West Bank Risks Becoming a New Front for Israel

Fadwa Hodali and Gwen Ackerman
·5 min read
11

(Bloomberg) -- Widespread arrests, a rising death toll and an economic slump are combining to stoke tensions in the West Bank, which is threatening to become a new front for Israel as it battles Hamas in Gaza.

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The Israeli army’s frequent raids into the larger of the two Palestinian enclaves have led to the arrest of 1,100 people, which it says are mostly members of Hamas. The number of dead this year has reached 334, the most since the United Nations began keeping records in 2005. At the same time, unemployment is soaring as Israel stops Palestinian workers from entering.

A further escalation of violence in the West Bank would add to pressure on an Israeli military already contending with an air and ground offensive in Gaza as well as escalating attacks from southern Lebanon by the militant group Hezbollah. It would also test the ability of the Palestinian Authority, the internationally recognized but unpopular government of the West Bank, to retain its power and maintain order.

“Israel is very keenly aware of how in no time the West Bank could become another front in the war,” said Uzi Rabi, the director of Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center. Gaza-based Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both designated as terrorist groups by the US and European Union, have some support in parts of the West Bank, he said.

For more on the Israel-Hamas war, click here.

Tensions in the West Bank, home to about 3 million Palestinians, have worsened since Israel curbed movement across the territory following Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel that killed more then 1,400 people. Roadblocks multiplied, as did arrests and raids by the military, adding to a deadly July raid into a refugee camp that had left at least a dozen Palestinians dead.

That in turn has sparked ever-larger protests by Palestinians and demonstrations in support of Hamas, including in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority. The two rivals openly clashed following a 2006 election held in the Palestinian territories, and Hamas took over the entire Gaza Strip the following year, running the local government there on its own ever since.

Nearly one in four in the West Bank’s labor force works in Israel or Jewish settlements, with salaries on average about twice the local rate. Their combined annual income was about $4 billion, representing a quarter of the West Bank’s total gross domestic product, according to the UN Conference on Trade and Development. The only jobs still available today are in industries deemed essential to Israel such as food and health care.

“The financial liquidity that these workers bring to the Palestinian economy moves the economic wheels,” said Nasser Abdelkarim, director general for research group Private Sector Development in Palestine. “Already, there is a financial crisis in the Palestinian Authority, and from here it will move to the banking sector.”

Samer, a 40-year-old father of three from the town of Bethlehem, worked as a building contractor in Jerusalem for the past three years. Like most of the 160,000 Palestinians who commuted daily into Israel from the West Bank, he is now unemployed. So is Mohammad, a 45-year-old construction worker and a father of five from Ramallah.

“Finding a job in the West Bank is limited and doesn’t pay well,” said Mohammad, who like Samer declined to give his full name because of concerns he will be blacklisted when Israel lifts its restrictions on migrant labor.

That may take a long time. Israel has said it intends to eliminate Hamas all together, and is doing so through a gradual move by ground forces into Gaza, which is home to about 2 million Palestinians. The death toll in the enclave has exceeded 8,500, according to Hamas-led health authorities. The campaign will take months not weeks, during which conditions in the West Bank are unlikely to improve.

Read more: Israel Deepens a War With Hamas That Has No End in Sight

Violence in the West Bank is coming too from clashes between Palestinians and Israeli settlers, whose numbers were estimated by local municipalities to be just under half a million last year. The West Bank Health Authority says eight Palestinians have been killed by the settlers since Oct. 7, bringing this year’s tally to 24. According to the Israeli military, 17 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in the West Bank since the beginning of the year, many of them settlers.

Jewish communities in the West Bank have had “more than their share of brutal terrorist attacks” and are now on a much higher alert than usual, said Dorit Ostrovsky-Schechter, a spokesperson for the Yesha Council, a group that comprises local councils in settlements. The communities are raising funds for additional security equipment and “are well equipped to protect” themselves” Ostrovsky-Schechter said.

Israel does seem to be making some effort to keep a lid on settler violence as well. The Times of Israel reported that a Jewish settler activist was placed under detention for four months, an extremely rare step by the government.

Israel’s primary objective is “to keep the level of violence as low as possible in the West Bank so as to concentrate on Gaza and then the northern front,” said Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser and senior researcher at The Institute for National Security Studies.

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