Israel wants to turn occupied West Bank into rubble like Gaza, says Haaretz

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of seeking to turn the occupied West Bank into rubble, as it has done in Gaza. The allegation was made in an editorial in Haaretz today.

Tension has been running high across the West Bank due to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed almost 46,000 people, mostly women and children, since a Hamas attack on 7 October, 2023, Anadolu has pointed out. At least 844 Palestinians have since been killed and more than 6,700 injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied territory, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

“While most Israelis view 7 October as the greatest disaster in the country’s history, some on the right see in it an opportunity, and even the beginning of the redemption,” said Haaretz.

Netanyahu approved a series of military actions in the West Bank on Monday, shortly after a shooting that killed three illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied territory. His Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich also called for destroying the Palestinian cities of Jenin and Nablus in the West Bank as happened in Jabalia in northern Gaza, which was reduced to rubble amid a deadly Israeli offensive.

Illegal settlers also attacked several Palestinian towns in the occupied West Bank in retaliation for Monday’s attack, torching cars and property.

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“The settlers in the West Bank see what’s happening in Gaza, and are envious,” Haaretz pointed out in its editorial. “They demand the government and the army do there what they did in the Strip.”

Illegal settlers also called on Defence Minister Israel Katz to launch destructive military operations in the West Bank.

“I call on the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] and the Israeli government to have a profound change of perception,” said Ariel Mayor Yair Shtebon. He wants a massive military operation in the West Bank like the one in 2002, “that destroys the refugee camps in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], in Tulkarem, in Jenin, in Nablus and wherever there is a threat to residents of Israel.”

His calls were echoed by members of Netanyahu’s Likud Party. Avichay Buaron, for example, called in a radio interview on Tuesday for the Palestinian Authority to be “disarmed of its weapons and political capabilities.”

According to Haaretz, when illegal Israeli settlers call for “uprooting terrorism” they mean that the government should expel Palestinian residents and demolish homes and civilian infrastructure. “The goal (is) to impose Greater Israel apartheid in the occupied territories. If they succeed, they will put an end to any future possibility of a two-state solution and sustainable life in the region.”

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land to be illegal and demanded the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

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