According to a new report, Israel is using many of the strategies it used during its offensive against Gaza to seize and control territory in the West Bank during Operation Iron Wall.
The operation was first launched by Israel in January. The Israeli military argued that its goal was to maintain its “freedom of action” within the Palestinian territory as it continued to rip up roads, destroy infrastructure, and subvert water and electricity lines, in response to what the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) described as “by far the longest and most destructive operation in the occupied West Bank since the second intifada in the 2000s.”
According to the report from the British research firm Forensic Architecture, Israel has implemented what researchers refer to as a “spatial control” system, which entails a number of mechanisms that allow it to freely deploy military vehicles across Palestinian territory.
The refugee camps of Jenin and Fara in northern West Bank and Nur Shams and Tulkarem in northern west bank were the subjects of the report’s focus. Witnesses, satellite imagery, and hundreds of videos were analyzed and interviewed by researchers to demonstrate a coordinated plan of Israeli action to establish a network of military controls in West Bank camps similar to those in Gaza.
Existing roads have been made wider while adjacent properties, private gardens, and homes have been destroyed to facilitate the quick deployment of Israeli military vehicles.
According to the report’s authors, “This network of military routes is clearly visible in the Jenin refugee camp,” and evidence suggests that the same tactic is being used again in the Nur Shams and Tulkarm refugee camps at the time of publication.
More than 54, 000 Palestinians were killed and the majority of the buildings were damaged or destroyed in the West Bank as a result of Israeli ministers’ earlier statements that they intended to use the same techniques as those used in the Gaza Strip.
Israel Katz, the country’s defense minister, stated in January that Israel would use the “lesson” of repeated raids on the Jenin refugee camp. Bezalel Smotrich, the West Bank’s finance minister, boasted that “Tulkarem and Jenin will look like Jabalia and Shujayea.” Nablus and Ramallah will resemble Rafah and Khan Younis, making comparisons between Gaza’s West Bank refugee camps and those whose areas have been the victim of Israeli bombing and ground incursions.
According to Smotrich, “They will also be transformed into uninhabitable ruins, and their residents will be forced to flee and seek a new life abroad.”
The British first used these tactics during their rule over historic Palestine, which predated Israel’s establishment in 1948, according to Hamze Attar, a defense analyst based in Luxembourg.
He claimed that “it’s a part of the” counterinsurgency “strategy.” “Bigger roads mean] easier access to forces; bigger roads mean less congestion in combat, bigger roads mean less fighters can escape from house to house.
displaced people by displacement
The refugee camps for Palestinians in Jenin, Nur Shams, Far’a, and Tulkarem have a population of about 75 000. When roughly 750, 000 Palestinians were forced from their homes by Zionist forces between 1947 and 1949 as part of the creation of Israel, they were either displaced themselves or descended from those who were displaced during the Nakba (which means “catastrophe).
According to the United Nations, at least 40, 000 people who reside in the West Bank refugee camps have been displaced as a result of Operation Iron Wall.
Similar to Gaza, many of these people were forced to leave their homes at the hands of the Israeli military, which according to experts described as “weaponized” against the local population.
According to the report, an area that had been cleared of its buildings and roads becomes a kill zone for the Israeli military, which can then reshape and build whatever it wants without provoking residents’ disapproval.
According to the report, “This engineered mass displacement has allowed the Israeli military to reshape these built environments unhampered,” adding that when Palestinian residents attempted to return to their homes after Israeli military action, they were frequently obstructed by the troops’ continued presence.
Infrastructure destruction
According to researchers studying forensic architecture, Israeli attacks on hospitals in Gaza have also spread to the West Bank.
According to the report, Israel’s attacks on medical infrastructure in the West Bank included placing hospitals under siege, blocking ambulance travel to areas with injured civilians, attacking medical personnel, and using at least one hospital as a detention and interrogation center.
According to researchers, the Israeli military surrounded several hospitals during Israel’s initial attacks on the Jenin refugee camp on January 21. These included Jenin Government Hospital, al-Amal Hospital, and al-Razi Hospital.
The following day, hospital staff and civilians reported that newly constructed berms, or land barriers, blocked access to the hospital and that the main road leading to Jenin Government Hospital had been destroyed by Israeli military bulldozers.
According to reports from Jenin on February 4, the Israeli military reportedly prevented injured people from getting to the hospital.
An early February UNRWA report claimed that the Israeli military had forcibly chosen one of the health facilities at the UNRWA-run Arroub camp near Jerusalem as a detention and interrogation facility, which also had unmistakable echoes of Gaza.
According to the Forensic Architecture report, the attacks on healthcare facilities were part of a larger effort to deteriorate the West Bank’s civilian infrastructure through controlled demolitions, airstrikes, and armoured bulldozers.
More than 200 instances of Israeli soldiers purposefully destroying buildings and street networks in all four refugee camps were found to have been uncovered by investigators, including more than 200 instances of them using armored bulldozers to erode civilian roads through barely passable piles of exposed earth and rubble.
During Israeli military operations, civilian property, such as parked cars, food carts, and agricultural buildings, including greenhouses, were also destroyed, according to them.
Source: Aljazeera
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