Qalqilya targeted as Israel escalates raids in northern West Bank

Israeli forces have escalated their attacks across the northern occupied West Bank with fresh assaults on the town of Qalqilya.

The Israeli military stormed the eastern entrance of Qalqilya at dawn on Thursday morning before deploying soldiers through several neighborhoods and establishing what local reports have described as a tight cordon around one, Kafr Saba.

According to the Palestinian news agency Wafa, Israeli forces conducted raids on a number of homes in the neighbourhood, including some belonging to the families of Palestinians detained or previously killed by Israeli forces. One of the houses raided belongs to the family of Muhammad Barahmeh, who was shot and killed last year by Israeli forces.

The military also turned one house into a makeshift interrogation site, Wafa reported, holding several young men there for questioning. Palestinian reports said that at least two people were arrested in Qalqilya, in addition to 11 Palestinians held following similar raids on Thursday in Ramallah, Hebron, Jenin and Nablus.

Violence has surged across several towns in the northern West Bank over the past week, following the launch of a new Israeli military operation. The offensive began in Tubas and Tammun in late November and was later extended to Qabatiya and Masliya, bringing curfews, raids, widespread arrests and significant damage to local infrastructure.

The Israeli army has said the goal of its operations in the occupied West Bank is to arrest Palestinian fighters. Israel has conducted near-daily raids in the region since 2022 that have escalated since it began its genocidal war in Gaza in October 2023. The raids have made daily life for Palestinians in the West Bank increasingly difficult, and have forced tens of thousands from their homes.

Dreams of annexation

Local Palestinian sources, including Tubas Governor Ahmed Asaad, also claim that the recent uptick in violence in the northern West Bank is aimed primarily at imposing “new realities” in the area around the Jordan Valley, which runs along the West Bank’s border with Jordan.

Senior politicians in Israel continue to push for an expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, and particularly in the Jordan Valley, tightening Israel’s grip on the territory, paving the way for annexation. The expansion of Israeli settlements also effectively makes a Palestinian state impossible under current circumstances.

Annexing the West Bank is a particular focus of the right-wing settler groups that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of both encouraging and relying upon to sustain his coalition and his political survival. In June 2024, Netanyahu quietly increased much of the control already granted over the territory to far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who himself lives in an illegal settlement.

Reacting to a United Nations nonbinding resolution endorsing a two-state solution in September, Smotrich wrote on social media that, in response, “Israel must apply sovereignty [to the West Bank] as a preventive measure against the reckless attempt to establish a terror state in the heart of our land”.

Right groups and international monitors have noted an increase in attacks by the Israeli military and settler groups since the war on Gaza began. In addition to storming refugee camps in Jenin, Nur Shams, and Tulkarem in January, attacks by the Israeli military, settler groups, or combinations of the two have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians and injured nearly 10,000 across the occupied West Bank, UN figures show.

Israel has arrested more than 18,000 people over the same period, according to Palestinian rights groups.