinians have faced since 1967, with nearly 50,000 Palestinians violently forced from their homes.
Israeli forces destroyed refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarem, denying residents the right to return. It has now turned the two camps into the de facto military headquarters for the north.
Israeli forces also almost completely destroyed infrastructure, including roads, sanitation systems, and power grids. At least 70 percent of roads in Jenin city were bulldozed, and within weeks, large portions of water pipes and sewage networks were destroyed in Jenin and Tulkarem, resulting in millions of dollars in economic losses.
Thousands of households across the district were cut off from both water and electricity. And even now, displaced families live in difficult-to-reach areas with little civilian infrastructure.
In parallel, the Israeli military expanded the area targeted for violence. Israeli forces now regularly raid central West Bank cities such as Ramallah and Aliha (Jericho), as well as southern cities such as al-Khalil (Hebron) and Bethlehem. In these attacks, Palestinians are surrounded, terrorized, and sometimes executed by Israeli soldiers who operate with impunity.
This week, Israeli forces launched a major operation in al-Khalil (Hebron) in the name of bringing law and order. The entire city is under lockdown and Israeli tanks patrol the streets, while men and boys are detained, questioned in the open and held in harsh conditions.
But Israeli violence is not limited to military raids and operations. Where the army goes, the colonists follow. In true settler-colonial spirit, the military serves as a vanguard to lead attacks by Israeli settler militias against Palestinians, property, and annexed land of shepherds. For the past two years, Israelis living illegally in the West Bank have been armed with military-style weapons, ranging from U.S.-made M16s to pistols and drones, and have freely used them.
It is now clear that Israel’s “counterinsurgency” operations are not aimed at winning “on the battlefield.” These are collaborative efforts with settlers to redesign the spatial and social environment of the West Bank so that opposition and resistance do not exist.
When the logic of counterinsurgency is applied to occupied civilians, homes, streets, and daily life are transformed into instruments of control.
infrastructure of fear
Last January, Israeli settlers installed billboards on a main road in the West Bank. They wrote in big bold letters: “Palestine has no future.” The Palestinians understood this to be a declaration of war. We are in the middle of it now.
Every week, an average of nine Palestinians are killed, another 88 injured, 180 arrested, and a dozen more tortured in field interrogations, as well as an average of 100 attacks on Israeli settlers, 300 military raids and assaults, and 10 destructions of Palestinian homes and property. It’s only been a week’s work so far.
These numbers reflect not only the rising level of violence, but also its frequency. The purpose of this reinforcement is to undermine the Palestinians’ sense of normalcy.
Thousands of attacks over a year, accompanied by expanded settlements, new bypass roads, hundreds of new military checkpoints, and systematic surveillance, is not a temporary phenomenon. They transformed violence from the exception to the norm and normalized chaos as a condition of governance.
Settler-colonial violence affects the lives of Palestinians. It shapes when people go to bed, where children play, when they go to school, whether businesses open, and how the future is imagined. It must be readjusted periodically. Drain and exhaust.
Across the West Bank, Palestinian daily life is structured around violent disruption. Not only is Israel rewriting the map through de facto annexation, it is also using fear as an infrastructure to redraw the boundaries within which Palestinians can safely exist.
This affects every aspect of life. As a Palestinian journalist, every time I hit the road I encounter a familiar, crippling anxiety about what might happen. I rarely go down the same road twice. One day, the village was closed. Next is the whole city. A one-hour drive can take three or even four hours. I changed my route through the mountains again and again, as Israeli gates and checkpoints appeared at the entrance and exit of every Palestinian village and town.
Our lives in the West Bank are measured in detours. These serve not only to highlight Israel’s systematic and rapid theft of territory and life-sustaining resources, but also to steal time and deplete socio-economic capacity. Israel has not only destroyed the West Bank’s territorial continuity, but also its social life, psychological foundations, and political potential.
So while some Palestinians are forced out at gunpoint, others are forced out through an infrastructure of terror.
Israel has succeeded in creating a hostile environment where even the home can become a battlefield within minutes. At the same time, violence and the proliferation of Israeli armed militia outposts are suffocating urban areas such as Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and al-Khalil (Hebron).
Israeli forces have systematically looted currency exchange shops and even stolen valuables such as gold and silver from homes. This is as important as the daily horrors, because Israel not only destroys physical infrastructure, but also makes recovery and reconstruction impossible.
fragment people
An unconnected land is an unconnected people. Palestinian cities in the West Bank are shrinking and being swallowed up by Israel’s ever-expanding colonial state.
Israel formalized plans to develop the illegal E1 settlement project last year and is expected to move forward with plans to expand the settlements near Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and throughout Ramallah this year. These developments will effectively cut off occupied East Jerusalem from the West Bank and the north from the south. Israeli settlers now plant Israeli flags on Palestinian roads and houses as a symbol of conquest.
The West Bank is critical to understanding that war doesn’t just come with bombs. Sometimes they involve checkpoints, permits, zoning restrictions, state-sponsored violence, and the rerouting of life-sustaining resources away from Palestinians and toward settlements. It is not just the fragmentation of land in preparation for colonization, but also the slow decline of indigenous peoples’ ability to exist collectively.
In the West Bank, a war is being waged without a front line and despite news reports.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
