For the first time since it signed the Oslo peace accords in the mid-1990s, Israel is building a military base in a part of the West Bank that the accords had put under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
The Israeli military says the base is needed to ensure that what was for decades a stronghold of Palestinian militant activity, in the city of Jenin, will not become one again.
But critics say the base could also pave the way for the expansion of Israeli settlements in areas of the West Bank abutting one of the densest Palestinian population centers. Israel has been establishing and expanding settlements, which most of the world considers illegal, at a record pace.
“They’re blowing up the Oslo accords,” said Kamal Abu al-Rub, the Palestinian Authority governor of Jenin. “They’re acting as if there are no agreements between us.”
The Israeli base is being erected on a patch of confiscated land just outside the urban area known as Jenin camp. The Israeli military invaded it in January 2025, eventually forcing more than 10,000 Palestinians to flee their homes, part of the biggest displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
The Israeli operation was undertaken after the Palestinian Authority tried for weeks to subdue militant groups in Jenin — some of them affiliated with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad — that had not only attacked Israelis, but also flouted the authority’s control.
It also signaled a sharp shift in Israel’s approach to militant groups resulting from the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel. Previously, Israel had sought to contain the threat posed by militants on its borders and in the West Bank. Since the Oct. 7 massacre, however, Israel has tried to act forcefully against threats as soon as they emerge.
In Jenin, the result was that parts of the camp soon looked like war-ravaged Gaza and remain a ghost town. But despite its depopulation, militants there still pose a threat, the army says, pointing to an episode on Thursday, when an Israeli officer lost an arm and a leg after an explosive device found by soldiers detonated as they tried to disarm it.
Created generations ago as a refugee camp for Palestinians, the area became a built-up, densely populated and deeply impoverished section of Jenin. Israel has refused so far to let residents who were displaced last year return home. It has also refused to withdraw and allow the Palestinian Authority’s police force to resume responsibility for patrolling the area on its own.
In a letter to an Israeli civil rights group that advocates for displaced Palestinians, the military said the new Jenin base was “intended to replace the stationing of forces in residents’ homes” and to help pave the way to the military’s “safe exit from the camp.”
“The military post was established to prevent the Jenin camp from once again becoming a hub for terrorist activity, to protect Israeli civilians and strengthen security and stability for all those living in the area,” Lt. Col. Ariella Mazor, a military spokeswoman, said in a statement.
But another important reason for the continued military presence is that, in December, Israel’s right-wing government decided to reestablish two Jewish settlements just outside Jenin, Ganim and Kadim that it had abandoned in 2005 in conjunction with Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
“If they didn’t have the settlements there, they wouldn’t need this base,” said Ibrahim Eid Dalalsha, a Palestinian analyst and director of the Horizon Center in Ramallah.
Michael Milshtein, an analyst who once led the Palestinian desk of Israeli military intelligence, agreed that the base was intended to defend the growing number of Israeli citizens in the area.
“This is not only a move with military logic, to limit the terror challenge in the northern parts of Samaria with boots on the ground,” he said, using the Biblical name for the northern West Bank. “I think this is part of a broader plan to shrink the Palestinian territory and to expand the Israeli presence all over the West Bank.”
The 1995 Oslo II Accord geographically divided the West Bank into three categories. Area A, including the most densely populated Palestinian cities and towns, would be under the control of the Palestinian Authority and its security forces. In Area B, comprising a little more than one-fifth of the West Bank, the authority exercises administrative control but shares security control with the Israelis. Area C, covering 60 percent of the West Bank, is fully controlled by Israel.
The Oslo accords have been violated innumerable times, and one member of Israel’s governing coalition recently sponsored a bill revoking them altogether. But the geographical designations and division of responsibilities remain in effect.
Shaul Arieli, a map expert who once helped prepare Israel’s official negotiating teams for peace talks, said building a base in Area A was “really one more step toward canceling Oslo.”
“The idea was we’d never ask for Area A during negotiations for a permanent status agreement,” he said.
Under the current government, Israel has accelerated the creation of West Bank outposts, including some deep inside Area B. In February, it took unilateral steps to seize more control over the West Bank, making it easier for Israelis to buy land there and giving some state enforcement agencies the power to demolish Palestinian structures, even in Area A.
Noa Sattath, executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said her assumption was that “there will be other bases popping up in Area A.”
In Jenin, Mansour Qabaha, 49, who lives next door to the site of the new base, expressed fear that he, his wife, and their four daughters would soon be in a danger zone.
“How are we supposed to live with a military post abutting our home?” he said. “It’s going to become hell.”
His brother, Wasim Qabaha, 51, who lives in London, said he owned a parcel of land that was being taken for the Israeli base. He said he had planned to give it to his son to build a home.
“I’m heartbroken,” he said. “This dream is over.”
Johnatan Reiss and Fatima AbdulKarim contributed reporting.
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