Geneva, 28 January, 2025.- Israel’s intensified military assault against the occupied West Bank marks a dangerous escalation against Palestinians, independent human rights experts* warned today, urging the international community to take principled action to protect the human rights and dignity of the Palestinian people.
“We are dismayed by the escalation of deadly violence sweeping through Jenin and the rest of the occupied West Bank,” the experts said. “Israel’s repression seems to have no end in sight.”
After weeks of tension and crackdown on the northern West Bank by Palestinian Security forces, the recent scenes of Israeli military and security forces bombing Jenin, destroying vital infrastructure, essential services such as water and electricity, raiding hundreds of homes, preventing the Palestinian Red Crescent medics from reaching injured Palestinians, attacking large crowds of Palestinian residents in the Jenin Refugee Camp and neighbouring cities are only aggravating a deeply unstable situation in the occupied West Bank, the experts said.
“A militarised attack only deepens suffering and violence,” they said.
“An alarming number of civilians from the occupied West Bank and especially Jenin refugee camp have already been detained and at least 16 people killed, including a child that was shot in the head, while at least 3,000 families have been displaced. The Israeli Government must instruct its military and security forces to immediately cease any use of excessive force and exercise restraint and withdraw its troops from the occupied West Bank, as ordered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July 2024.”
These acts of aggression are not new for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, the experts noted.
In fact, systematic aerial and ground attacks on Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarem and Tubas governorates, particularly targeting refugee camps, have been a feature of the Israeli assault on the West Bank since 7 October 2023. At the end of August 2024, Israeli occupation forces launched a full-scale military operation against these areas, killing at least 39 Palestinians, including women and children and injuring dozens. In December, at the behest of the Israelis, Palestinian Security Forces attacked Jenin refugee camp, resulting in killings and injuries of Palestinians, including children and one journalist. The Palestinian Security Forces withdrew from Jenin as Israel started their latest attack on the city. “The continuity of the violence against Palestinians in the area speaks for itself,” the experts said.
They also noted their concern about the continued detention of journalists by Palestinian and Israeli security forces and the recent banning of the news organisation Al Jazeera in the West Bank by Palestinian authorities, similar to the ban adopted by Israel in May 2024.
The experts were gravely concerned about comments by the Israeli Defence Minister that sought to justify the new onslaught as a response against “Palestinian terrorism.” The Minister invoked the concept of “the iron” wall, coined by Jabotinsky, a founder of Zionism, to argue for a crushing, unyielding defence.
“The new attacks come in the wake of a US decision to lift limited sanctions on Israeli settlers, and by Israeli authorities to remove administrative detention and other sanctions for Israeli settler violence, effectively offering a greenlight for more unchecked violence against the Palestinian people,” the experts said.
The violence in the occupied West Bank coincides with unprecedented levels of increased colonies’ expansion, armed settler violence, displacement, depopulation and land confiscation by the State of Israel including through settler militias. These violations continue even after the ICJ concluded that this occupation is unlawful, and Israel must dismantle it together with the colonies and its associated regime.
“The heightened assault on the occupied West Bank is part of an overall process of Palestinian forced displacement and replacement and the territorial expansion of Israel,” the experts said. “This is not an isolated action,” they said.
“The long-standing impunity granted to Israel is enabling de-Palestinisation of the occupied territory, leaving Palestinians at the mercy of forces pursuing their elimination as a group,” the experts warned.
“The lack of intervention by States to protect Palestinians in line with international law, is alarming and of catastrophic ramifications,” the experts said, urging the international community to urgently step in to stop Israel’s assault on Palestinians.
“Like other indigenous peoples before them, the Palestinian people seem to have been abandoned to their fate. We cannot let it happen; this would be the greatest failure of the human rights system.”