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AS THE BOMBING OF IRAN TOOK CENTER STAGE, ISRAELI FORCES DEPLOYED
DEEPER INTO THE OCCUPIED WEST BANK  
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Georgia Gee, Dikla Taylor-Sheinman
July 10, 2025
Drop Site
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_ "They are dealing with the West Bank as if the war is right here."
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An Israeli military operation in the Balata refugee camp in the West
Bank on June 19, Nidal Eshtayeh/Xinhua via Getty Images

 

Hours before dawn on June 18, as Iran sent a wave of ballistic
missiles into Israel, the Israeli army stormed Al-Walaja, a village in
the occupied West Bank south of Jerusalem.

Moataz Al-Hajajleh, 21, had been spending the evening with friends in
a neighbor’s garage, smoking hookah and sipping tea, when Israeli
soldiers raided his uncle’s home nearby. The soldiers broke down the
door, ransacked the house, and demanded to be taken to his uncle’s
son’s residence.

On their way, they suddenly began beating his 50-year-old uncle, just
in front of where Al-Hajajleh and his friends were hanging out.

“When my son saw the soldiers beating his uncle, he stood up. He
didn’t even approach them—just called out from the doorway, asking
why they were attacking his elderly uncle,” Abu Rashed told Drop
Site. “They immediately let go of my brother, as if he hadn’t been
the real target. Then they grabbed my son, beat him, dragged him into
the house, and continued the assault on the veranda.”

Then an officer shot Al-Hajajleh three times. The bullets “went
through his chest into the wall,” said Khader Al-Auraj, head of the
village council, who went to the scene. “There was even flesh stuck
to the wall from the bullet. Very quickly it became clear that it was
a field execution, in the ugliest way.”

After its unprovoked strike on Iran on June 12, Israel accelerated
another war, as well. The West Bank, already experiencing record
levels
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settler violence and demolitions, was immediately put under siege by
the Israeli army. While a ceasefire still holds between Israel and
Iran, the raids and arrests in the West Bank are only continuing with
increasing violence. The military has deployed en masse across
multiple cities, from Nablus
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conducting violent overnight raids
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home demolitions, mass evictions, and abductions
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Al Walaja straddles
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Area B, where Israel exercises complete security control and shares
civil control with the PA, and Area C, under full Israeli control.
Thirty-five-year-old Amin, who declined to share his last name due to
safety concerns, told Drop Site that soldiers started banging on his
door around 3 a.m. that night—a few hours after Al-Hajajleh was
killed. They shattered the glass and forced their way into Amin’s
home, smashing furniture, pushing his wife, and stealing the cash he
was saving to finish his restaurant.

Amin’s two-year-old daughter watched the raid, bewildered. “How
can she possibly understand what is going on?” he said.

Across the West Bank, communities live in fear of the next operation.
“They are dealing with the West Bank as if the war is right here,”
said Muhanned Qafesha, an activist with Youth Against Settlements and
Hebron resident. “People are terrified.”

An estimated
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Palestinians in the West Bank, including 30 children
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have been killed by settlers or Israeli forces since Oct. 7, 2023.
Over 45,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced over the same
period, the largest displacement in the West Bank since 1967. Israeli
authorities are increasingly treating the territory in ways that
mirror the military domination and isolation once reserved for Gaza.
Last week senior ministers of Likud, Prime Minister Benjamin
Nentanyahu’s, party urged
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to annex the West Bank by the end of July.

The Israeli military claimed without evidence that it arrested 400
“terrorists” from the West Bank during the Iran war, and killed
eight. Those killed
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multiple young men and teenagers,
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well as a 61-year old man
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a bicycle in Tulkarem refugee camp and a 66-year old woman
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East Jerusalem.

“Something very important going on right now is that the military is
raiding villages that have had no issues with Israeli authorities in
the past,” said Ayman Gharib, an activist with the Popular
Resistance Committees in the Jordan Valley. “They come with tanks,
guns, and military armored vehicles."

Moataz Al-Hajajleh. Photo courtesy of his family.

In Mukhmas, a Palestinian shepherding community in the central West
Bank, Abu Muhammad Ka’abneh’s family has been constantly facing
settler attacks. A few months ago, settlers burned his brother’s
house down in the neighboring village.

Ka’abneh, who has four children, has been enduring constant theft
and attacks by settlers. Typically, four or five Israelis arrive on
his land and begin provoking him and his family. “Then this group
turns into 100, complete with tractors and cars,” he said.

On June 20, the Israeli army declared Mukhmas to be a closed military
zone. This order is set to remain in effect for a month, according to
the notification document obtained by Drop Site.

Ka’abneh said the army told him that the closure was “for the
purpose of protecting us from the increased settler assaults.” But,
he said, the frequency of the attacks only increased. Settlers have
even entered his home with their sheep and dogs, terrifying his
children. They cut his water pipe, stole food for his animals and
closed off roads in the villages with stones. Now, the attacks are
never-ending.

“The settlers are here everyday. Why don’t they [the army] prevent
them from entering?” he said. “It’s almost as if the whole thing
is coordinated, as if the army and the settlers are communicating with
each other beforehand.”

Mourad Jadallah, a legal researcher from al-Haq, is seeing these kinds
of attacks daily across communities in the West Bank. “We’re no
longer talking about small groups of settlers attacking a Palestinian
house or burning it and stealing livestock,” he told Drop Site.
“Now it’s 50 to 200 settlers, many of them armed, often backed by
the Israeli police or army. There will be massacres committed by
settlers in the near future.”

In Al-Mazra'a al-Sharqiya, east of Ramallah, 70 settlers reportedly
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a stone factory and Palestinians who came to protect it, while the
Israeli army was present.

Mass displacement to attacks is ongoing: in Al-Mu'arrajat, in the
Jordan Valley, 30 families have already been forced 
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abandon their homes, with 20 more on the verge of leaving after
settlers moved from home to home forcing families out at gunpoint.

“Israel’s ability to carry something like this out in the West
Bank is unrestrained and limitless,” said Jadallah. “There is no
Palestinian who is safe, and there is no safe place in Palestine.”

On June 12, hours before Israel conducted
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first strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites and key leadership figures,
Israeli cabinet ministers vowed to annex the West Bank and Gaza.

Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and heritage minister
Amichay Eliyahu attended
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conference in the Gaza-border town of Sderot held by veteran
right-wing settlers. “Do we want Judea and Samaria? Do we want
Syria? Do we want Lebanon? Do we want Gaza?” Eliyahu reportedly
shouted to a crowd who cheered in response.

On July 2, 15 ministers from Netanyahu’s party, Likud, sent a letter
to Netanyahu advocating for the West Bank to be fully annexed by the
end of the month. They said that the support from the U.S. and
President Donald Trump “have made it a propitious time to move
forward with it now.”

“After the State of Israel’s historic achievements in the face of
Iran’s axis of evil and its sympathizers,” the letter said
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“the task must be completed and the existential threat from within
must be eliminated, to prevent another massacre in the heart of the
country.”

The letter was met with praise by far-right Israeli figures, including
Smotrich, who said that as soon as Netanyahu “gives the order,” he
will be ready to implement Israeli sovereignty over the territory
“immediately.”

“If you ask me, what happened in Gaza, the genocide, forced eviction
and transfer, starvation, killing, this is the incoming scenario for
the West Bank,” said Jadallah from Al-Haq. “It will exploit every
moment to further annexation. And the world just watches.”

_GEORGIA GEE is an investigative journalist covering human rights
issues, environmental abuse and surveillance. Her work has appeared in
print, podcast and documentaries, including for The Intercept, Foreign
Policy and the OCCRP._

_DIKLA TAYLOR-SHEINMAN is an Editorial fellow at +972 Magazine._

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* Israel
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* Israel bombing
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* Iran
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* West Bank
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* Palestine
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* Israeli Occupation
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