Qalqilya targeted as Israel escalates raids in northern West Bank

With fresh assaults on the town of Qalqilya, Israeli forces have increased their attacks across the northern occupied West Bank.

At dawn on Thursday morning, the Israeli military stormed Qalqilya’s eastern entrance before sending soldiers through several neighborhoods and erecting what local media outlets call a tight cordon around one, Kafr Saba.

Israeli forces reportedly raided a number of homes in the area, including some that were owned by Palestinians who had been detained or killed by Israeli forces, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. Muhammad Barahmeh’s family was one of the houses that were raided, and Israeli forces shot and killed him last year.

According to Wafa, the military also used a house as a makeshift interrogation location, posing questions on several young men there. According to Palestinian reports, 11 Palestinians were detained in Qalqilya as a result of similar raids on Thursday in Ramallah, Hebron, Jenin, and Nablus, in addition to at least two others.

Following the launch of a new Israeli military operation, violence has erupted in several towns in the northern West Bank over the past week. In Tubas and Tammun, the offensive started in late November, with later expansion to Qabatiya and Masliya, resulting in extensive arrests, curfews, and significant damage to local infrastructure.

Palestinian fighters’ arrest, according to the Israeli army, is the aim of its operations in the occupied West Bank. Since starting its genocidal war in Gaza in October 2023, Israel has carried out nearly daily raids in the area since 2022. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been forced to leave their homes as a result of the raids, which have made daily life in the West Bank more difficult.

Annexation dreams come true

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

In order to strengthen Israel’s hold on the occupied West Bank, senior Israeli politicians are still pushing for an expansion of illegal settlements, particularly in the Jordan Valley, which would lead to an annexation of the area. In the present, Israeli settlement expansion effectively renders a Palestinian state impossible.

Right-wing settler groups that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of supporting and relying on to sustain his coalition and his political survival are a particular focus of the annexing of the West Bank. Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister, quietly seized much of the authority that had been given to him in the territory in June 2024, adding that he himself lives in an illegal settlement.

In response to a non-binding UN resolution in September that recommended a two-state solution, Smotrich wrote on social media that Israel must assert its sovereignty over the West Bank as a preventative measure against the reckless attempt to establish a terror state in our nation.

Since the start of the Gaza War, Israeli forces and settler groups have increased their attacks, according to international observers and right-wing organizations. More than 1, 000 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 10,000 have been injured across the occupied West Bank as a result of attacks by the Israeli military, settler groups, or combinations thereof, according to UN figures.