Transcript

Alex Kane: Hello and welcome to On the Nose, the Jewish Currents podcast. I’m Alex Kane, the senior reporter for Jewish Currents, and I’ll be your host today. Israeli warplanes have stopped dropping bombs on Gaza, at least for now. There’s no ceasefire in the occupied West Bank. Instead, over the past year—and even more so in the past few weeks—the intensity of Israeli military operations in the West Bank has escalated to a degree unseen since the Second Intifada. On January 21, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the start of Operation Iron Wall, a military campaign centered on Jenin, a city in the northern West Bank that has long been an epicenter of Palestinian militant activity. Israel’s hardline extremist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said the military campaign was, quote, “for the protection of settlements and settlers,” while Israel’s Defense Minister said the army was applying lessons learned in Gaza to Jenin. So far, Israeli forces, which invaded the city in large numbers and have been accompanied by attack helicopters and armed drones, have killed at least 25 Palestinians in Jenin, including a two-year-old. Israeli troops have also bulldozed roads in the city, causing damage to water and sewage, infrastructure and telecommunication networks, and destroyed homes and infrastructure throughout the city and the refugee camp inside the city. The Israeli invasion has also forced thousands of Palestinians to leave, turning Jenin into what Reuters described as “a ghost town.” And in a particularly brazen act that recalled scenes in Gaza, Israel’s army simultaneously blew up 23 buildings in Jenin in one fell swoop. All of this adds to a toll of utter destruction brought by similar Israeli operations in Jenin over the past two years. Israel’s army has also ramped up airstrikes and drone strikes and raids in other parts of the northern West Bank, and Israeli settlers have meanwhile continued a campaign of land theft and extremist attacks on Palestinian villages. On February 4, a Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded eight more.

Alex Kane: To discuss why this is happening now, its impact on Palestinians, and the connection between the bombardments in Gaza and the West Bank, I brought on two guests. Azmat Khan is assistant professor at Columbia Journalism School, the leader of the school’s Li Center for Global Journalism, reporter with the New York Times Magazine, and the author of the forthcoming Random House book Precision Strike, and Tahani Mustafa, the Senior Palestine Analyst for the International Crisis Group. Asmat and Tahani, thank you so much for coming on the show. I wanted to begin by setting the scene before we get into the most recent Israeli invasion of Jenin. How would you describe the conduct of the Israeli army, particularly since October 7 and the start of the campaign in Gaza? Has Israel used the cover of war in Gaza to escalate in the West Bank? Let’s begin with Tahani, and then Asmat can follow up.

Tahani Mustafa: Yeah, so I think we’ve certainly seen, since the 7th of October 2023, trends that were already persistent in the West Bank over 2021, up until that moment of 7th of October 2023 definitely accelerate after that—not just in the way of Israeli search and arrest operations but also settler violence. And at that point, we’d seen the obfuscation of the demarcations between settler and soldier, had settlers that were now donning military uniforms, thereby making a lot of these incursions even more fatal and even more destructive in a lot of Palestinian localities. And where prior to the 7th, you saw a lot of Israeli operations were very much clustered in the north, which is where a lot of these perpetrators that were alleged to have conducted lone-wolf attacks in Israel (as the justification for Israel conducting search-and-arrest operations in the West Bank) often hailed from. I think this was the first time where we really saw Israel indiscriminately just going north, south, central—even places like the PA administrative capital haven’t been immune to deadly Israeli search-and-arrest operations, where we’ve also seen fatalities and destruction. Over the last 15 months, we’ve also seen very similar images that we’ve seen in places like Gaza coming out of the West Bank, in places like Tulkarem, places like Tubas, places like Jenin, where literally entire neighborhoods have been razed to the ground, and where we’ve seen forcible displacement. And in many cases, just from the sheer scale of destruction and disruption to routinized daily life, we’re now seeing also associated displacement that is actually taking effect, not just in the north but also in the south, in the center of the West Bank—places like Ramallah, for instance, where the routinization of daily life has been completely disrupted and where there is really no sense of security for Palestinians.

Azmat Khan: One particular area in which we’ve seen Israeli forces ramp up the war in the West Bank has been through the use of airstrikes. There were reports in 2022 of drone strikes that the Israeli army didn’t confirm. And in 2023, there were reports of strikes they did. And after October 7th, those escalated significantly. We’ve seen some 60 or more deadly airstrikes across the West Bank that have killed people since October 7. They have launched some of their largest raids over the summer; the IDF came into multiple camps in the northern areas, including Jenin but also Tulkarem, Balata, and Farah Camp in the north, where they launched these intense raids that coupled not only soldiers on the ground in these areas going after what they said were fighters but also conducting drone strikes and airstrikes with fighter jets. There was an airstrike in Tulkarem that hit a café on October 3 that killed 18 people, some of them children. And that was not a drone; that was an Israeli fighter jet. And I went right after it happened and collected the weapons fragments and was able to identify them as US Weapons from a JDAM. And these are not normal tactics in a place like the West Bank. But with so much attention focused on Gaza, it has been incredibly easy to overlook that escalation.

Alex Kane: I really want to dig into this question of aerial warfare. I mean, obviously during the Second Intifada, for instance, airstrikes were really common. And then, I mean, I don’t know for how many years, but then there was a period in which airstrikes didn’t happen. And yet, as you mentioned, perhaps beginning in 2022—and obviously significantly since October 7—there’s been an escalation in airstrikes. And I’m not sure if people reading the news might understand the significance. Like, why should we focus on airstrikes? What makes aerial warfare different than the kinds of on-the-ground military raids that we’ve always seen? And why is it important to take stock of this aerial warfare in particular?

Azmat Khan: Israel has long claimed that they only conduct drone strikes in places where they can’t make arrests. I’ve been to the sites of about 25 or so deadly airstrikes across the West Bank, and, routinely, it was very hard to understand why these particular targets necessitated airstrikes. I think that there is a question of risk (to soldiers) that they might be entertaining, where there are Israeli soldiers on the ground while there are also airstrikes happening. I mean, these are residential areas where there’s very densely populated Palestinians living in these camps, just house by house by house, connected to one another. So, to conduct these strikes and to expect to be precise, whether that’s a drone is really just hard to understand. And you can really see the impact it’s having on families. I went to the site of a Christmas Eve strike that occurred in Tulkarem, and two women were killed. As far as I can tell, no militants were killed in that particular strike. There may have been militants nearby. Two women were killed. And the husband of one of the women, her name was Bara, but Bara’s husband told me that in the weeks prior to that, she had written a will about what she wanted for her family, and what she wanted for her daughter, and how she wanted her daughter to be raised—simply because she was anticipating her own death. In that area, that particular neighborhood, there had been a barrage of strikes, and she lived with fear that she might be killed. And there were many civilians killed in that neighborhood and in those areas in the months prior. And so, just imagine what your mentality might have to be to think that this is something that might reach you or impact you. And they didn’t have, as her family told me, they didn’t have anywhere else to go. The Israeli army is often trying to evacuate civilians and the populations of these camps. And so many of them would tell me things like, “We had no other place to go.” They are quite poor. Living in the camps where they might have a home is a lot cheaper than trying to afford rent in major cities where these camps are located near. And so, often, they are in these areas where these very intense military operations are taking place with airstrikes. And they’re really caught in the crosshairs in ways that we have not previously seen.

TM: Yeah, I mean, I think it definitely serves a military objective for Israel, which is maximum impact at the lowest possible cost for its soldiers. And that’s exactly what these airstrikes do. We’ve also seen—and I think this is prior to the 7th of October—which is what many that had been following some of Israel’s security operations in the West Bank were warning of, which is Israel doesn’t have soldiers capable of actually conducting effective insurgency campaigns. And we’d seen that in a lot of these localities, where they were going in over the last two years prior to that, trying to target armed groups, trying to target the problem of militancy that was growing across the northern West Bank, and where you were literally seeing—I mean, they were having to deploy some of their most special units, highly trained soldiers, against something like four to five kids, effectively kids, 18 to 22-year-olds, in places like the old city of Nablus, densely populated, incredibly congested. And I mean, the level of force that they had to deploy in order just to target those five kids was immense. And imagine those five kids being able to engage in a five-hour shootout with Israel’s special forces. It was insane. And that’s when you started to see Israel then having to deploy its air force. In places like Jenin, back in July 2023, we only really saw Israel then having to deploy its air force in order to rescue its ground troops. Again, it’s a serious miscalculation of just how well-trained its soldiers are. And that was something that even military commentators were talking about, in terms of the conduct of soldiers in trying to fight an insurgency campaign in a place like Gaza. If Israel could barely contain battalions of something like 50 to 83 young men who had no serious combat experience, then how were they meant to fare in a place like Gaza? And I think that’s been very much proven, especially in the case like Jenin. I mean, even today, if we look at Jenin now, the brigade doesn’t total more than 83 in terms of young militants. Again, their combat experience—very limited. And yet, that camp has been under siege from both the PA that had to deploy 1,000 Palestinian security forces, and now the Israeli military. And still, they don’t have the issue of armed resistance under control. I mean, we’re just talking about over the last two months, never mind the fact that Israel has been dealing with this since 2021.

Azmat Khan: Yeah, I might add it certainly questions the capability of them to fight on the ground but also just about their intelligence. Repeatedly, there have been cases in which they have assessed a particular threat. So, for example, in Tammun on January 8, they conducted an airstrike near where IDF troops were operating and called it a terrorist cell. I went to the site the next day and it was essentially an eight-year-old boy, a 10-year-old boy, and a 24-year-old. They were all cousins who had been playing outside together, and they had called this a terror cell. They took the bodies and only, I think, later on that night did they return them and admit this was not the terrorist cell that they had initially described it as. And I went there and, essentially, this family awoke to the sounds of the strike, came outside, saw the bodies. A young woman named Isra, who is the sister of Adam, who was the 24-year-old who was killed, said she could see Hamza, the eight-year-old boy, still breathing. And immediately, Israeli soldiers rushed in and prevented them from seeking medical care, which is something I’ve heard again and again and again; that after a lot of these deadly operations, ambulances were either obstructed—in one case, a medical worker was shot while he was trying to resuscitate someone—and, essentially, they watched their loved ones die right before them. There are certainly cases in which they went after specific fighters. There are cases where they have killed who they anticipated. But, over and over, I found cases where they either killed only civilians, missed their target, or there are really dubious questions as to what intelligence they were operating under. And I think that really plays a role in understanding not only the failures of October 7 but, like Tahani said, their ability to conduct warfare against insurgency.

Alex Kane: Asmat, you have a lot of experience; you’re probably one of the most experienced reporters, if not the most experienced reporter, in examining the impact of airstrikes in the Middle East and also, of course, in Afghanistan. I’m curious: When you’re doing this work that you’re describing where you’re going to the sites after, how does that compare in the West Bank to other sites that you’ve done work in—in Iraq and Syria and Afghanistan?

Azmat Khan: Yeah, that’s a great question. Oftentimes in Afghanistan, these were occurring in really rural areas that were hard to access that have very limited internet. And also, there was not a lot of presence of NGOs or others who were on the ground documenting these strikes in these Taliban-controlled areas at the time. In Iraq and Syria under ISIS rule, they had banned the internet and certainly beheaded journalists and killed journalists. There were not a lot of journalists operating on the ground, let alone NGOs documenting things. But in the West Bank, there’s a really rich history and culture of local groups documenting this on the ground. And in particular, Al Haqq, a Palestinian rights watchdog which operates in occupied territories, has done a really incredible job, I think, of being on the ground after these strikes and not only documenting evidence, but also using OSINT tools and satellite imagery and other efforts to collect evidence, but also to analyze it and present findings about what’s happening on the ground. And that was really interesting to me to see. I mean, most of the time in the previous strikes I’ve investigated, almost always, I was the first person to ever interview survivors in those places that I went to. They had never spoken to a journalist, let alone somebody who was taking their account of those casualties. Again and again, in different parts of the West Bank—and I was in all of these northern areas where strikes have taken place, so in Tubas, in Nablus, in Jenin and Tulkarem—in all of those places, people had been spoken to, they had had their testimonies taken. And that one specific rights group, Al Haqq, had often been there very first. They have great people embedded in those communities and documenting what’s happening. So that was really interesting to see, and I think it’s credit where it’s due.

Alex Kane: Talk about the most recent escalation in the West Bank. I mean, it’s tough to call it “new,” in the sense that we’ve had these rolling waves of operations, even beginning, I think, in 2021 under Naftali Bennett. But now, it seems like we’re seeing this to a degree that is unprecedented. On January 21, Israel launched what they called Operation Iron Wall. And I’m just curious what this campaign has looked like. What are its stated aims, how does it build on previous Israeli military campaigns, and also, what is its impact on the Palestinian population, particularly in Jenin?

TM: I guess this recent operation, Operation Iron Wall, was meant to be a continuation of an operation that the PA had started back in December but couldn’t finish effectively. So, the PA had been tasked with trying to clamp down on the issue of militancy, especially after the 7th of October. And for the last 15 months, up until, I think, around July, they had been trying to deploy something called a surrender program, where they offer militants some form of amnesty—whether that’s a legal pardon, jobs within the PA security forces in exchange for laying down their weapons—simply because the PA doesn’t have the capacity to really deploy force. They don’t have the logistics, primarily because Israel won’t allow them to have the logistics, for the fear that they may end up using it against Israelis. So, often, the PA tends to rely on things like that—forms of co-optation.

TM: Now, in July, they had realized that that just simply wasn’t working. The phenomenon of armed resistance was spreading. It was spreading in places that hadn’t really been an issue, places like Tulkarem, Ramallah, Hebron, Bethlehem, as well as other various parts of the northern West Bank, where it already, to some degree, existed. Now, the PA had launched its own operation, Operation Protecting the Nation, where it wanted to prevent Israel from doing what we’re now seeing it do under Operation Iron Wall, what we’ve seen it do in Gaza. And I think they started in Tubas first; we’d seen clashes there in October. Militants handed themselves in through a surrender program brokered with the local community. And then, the PA decided to then tackle the belly of the beast, which was Jenin. They were meant to go into Tulkarem first, which was considered to be an easier brigade to grapple with before then trying to tackle a place like Jenin. But I think they were very emboldened by their success in Tubas, that they decided to then go into Jenin. And the idea was if you nip this in the bud, then that’s it. The phenomenon’s dead.

TM: Now, obviously, that didn’t work. You had 1,000 PA security forces deployed in a place like Jenin. They outnumbered the brigades quite significantly. You’re talking about like 83 men, young men, and something like 1,000 passive forces. But again, a lot of those deployed to Jenin had no combat experience. They didn’t have the adequate logistics. So, they were outdone in terms of experience and also in terms of just logistics. These guys had better guns; they had IEDs, things that the PA couldn’t really grapple with. The PA refused to engage in any surrender program because they quite literally wanted to disarm the camp completely. That was what the PA was after. And the Israelis had threatened during that time—they had threatened that if the PA can’t finish the job, then they will. And that’s exactly what ended up happening. It took the PA something like six weeks.

TM: And there tends to be a very murky relationship between the PA and I think, the issue of armed resistance, which never really gets talked about. And so, it’s not as clear-cut as this resistance versus cooperation discourse that tends to occupy a lot of stories around what is happening, especially in the context of Jenin and the reporting that’s been going on over the last two months. It’s difficult to think that those that have been charged with implementing the program would clamp down on the phenomenon of armed resistance when many of those were actually implicated in supporting, financially and logistically, a lot of these militants, for financial reasons or for political reasons. So, to assume that they would then cut off their power bases, their bread and butter, would be a bit naive. Unfortunately, that had played a part in why the PA wasn’t able to grapple with the phenomenon. Also, the fact that you had images that we were seeing coming out of Gaza, and to then expect a lot of those security personnel to try and clamp down on resistance at a time like that—it wasn’t going to happen. And they had a fair amount of international support behind them. The Americans were there the entire step of the way. They were very much trying to use this as a way to convince those skeptics in Israel that the PA had the capability to enforce law and order, not just in the West Bank, but for their reinstatement in Gaza, and if ever the day comes we see reconstruction and a reinstatement of the PA, then they have the capability to do that. Obviously, we didn’t see that. And now we’re seeing Operation Iron Wall.

TM: In terms of, I think, the level of force that’s being deployed—again, the camp is under siege. That’s not uncommon for Israel to do. We’ve seen it in many other cases. Even before 7 October, they had placed Jericho—which, again, had a similar issue of militancy—under a siege for three months, when nothing was going in and out of the camp. The sheer level of disproportionate force fatalities—again, these numbers are not uncommon, considering what we’ve seen in the past. Again, the lack of intelligence, simply just going in and disproportionately targeting residential buildings, terrorizing local residents, forcibly displacing people—not unprecedented. But I think it’s more the political context in which this is happening. I think that that is compounding the effects of what we’re seeing coming out of Jenin, especially when we’re hearing talks of total annexation against the backdrop of now what’s happening in Gaza and this potential resettlement there. So, I think there’s an entire political context that’s really compounding the images that we are seeing. But in terms of the actual operational elements of what’s happening in Jenin, this isn’t necessarily unprecedented.

Alex Kane: And obviously, the justification for these operations is an increase in armed militancy. As I mentioned in the introduction, a couple days ago, a Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint in the Jordan Valley. And I guess I’m curious: Tahani, you had mentioned earlier that armed militancy had been spreading throughout the West Bank. Now, correct me if I’m wrong: It does seem like the Israeli operations are concentrated in the northern West Bank. And I guess I just wanted to drill down into the regional aspect of this. Like, why is the northern West Bank a particular focus? Why might there be more armed resistance there? And also, what is the impact of the Israeli military operations on the northern West Bank to the economy and also to people’s lives?

TM: I mean, even in the north, it’s not the same, right? If you look at Nablus, if you look at places like Tulkarem, and you compare them to a place like Jenin, the dynamics are very different in terms of resistance. There are different motivations that drive resistance in different localities. There’s almost a running joke that places like Balata, for example, that had its own brigade, they weren’t really serious in terms of their intentions. It wasn’t driven by political motivation; it was driven by profit. Whether it was through legal pardons they could get through the PA or jobs that they could get in exchange for laying down their weapons. The same thing in places like Nablus. The original founders of the Lion’s Den did actually have a political motivation and a political program in mind, but they had been killed a few months after the group had been established. But then, what you ended up having was a churning process of a rotation of membership when new members would be joining.

TM: But because they don’t have a structured leadership, they are really an ad hoc mishmash of different Palestinian, I guess, young men that are affiliated to different factions that come in with their own motivations. For some, it is a political project. For them, there are political motivations. For others, it’s a form of nihilistic resistance. They don’t feel like they have any sense of agency or control over their lives. When you’ve literally grown up in one place and you’re not allowed to move from that one place, where Israel controls every element of life, whether it’s the economy, your physical movement, geography, I mean, everything—for them, that is the only way they see as being able to assert their agency. For some, it’s about economic motivations, whether it’s a faction that will pay you a stipend per month, or if it’s the PA that will offer you a job in exchange for laying down your weapon.

TM: There are different motivations here, but I think Jenin was very different. Jenin has a very different social and political makeup. And there seems to be a long-standing history of resistance that many in the camp do really—I don’t want to say take to heart, but it’s a very politically charged place. And it’s difficult, I guess, to put your finger on it, but Jenin just has a very, very different psychology compared to other areas. I can’t say that their living conditions or the context differ so substantially from other places in the north, nor even across the West Bank. If you look to Hebron, you’d wonder why the same phenomenon doesn’t exist there, but it really is just a very different psychology. In places like Hebron, Bethlehem, it doesn’t matter where you look across the West Bank— there definitely is the potential for mobilization. I mean, guns are everywhere. Everyone has guns in the West Bank. Weapons are very much in abundance there, for various reasons. But as I said, the psychology when it comes to a place like Jenin, and why the north, is precisely because this phenomenon started in Jenin in 2021. But it was because of family and social ties that they were then able to transport the idea to places like Nablus and Tulkarem, which is where you have family and social connections there. But again, in each locality where that idea got transported, it took on a very different character depending on the locality itself. So as much as I wanted to transport the idea in terms of what these groups actually became was something very different to what had been originally planned and anticipated by those that began in 2021.

Azmat Khan: I might add that there are also some networks between some of the camps, specifically Jenin, Nur Shams and Farah Camp. I think, historically, they were originally displaced from Haifa and those areas. And it’s my understanding there are strong family ties between those three camps in particular. And so, you will see fighters that were sometimes circulating between them. But Jenin is particular for many reasons, and motivations vary for why people might join. And one thing that I might point out is the extent to which sometimes, those targeted were explicit fighters in the brigades, but sometimes they were—for example, I went to a strike site in Deir Ibzi, I think, where it was what seemed like a lone wolf attacker who had attacked settlers nearby. And the IDF was fighting with him. And it was like an hours-long standoff before they ultimately had to kill him in an airstrike. They were apparently unable to do it any other way. And not only that; I kept finding young boys who were not part of the brigades, had no formal affiliation, but who may have been throwing—not a Molotov cocktail, but I think it’s equivalent to something like that, or in some cases, it was stones. But they were not formal fighters. They were young boys but were either killed in airstrikes or sometimes shot.

Azmat Khan: There was one young boy, his name was Maajid. He was killed in early September. Israel says that he was throwing an explosive device, and everyone in that neighborhood in Farah camp described to me that he was shot first in one leg. And he cried out, and somebody, like a soldier, said, “Don’t shoot, he’s young.” Another shot rang out. He was shot in the other leg. And this boy is on the ground screaming. And he’s ultimately shot a third time, I think in the neck. He is left to bleed out. And everyone told me that a bulldozer dragged his body across this part of the camp and then dumped it in an area nearby. And a few hours later, video surfaces, like, everything that they had described, that it played out exactly as it was described to me. But I just remember being really stunned by that, because by all accounts, he was not in any brigade.

Azmat Khan: So many young boys were shot, many of them not fighters. I remember I was speaking to the father of a boy who was killed, and his kindergarten teacher, the woman who taught his son in kindergarten, walked by, and just immediately turned to the father, started crying, “I remember your son, he was such a good boy. This is what he did in school every day.” And it was just—I just want to point out the cyclical nature of this. These killings are resulting in more recruitment. When these forces come in, there was a lot of pride to be someone who might be able to throw something at them. I can’t tell you the number of mothers I sat with whose sons may have joined the brigades. And I remember them telling me things like, “Oh, he hid it from me when he joined it because he knew I would be mad.” But the amount of pride they had after their sons were killed, and what they saw as martyrdom, I think that there’s just a real cyclical nature to this. I really question if they’re going to have the effects that they’re intending.

Alex Kane: Thank you so much, Azmat, for bringing these stories into the conversation. There has been this phrase that has circulated ever since October 7 and the Israeli campaign in Gaza, and then what’s going on in the West Bank. People are saying there’s a quote, unquote “Gazafication” of the West Bank. And Azmat, you co-wrote a piece in the New York Times quoting a number of Palestinians making this comparison. And your piece also noted particular tactics that drew headlines in Gaza that were also being used in the West Bank. And I wanted both of you to reflect on what this phrase tells us (or doesn’t tell us) about what’s going on in the West Bank, from a military tactical level and also from a broader comparative level.

Azmat Khan: I hear this a lot with sources on the ground who study the Israeli military. I hear it frequently from Palestinians in the West Bank. There are obviously major distinctions between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in the West Bank. Not just in terms of the use of 2,000-pound bombs in Gaza or this extraordinary level of force. I mean, I was struck, even just in the first week of the aerial campaign in Gaza, the first six days, the Israeli military announced dropping 6,000 bombs. In no month of the US-led coalition’s anti-ISIS air war did they ever drop that many bombs in a single month in Iraq and Syria. So, to do that in six days into a tiny strip of land is astounding. Like, I genuinely was so taken aback. And you certainly saw in that first month, in particular the first month and a half, just some of the most intense pace and scale of airstrikes. Not just in my lifetime, but in the last decades, we haven’t seen anything.

Azmat Khan: So, I don’t want to just say that what’s happening in Gaza is exactly happening in the West Bank. There are very big differences. But you can see tactics that are being adopted. And one that I saw—of course, in addition to the increased use of drone strikes and airstrikes in the West Bank—but you’re also seeing the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields. And I heard numerous accounts from Palestinians and would corroborate them in different ways. And of course, we’ve heard about that tactic being used in Gaza. Some say that that is only being used with detainees in Gaza, but those that I’ve seen it being used with in the West Bank were just widespread across the population. They were not just detainees. In fact, in cases that I documented, they were children, they were young men who had nothing to do with the fighting.

Azmat Khan: Just to give you one example, one was a 10-year-old girl. She was a 10-year-old girl who was forced to open doors. It was her own house, so she knew it was safe. But just imagine that: that you have soldiers using a 10-year-old girl because they fear that there might be explosives in a house and forcing her, separating her from her sister, forcing her to do this. And multiple people witnessed this. Imagine an account like that. So, there are so many ways in which it’s understandable why Palestinians in these places would say this is a Gazafication. There’s so many reasons why experts would say that as well, when you’re seeing the adoption of particular combat techniques and tactics. But I think, in many ways, they are seeing this escalation as leading to something that might be more like Gaza.

Azmat Khan: And just to share something that I think might be helpful to know: at some point, I was speaking to people affiliated with the most recent US administration, and I asked a question that was, essentially: What is the basis for the decisions you’ve been making with respect to Gaza? And I was essentially told something akin to: Well, we can sleep at night because we have prevented what happened in Gaza from happening in the West Bank. And I think that it’s an ominous warning, in many ways, about what might be happening in the West Bank, or what Israel might want to do in the West Bank, that I think is worth taking seriously and considering.

TM: Yeah, I think in terms of the images that we’ve seen come out of Gaza and the psychological trauma that that has instilled in Palestine, especially in the West Bank, that has really played on their psychology. And so now, even when we are seeing trends that Azmat correctly pointed out are not exclusive to the 7th of October by any means. Especially in the West Bank, where we’ve seen Israel deploy human shields for decades, where we have seen the forcible violent displacement of Palestinians—I mean, to the point where we can literally pinpoint inflection points in history, 1948, 1967, and obviously, the violence had accompanied in the collective punishment of the First and Second Intifadas. But I think the scale and speed and sheer level of destruction that has come out of Gaza has made many in the West Bank draw these sorts of comparisons and deploy new terminology. And it’s definitely compounded the feeling of what they’re seeing and what they’re experiencing in the West Bank to be one of the same. If we’re just talking about movement restrictions and the number of checkpoints, those are completely unprecedented in the context of the West Bank. And obviously, now the sheer scale of displacement that we’re seeing accompany that, as well as the violence that we’re seeing. So, in terms of tactics deployed, they’re definitely not new, not unprecedented. But I think it’s simply the speed coupled with the sheer scale of what we’ve seen Israel do in the context of Gaza. And those two things can’t be separated, especially when we talk about the psychological impact of that and how Palestinians in the West Bank are interpreting their own experiences now.

Alex Kane: This leads me to my last question, which is a bit of a future-looking question but also taking into context the events of just yesterday from when we’re recording. I mean, you have Donald Trump saying he wants to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza and dump them in Egypt or Jordan and do some real estate project in Gaza. Azmat, you mentioned the justification that you heard from the Biden administration and how they said they’re happy that they prevented a massive escalation in the West Bank that would be comparable to Gaza, but now, we have an administration that, at the highest levels, are surrounded by people who are aligned with the project of the Israeli settler right and the far right of the Israeli government. You have Republicans introducing legislation where they want to force the US government to say that the West Bank is Judea and Samaria, which is, obviously, a term that Israeli settlers use to say that Israel’s sovereignty extends to all of the West Bank. My question is: Can this get even worse? What should we pay attention to—in the West Bank in particular—as Trump’s term goes on? Do you expect more of the same, or might Israel be even more emboldened? And to sort of point people where they might look?

TM: I mean, look: I think certainly those that had been involved in regional mediation around the ceasefire back in November were already warning of this—the fear that they would see a ceasefire in exchange for full annexation of the West Bank and exactly the trends that we’re now seeing and the trajectory we’re seeing things head into. There was also concern amongst regional states as well as, I mean, even if you’re talking about the UN for example, when they were thinking about relocating their leadership to Amman; the Jordanian officials then, they were very reluctant to allow that to happen because of the worry of what that could mean in the context of setting a precedent for allowing the displacement that Trump is now threatening. And for the last 15 months, we’ve definitely seen attempts by the Biden administration—I don’t think they necessarily abetted it, but there definitely was the early implication of potentially allowing these states to host at that time, I think there was definitely softer language around it for sure. But even then, countries like Egypt, countries like Jordan, were very reluctant to allow that. Egypt doesn’t want the conflict spilling into its own borders. They know that Palestinians won’t go willingly. And if they do, that could immediately lead to an issue of militancy and a cross-border issue for Egypt. The same with Jordan. And it’s not about Gazans in Jordanian territory. It’s about the precedents this could set for Israel’s plans in the West Bank and the threats of annexation that the far right have been making. And so, it’s very difficult to determine whether they’ll actually stick to their guns and continue to object.

TM: But I think ultimately for Palestinians, I think there tends to be an underestimation of the attachment Palestinians have to their land, whether that’s in Gaza or the West Bank. For many, the option of leaving is not an option. Where do you go? What state is going to absorb you? Even if you do go to Egypt and Jordan, you’ll live as a refugee, right? So many would rather the dignity of death than the indignity of living as a refugee. Even for those that do have the means to leave, many have stayed. You do have some level of associated displacement for those that have had the potential to leave to western states, to places like Turkey. But the vast majority would rather stay and suffer the dignity of death rather than the indignity of living the life of a refugee outside. I think Trump and Netanyahu can call for displacement all they want, but the reality is it’s going to be completely impractical. And again, it goes back to this underestimation that the international community has of the attachment that Palestinians have to their own land.

Alex Kane: And that does it for our show. Thanks so much to Azmat and Tahani for coming on, and thank you for listening, as always. Please rate the show on your podcast apps if you like it and subscribe to Jewish Currents. See you next time.