Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza has stoked fear in the occupied West Bank, where dozens of Palestinians have been killed and residents say they now live in terror of more reprisal attacks by Jewish settlers.
The army battling Hamas after the Islamist group’s bloody October 7 attack on Israel has also hunted the group’s members in the West Bank, making hundreds of arrests.
Thousands of Palestinians have meanwhile rallied in solidarity with besieged and bombarded Gaza, and stone-throwing youths have burned tyres in clashes with Israeli forces.
As Israel has vowed to destroy Gaza’s Hamas rulers, many Palestinians living in the West Bank say they feel in more danger than ever — both from Israeli settlers and the soldiers who protect them.
“Soldiers and settlers are now quick to open fire in revenge for what’s happening in Gaza,” said Faraj Beitaoui from Beita, a northern village where two people have been killed this month.
Zeid al-Chouaibi, from Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, said the tense recent days had seen the “looting of shops, threatening graffiti from settlers, attempted attacks on villages, and the murders”.
About three million Palestinians live across the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict.
Scattered throughout are Israeli settlements, which are considered illegal under international law but home to 490,000 Israelis.
Since the Gaza war broke out, settler attacks against Palestinians have more than doubled, from an average of three to eight incidents a day, according to the UN humanitarian agency OCHA.
Deadliest year since 2005
Before the Gaza war, the West Bank was already torn by its deadliest upsurge of violence since at least 2005 according to the UN, marked especially by months of frequent pre-dawn Israeli army raids.
The hardline nationalist government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which includes far-right settlers, had vowed to crack down on Palestinian militant groups across the territory.
That violence has now been overshadowed by the bloody carnage of October 7 which brought the worst attack on Israel in the country’s 75-year history, and the devastating bombing campaign on Gaza that followed.
Israel was left grieving and enraged by the Hamas attack in which gunmen surged out of Gaza, leaving mutilated and burnt corpses scattered across highways, towns and kibbutzim.
More than 1,400 people have been killed in Israel since October 7.
Israel’s response has been to level entire city blocks in Gaza where around 3,000 have been killed.
The population in the long-blockaded coastal territory has endured mass displacement while water, food and power have been cut off.
Worse may yet lie ahead as Israel has threatened to “crush” Hamas in a possible ground invasion of Gaza and seeks to rescue at least 199 hostages taken to the enclave.
Western powers that designate Hamas as a “terrorist” group have sought out the West Bank-based Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, 87, in efforts to prevent a wider Middle East conflagration.
‘Afraid of settler attacks’
While the world’s attention has been focused on Gaza, the rage and violence has spilled into the West Bank.
At least 61 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,250 wounded since, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Most were shot dead by Israeli forces, others killed by settlers according to Palestinian health officials. Thousands of mourners have turned out for their funerals.
Israeli forces have detained some 700 Palestinians in the West Bank, mostly Hamas members, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group.
Among them are dozens of Gazans who were working legally in Israel when the war broke out and took refuge in the West Bank, according to the group.
Amid the heightened tensions, Palestinians have been out on patrol each night in Deir Jarir village near Ramallah.
“There’s a group where we exchange information and where we keep one another informed of settler movements,” said Haidar Makho, a 52-year-old resident.
In nearby Qusra village, settlers killed five Palestinians last week, the health ministry said.
Most shops are now shuttered in Huwara, a northern West Bank town which has been the scene of Palestinian attacks on Israelis and reprisals by settlers.
The town’s mayor, Moin Dmidi, voiced fear of worse ahead. “We’re all afraid of new settler attacks after what happened in Gaza.”
