In the shadow of the war in Gaza, conflict in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has intensified with Palestinian attackers carrying out bolder and more sophisticated assaults as the Israeli military increases the scope of its raids on Palestinian cities.
A shooting by a Jordanian citizen that killed three Israelis on Sunday at a heavily fortified West Bank border crossing came after three recent attempts by Palestinian militants, including from Hamas, to set off car bombs in the territory. Last month, Hamas and its ally, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, claimed an attempted suicide bombing in Tel Aviv in which the Israeli police said the assailant had come from the West Bank. Less than two weeks later, a drive-by shooting killed three Israeli police officers in the southern West Bank.
Taken together, the violence constitutes the most complex sequence of attacks relating to the volatile West Bank in years, according to analysts. While Sunday’s border attack was considered the act of a lone individual with unclear intentions, the other episodes suggest that militant groups have developed new technical, logistical and organizational abilities despite expansive Israeli efforts to contain their insurgency, the analysts said.
“If you compare what’s been happening in recent weeks to what was happening over the past decade, you can see a more organized effort to carry out attacks,” said Ibrahim Dalalsha, the director of the Horizon Center, a research group based in Ramallah, in the West Bank. “A bomber with a bomb in his backpack, wandering the streets of Tel Aviv, is a sign that there is a network that is actually supporting something like this to happen.”
The escalation comes as Israel struggles to contain wider battles not only in Gaza but also with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, as well as with their benefactor, Iran. These animosities, including in the West Bank, long preceded the war in Gaza, but they have intensified since the latest Hamas-Israel war began in October, and are unlikely to ebb until the sides reach a truce in Gaza.
The conflicts highlight how the Gaza war has heightened regional outrage at Israel and led to a growing list of unusual and unpredictable episodes — including Iran’s volley of ballistic missiles toward Israel in April after Israel struck an Iranian compound in Syria; a drone fired from Yemen at Tel Aviv in July; and the rare attack on Sunday by a Jordanian.
These events have become more likely as the war has dragged on, heightening Israel’s internal divisions and external vulnerabilities, said Alon Pinkas, an Israeli political commentator and former ambassador.
“You have a lot of things coming out of left field,” Mr. Pinkas said. Israel’s enemies “sense an opportunity. They sense a weakness. They sense anxiety. And they are being emboldened and empowered by what’s going on in the Arab Street,” as well as “what they have seen Israel committing in Gaza,” Mr. Pinkas said.
Militants in the West Bank say the fighting in Gaza has encouraged them to become more active, giving momentum to their yearslong fight against Israeli occupation and, in many cases, Israel’s very existence. Polling shows broad support in the West Bank for Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel at the start of the war.
Since Oct. 7, Palestinian anger has been further stoked by Israeli actions — including military raids on militant strongholds that have killed more than 600 people, according to the United Nations, including both combatants and civilians; widespread road closures; and attacks by settler extremists. The Israeli government’s authorization of more settlements, and the decision to give far-right settler leaders a greater role in West Bank governance, have also inflamed tensions.
Analysts partly attribute the militants’ increasingly complex attacks to support from Iran, which is funding and arming some of the West Bank militants. They also cite the weakness of the Palestinian Authority, the semiautonomous body that administers Palestinian cities in the territory and has struggled to contain the militants.
To stymie Palestinian attacks, Israel has also stopped more than 100,000 Palestinians from working in Israel — cutting off a crucial economic lifeline for a population of roughly three million and creating a feeling of desperation among many West Bankers.
With wars already underway in Gaza and along the Israel-Lebanon border, “We are on the path to a third front,” Michael Milshtein, an Israeli analyst of Palestinian affairs, said of the situation in the West Bank. “It’s very similar to the story about the frog and the boiling pot. Every day and every week, the temperature is getting higher.”
Several of the recent West Bank attacks occurred as the Israeli military mounted some of its most expansive operations in years in the Palestinian cities of Jenin and Tulkarm, as well as in the Jordan Valley, all strongholds for Palestinian militant groups.
Hundreds of Israeli soldiers spent days in both cities this month, clashing with fighters, killing dozens and uprooting streets and infrastructure in what the Israeli military said was a search for hidden explosives and booby traps. Many civilians were left trapped in their homes without running water or internet, amid considerable damage to homes, businesses and water lines.
Israeli analysts and the military said the raids were intended to thwart precisely the kinds of attacks that have mounted in recent weeks.
The raids seek “to neutralize the strategic bomb that is ticking in Judea and Samaria,” wrote Yossi Yehoshua, a correspondent for Yediot Ahronot, a centrist newspaper, using an Israeli term for the West Bank. “Judea and Samaria is a sector of whispering embers that need to be prevented from burning too intensely.”
To Palestinians, the Israeli raidsonly increase Palestinian animosity toward the Israeli occupation, and have done little to temper the militants’ abilities. After the Israeli military pulled back from Jenin last week, a squad of several dozen militants paraded through the city carrying assault rifles, seemingly undaunted, according to video reviewed by The New York Times.
Israeli operations “may be able to reduce the number of gunmen here and there,” Mr. Dalalsha said. “But the truth is that, under the current circumstances, I don’t think that could lead to de-escalation. In fact, I think the worst is yet to come, unless we have an end to the war in Gaza.”
It is a view shared by Israeli and Palestinian analysts alike. “A growing escalation is just a matter of time,” Mr. Milshtein said.
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