Why the West Bank Is in Chaos

Yesterday, a Palestinian terrorist murdered two brothers, Hillel and Yagel Yaniv, who were driving on a highway. Shortly thereafter, local Jews rioted in a nearby Palestinian village. These events follow on the heels of numerous terrorist attacks over the past several weeks—which have left nine others dead—and of multiple shootouts between the IDF and armed factions in the West Bank. Reports in the media have tended to describe the current situation either as part of an unending “cycle of violence,” or as an unexpected surge of attacks—leading many to interpret them through the lens of recent developments in Israeli domestic politics. But such portrayals stray far from the truth, explain Jonathan Schanzer and Joe Truzman:

The intifada of 2000-2005 was an asymmetric war waged by Palestinian groups. But since then, thanks in part to the efficacy of Israel’s security barrier, not to mention careful and complex coordination between Palestinians and Israelis, the West Bank has been largely quiet. By the end of 2021, however, armed clashes between Israeli forces and gunmen had become routine. So it behooves us to look for the turning point.

We find it in May 2021 during an eleven-day war between Israel and Hamas. Israeli security officials now say that Hamas made a strategic decision after that clash to abandon battles in Gaza because it is a territory the terrorist group already controls. Rather, it elected to export unrest and chaos to the West Bank, with assistance from Iran and some of its proxy groups, with the goal of taking it over. Stoking violence there has the benefit of threatening Israel and destabilizing the rival Palestinian Authority.

The effect was immediate. On June 10, 2021, Israeli security forces entered Jenin to search for two men who shot at Israeli soldiers. . . . Violence continued into 2022. . . . By the spring of last year, Israeli defense officials observed that pockets of the West Bank were utterly lawless. Hamas’s strategic pivot in the summer of 2021 was paying dividends. The Palestinian Authority was either unwilling or unable to contain the chaos in towns such as Nablus and Jenin. After sustained Israeli political pressure, coupled with continued IDF operations, in September 2022, the Palestinian Authority arrested Musab Shtayyeh, a wanted member of Hamas. Israel lauded the arrest, which demonstrated the Palestinian Authority had the ability to act.

But it was too little and too late. The West Bank had become home to established terrorist organizations that previously lacked a foothold in the territory, such as the Gaza-based Mujahideen Movement and the Popular Resistance Movement. Worse, a new terrorist organization emerged: the Lions’ Den.

Read more at FDD

More about: Hamas, Israeli Security, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Palestinian terror, West Bank

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF