--- title: "Israel's Raids in the West Bank: What Happened, and Why It Matters" description: "Over the past several days, an occupied Palestinian territory under Israeli authority has been rocked with violence. But this time, the battle and bloodshed comes not in the war-torn Gaza Strip, once encircled by Israel and now ravaged by the Israel-Hamas War. Instead, the violence takes place in the West Bank, a large stretch of territory between Israel and Jordan where Israel has maintained an occupation for many decades, and where some half-a-million predominantly Jewish religious settlers live in a tenuous balance with roughly three million Palestinians. Overnight on Wednesday, August 28th, Israeli forces streamed into the territory in a major operation, split between several West Bank cities. On Thursday, the 29th, the operation continued, backed up by helicopters, armored vehicles, and more. Israel's targets are several armed insurgent and terror organizations in the West Bank, all of whom report that they are now fighting back. It is the biggest Israeli military operation in the West Bank in decades, and the territory's first explosion of violence on this scale since the start of the Israel-Hamas War.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n- The IDF launched its largest West Bank operation in decades on August 28, 2024, deploying several hundred soldiers across Jenin, Tulkarem, Tubas, and Nablus.\n- At least sixteen Palestinians were killed by the end of August 29, making it Israel's deadliest single West Bank operation since before October 7, 2023.\n- Five Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants, including the prominent figure Mohammed Jaber (Abu Shujaa), were killed in a shootout in a Tulkarem mosque on August 29.\n- Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Fatah all announced armed retaliation, detonating bombs against Israeli military vehicles, though no Israeli fatalities were reported.\n- Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz claimed Iran is establishing an eastern terrorist front in the West Bank modeled on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.\n- The UN's Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has counted nearly 1,300 settler attacks against Palestinians since October 7, 2023.\n\n## IDF Forces Advance into Jenin, Tulkarem, Tubas, and Nablus\n\nThe West Bank raids carried out by the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, began in the pre-dawn hours of the morning on August 28, 2024. At that time, a force of several hundred IDF infantry and other foot soldiers—a precise number is not yet clear—advanced into several key West Bank cities, accompanied by air support. The operations covered the cities of Jenin, Tulkarem, Tubas, and Nablus, with a combined population of about 310,000 people, and struck both built-up areas of some of the cities and refugee camps near others. The initial wave of raids saw IDF soldiers, backed up by armored vehicles, close air support, and intelligence-collecting and overwatch drones, target suspected or alleged militants in the cities, with at least ten Palestinians believed to have been killed over the course of the day. Drones launched strikes from the air, including one in the refugee camp of Far'a, where at least four people were killed. At around the same time, Israeli troops surrounded the main hospital in the city of Jenin, building earthworks barriers with the stated intent of preventing militant fighters from retreating there. IDF troops did not enter the hospital. Palestinian sources have claimed that Israeli bulldozers also leveled city infrastructure, in both Jenin and Tulkarem. Over the course of the day, an Israeli military spokesperson confirmed that there was an \"immediate threat\" to civilians, but that \"the terror threat in this area is not new, it hasn't started yesterday and it's not going to end tomorrow.\" Curfews were announced in parts of the West Bank by that evening.\n\n## Militant Retaliation and the Killing of Abu Shujaa in Tulkarem\n\nThe retaliation by local militant terror groups was violent in kind. Within hours, three such groups announced that their fighters were detonating bombs against Israeli military vehicles in several locations. Those groups included Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both of which maintain an armed presence in the West Bank that is separate from their forces fighting in Gaza, as well as Fatah, the group that controls the Palestinian Authority and thus exercises limited civil control over the West Bank. At the time of writing, no fatalities have been reported on the Israeli side of the raids, and it remains unclear just how effective these bomb attacks were, or were not. But with militants acting in and around cities like Jenin that have been militant hubs for many years, there is likely a good deal of ordnance, as well as fighters, who may have waited out the early days of the incursion to see whether the situation would return to an equilibrium. Early on Thursday, the twenty-ninth, the IDF raids continued, with the most notable of the raids coming in the city of Tulkarem. There, five militants swearing allegiance to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were cornered after hiding in a mosque, and killed in a shootout with the IDF. Among the fighters killed was one Mohammed Jaber, known best by the alias Abu Shujaa, who had gained fame in the West Bank earlier that year after showing up alive to funerals of other militants who had been killed in an operation where he, too, had been reported dead. Abu Shujaa was, according to the IDF, responsible for the killing of at least one Israeli and carrying out many attacks, and he had allegedly been planning to commit more. Those five militants were the only ones reported killed on the twenty-ninth, in a day that saw fewer raids but a sustained Israeli presence. That presence included the maintenance of the IDF's blockade around Jenin's central hospital, as Israeli troops set up checkpoints for ambulances coming in, along with Internet and cellular services shut down, and some areas without water or sewage services. With sixteen people reported dead by the end of the day on Thursday, this is now Israel's deadliest single operation in the West Bank since before October 7, 2023.\n\n## Israel's Stated Rationale and Iran's Alleged Role\n\nWhen it comes to the reasons why these West Bank raids have taken place, the obvious place to start is Israel; after all, it is the Israeli government and the IDF that have chosen to launch these operations at all. According to Israel, the intent is to conduct counterterrorism operations, in what the IDF states will be a multi-step process. Per Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, posting online in the early hours of the incursion, the IDF is working to dismantle a terror threat in the West Bank in the same way it has been dismantling terror threats in Gaza. Katz also stated that temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents is apparently on the table. Shortly after Katz's statement, IDF spokesman and Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani indicated that there is not a soon-to-be-instituted plan for evacuations, but that local residents can leave if they like. Early on, international news outlets indicated that the operation was likely tied to a prior airstrike on Monday, the twenty-sixth, in the West Bank, when five people, described by the IDF as terrorists, were killed in an area called Nur Shams. As operations continued, Israel clarified the terror threat it claimed to be observing in the West Bank. Foreign Minister Katz offered that \"Iran is working to establish an eastern terrorist front against Israel in the West Bank, according to the Gaza and Lebanon model\"—with those models Katz referenced being the Hamas and Hezbollah organizations. IDF sources have claimed for several months that Iran is working through smuggling routes across the Middle East to flood the West Bank with as many weapons as possible and create a potential new front in Israel's war against its Palestinian population. Over the last year, roughly 150 attacks have been launched against Israelis from the northern West Bank, according to IDF figures. Per the aforementioned IDF spokesman Nadav Shoshani, current operations are targeting \"a mixture of terror groups and terror cells,\" and IDF statements have indicated that in addition to the \"armed terrorists\" that its forces have killed, other wanted suspects have been taken into custody as weapons and military supplies have been seized. IDF troops have been able to dig up and dismantle improvised explosive devices, including dangerous roadside bombs.\n\n## Palestinian Perspectives and the Pattern of Settler Violence\n\nPalestinians in the West Bank, however, have offered a competing explanation on why Israel has chosen to launch such an incursion. The real objective, many people there suspect, and the Hamas organization claims, is for Israel to broaden its control over the West Bank and advance its occupation. Those suspicions are helped along by a situation widely regarded as discriminatory law enforcement in Palestine, where Palestinians who attack Israelis in the West Bank are swiftly, and sometimes fatally punished, but Jewish settlers who carry out attacks against Palestinians, often with just as lethal consequences, go without any serious rebuke. Settler attacks are not an isolated phenomenon, either; the UN's Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has counted nearly 1,300 attacks since October 7th of the previous year. Per the AFP, a total of over 650 Palestinians, including many militants, have been killed in the West Bank in that same time-frame, by a combination of IDF soldiers and settlers. According to both the IDF and the West Bank's major militant organizations, the current fighting is largely or fully between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters. But it is just as important to understand the public perception of the incident as it is to understand the reality, because both, not just one or the other, will guide future action on both sides.\n\n## Decades of Occupation, Resistance, and the Symbolic Weight of Jenin\n\nLiving under Israeli occupation since the late 1960s, Palestinians in the West Bank have long held a bitter animosity toward Israel. Their more militarily powerful neighbor has asserted a status quo where Palestinians have no right to vote, little means to advocate for themselves, and have to abide what is largely seen as a puppet government, backed by the Israeli leadership. The construction and expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank has been a major point of conflict, and has been condemned by much of the world for decades. A deep cultural ethos of resistance to Israel has been a major part of life in the West Bank for a very long time, and the population there lost faith, long ago, in peace processes that are now remembered as a charade by Israel. Armed resistance is now a mainstay of the West Bank, generally framed as freedom-fighting by its supporters and as terrorism by its opponents, and major explosions of violence have left deep marks on the people there, regardless of what side of the conflict they are on. The city of Jenin holds major symbolic value to both sides; for Israelis, it is remembered as the point of origin of dozens of suicide bombers who attacked Israel during the Second Intifada, a long stretch of violent revolt against Israel's occupation in the early 2000s. For Palestinians, it is both a long-respected center of resistance and popular discontent, and the site of a 2002 battle where dozens of Palestinians, about half believed to be civilians, and about two dozen Israeli soldiers were killed.\n\n## Cutting the Grass: A Strategy Under Strain\n\nSince the start of the Israel-Hamas War in Gaza, the West Bank has largely become an afterthought for global governments and press. But even before the start of this operation, the West Bank has not been a quiet part of Israel, by any means. Although no single violent incident has risen to the scale and scope of this current Israeli operation since the start of the war in Gaza, the West Bank has nonetheless been a violent and difficult place. On one side, Israeli and other Jewish settlers living in the West Bank have attacked and repressed local Palestinians with impunity, organizing into militias that are empowered by, and often reinforced by local IDF forces, and that have committed numerous and sometimes fatal attacks against Palestinians. On the other, dozens of shooting attacks against Israelis have been traced back to the West Bank over the last year, and just a couple of weeks before this operation, an attempted suicide bombing was botched by pure chance, when an aspiring bomber from the West Bank had his backpack bomb detonate just moments before he may have breached a synagogue during evening prayers. In October and December of the previous year, and in January and April of 2024, prior raids by the IDF killed several dozen people, including at least eight children. Israel has long employed a strategy referred to as \"cutting the grass,\" engaging in frequent and sporadic operations to destroy and root out active militant threats, without committing to a long-term engagement of troops. As one former IDF intelligence officer, Michael Milshtein, put it to the Associated Press: \"You see something growing, you need to cut it. But it means that in two months, you will be there again.\" By all indicators, that is still the approach, but the size and scale of this current advance into the West Bank indicates that the grass, so to speak, had gotten a bit too long. By Israel's own statements, on the purported flood of weapons into the West Bank and the rising terrorist threat that it is responding to, the situation in the West Bank is not sustainable forever. There are plenty of proponents of mowing the grass in Israel, just as there are many people who say it does not work and has never worked, but as an antidote to the rise in anger and violent intent that Israel is calling out in the West Bank, mowing the grass does not appear to be a sufficient answer. Hamas, Fatah, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad indicated during this most recent operation that they were not avoiding a fight; they were spoiling for one, and if that is where their sentiments are, at this stage of the current conflict, then it may not be possible to refer to \"low-grade hostilities\" in the West Bank for much longer.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### What triggered the IDF’s August 2024 West Bank operation?\n\nIn the pre-dawn hours of August 28, 2024, the IDF launched its largest West Bank military operation in decades, sending several hundred soldiers into Jenin, Tulkarem, Tubas, and Nablus. Israel stated the operation was a counterterrorism effort to dismantle armed militant networks, and Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz explicitly tied it to what he described as an Iranian effort to establish an eastern terrorist front in the West Bank modeled on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.\n\n### Which Palestinian militant groups were involved, and how did they respond?\n\nHamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Fatah all announced that their fighters were detonating bombs against Israeli military vehicles within hours of the operation beginning. The most notable engagement came in Tulkarem, where five Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants, including Mohammed Jaber (Abu Shujaa), were cornered in a mosque and killed in a shootout with the IDF. Despite these retaliatory attacks, no Israeli fatalities were reported by the end of August 29.\n\n### Why does the city of Jenin hold particular significance in this conflict?\n\nJenin holds major symbolic weight on both sides. For Israelis, it is remembered as the origin point of dozens of suicide bombers who attacked Israel during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s. For Palestinians, it is a long-respected center of resistance and popular discontent, and the site of a 2002 battle in which about half of the roughly two dozen Palestinian deaths were believed to be civilians. During the 2024 operation, the IDF surrounded Jenin’s main hospital with earthworks barriers and shut down internet, cellular, and in some areas water services.\n\n### What is the IDF’s \"cutting the grass\" strategy, and why is it under strain?\n\n\"Cutting the grass\" is Israel’s long-standing approach of conducting periodic, targeted operations to destroy active militant threats in the West Bank rather than committing to a permanent large-scale engagement. As one former IDF intelligence officer told the Associated Press, if you see something growing you need to cut it, but it means returning again in two months. With nearly 150 attacks launched against Israelis from the northern West Bank over the prior year and Iran allegedly flooding the region with weapons, Israel’s own statements suggest the situation is no longer sustainable under this limited strategy alone.\n\n### How do Palestinians interpret the stated Israeli rationale for the operation?\n\nMany Palestinians suspect the real objective is to broaden Israeli control over the West Bank and advance the occupation rather than purely counterterrorism. This suspicion is reinforced by what is widely regarded as discriminatory law enforcement: Palestinians who attack Israelis face swift and sometimes fatal punishment, while Jewish settlers who carry out attacks against Palestinians, of which the UN counted nearly 1,300 since October 7, 2023, face little serious rebuke. Hamas, Fatah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad all indicated they were spoiling for a fight rather than avoiding one.\n\n## Related Coverage\n- [Israel's Raids in the West Bank: What Happened, and Why It Matters](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/israels-raids-west-bank-what-happened-why-it-matters)\n- [Israel has Shattered the Ceasefire in Gaza. Here's What You Need to Know.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/israel-has-shattered-the-ceasefire-in-gaza-heres-what-you-need-to-know)\n- [Israel Eliminates Houthi Prime Minister in Sana'a Airstrike](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/israel-eliminates-houthi-prime-minister-sanaa)\n- [Bloodshed in Syria. Here's What We Know.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/bloodshed-in-syria-heres-what-we-know)\n- [India-Pakistan Escalation Explained: Operation Sindoor, Aerial Battles, and the Risk of Full-Scale War](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/india-pakistan-escalation-operation-sindoor-aerial-battles-war-risk)\n\n## Sources\n1. \n2. \n3. \n4. \n5. \n6. \n7. \n8. \n9. \n10. \n11. \n\n[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-idf-west-bank-operation-palestinians-killed/\n[2]: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-west-bank-raids-explain-74d61deb5ef9173a54d07ebc826caa94\n[3]: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-news-08-29-2024-ee53e1dbf7ece94151088308510e8679\n[4]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/least-7-killed-israeli-strikes-west-bank-2024-08-28/\n[5]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4xl4pvn0yo\n[6]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2ny546m7go\n[7]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/28/world/israel-hamas-gaza-war\n[8]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/29/world/israel-hamas-gaza-war#un-world-food-program-gaza\n[9]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/world/middleeast/west-bank-what-where-who.html\n[10]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-we-know-about-who-israel-is-targeting-in-west-bank-raids\n[11]: https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080034/west-bank-israel-palestinians\n\n" url: https://warfronts.pub/article/israel-raids-west-bank-what-happened-why-it-matters.md canonical: https://warfronts.pub/article/israel-raids-west-bank-what-happened-why-it-matters datePublished: 2026-03-04 dateModified: 2026-03-04 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://warfronts.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: Warfronts image: "https://media.warfronts.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/IElQCGMLXWg/hero.jpg" type: NewsArticle contentHash: 30aac2946bd9d2277d34bd04510c7a97f3d17bb05e45a50712f094ec753f4ba4 tokens: 5069 summaryUrl: https://warfronts.pub/article/israel-raids-west-bank-what-happened-why-it-matters.md.summary.md --- Over the past several days, an occupied Palestinian territory under Israeli authority has been rocked with violence. But this time, the battle and bloodshed comes not in the war-torn Gaza Strip, once encircled by Israel and now ravaged by the Israel-Hamas War. Instead, the violence takes place in the West Bank, a large stretch of territory between Israel and Jordan where Israel has maintained an occupation for many decades, and where some half-a-million predominantly Jewish religious settlers live in a tenuous balance with roughly three million Palestinians. Overnight on Wednesday, August 28th, Israeli forces streamed into the territory in a major operation, split between several West Bank cities. On Thursday, the 29th, the operation continued, backed up by helicopters, armored vehicles, and more. Israel's targets are several armed insurgent and terror organizations in the West Bank, all of whom report that they are now fighting back. It is the biggest Israeli military operation in the West Bank in decades, and the territory's first explosion of violence on this scale since the start of the Israel-Hamas War. ## Key Takeaways - The IDF launched its largest West Bank operation in decades on August 28, 2024, deploying several hundred soldiers across Jenin, Tulkarem, Tubas, and Nablus. - At least sixteen Palestinians were killed by the end of August 29, making it Israel's deadliest single West Bank operation since before October 7, 2023. - Five Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants, including the prominent figure Mohammed Jaber (Abu Shujaa), were killed in a shootout in a Tulkarem mosque on August 29. - Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Fatah all announced armed retaliation, detonating bombs against Israeli military vehicles, though no Israeli fatalities were reported. - Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz claimed Iran is establishing an eastern terrorist front in the West Bank modeled on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. - The UN's Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has counted nearly 1,300 settler attacks against Palestinians since October 7, 2023. ## IDF Forces Advance into Jenin, Tulkarem, Tubas, and Nablus The West Bank raids carried out by the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, began in the pre-dawn hours of the morning on August 28, 2024. At that time, a force of several hundred IDF infantry and other foot soldiers—a precise number is not yet clear—advanced into several key West Bank cities, accompanied by air support. The operations covered the cities of Jenin, Tulkarem, Tubas, and Nablus, with a combined population of about 310,000 people, and struck both built-up areas of some of the cities and refugee camps near others. The initial wave of raids saw IDF soldiers, backed up by armored vehicles, close air support, and intelligence-collecting and overwatch drones, target suspected or alleged militants in the cities, with at least ten Palestinians believed to have been killed over the course of the day. Drones launched strikes from the air, including one in the refugee camp of Far'a, where at least four people were killed. At around the same time, Israeli troops surrounded the main hospital in the city of Jenin, building earthworks barriers with the stated intent of preventing militant fighters from retreating there. IDF troops did not enter the hospital. Palestinian sources have claimed that Israeli bulldozers also leveled city infrastructure, in both Jenin and Tulkarem. Over the course of the day, an Israeli military spokesperson confirmed that there was an "immediate threat" to civilians, but that "the terror threat in this area is not new, it hasn't started yesterday and it's not going to end tomorrow." Curfews were announced in parts of the West Bank by that evening. ## Militant Retaliation and the Killing of Abu Shujaa in Tulkarem The retaliation by local militant terror groups was violent in kind. Within hours, three such groups announced that their fighters were detonating bombs against Israeli military vehicles in several locations. Those groups included Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both of which maintain an armed presence in the West Bank that is separate from their forces fighting in Gaza, as well as Fatah, the group that controls the Palestinian Authority and thus exercises limited civil control over the West Bank. At the time of writing, no fatalities have been reported on the Israeli side of the raids, and it remains unclear just how effective these bomb attacks were, or were not. But with militants acting in and around cities like Jenin that have been militant hubs for many years, there is likely a good deal of ordnance, as well as fighters, who may have waited out the early days of the incursion to see whether the situation would return to an equilibrium. Early on Thursday, the twenty-ninth, the IDF raids continued, with the most notable of the raids coming in the city of Tulkarem. There, five militants swearing allegiance to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were cornered after hiding in a mosque, and killed in a shootout with the IDF. Among the fighters killed was one Mohammed Jaber, known best by the alias Abu Shujaa, who had gained fame in the West Bank earlier that year after showing up alive to funerals of other militants who had been killed in an operation where he, too, had been reported dead. Abu Shujaa was, according to the IDF, responsible for the killing of at least one Israeli and carrying out many attacks, and he had allegedly been planning to commit more. Those five militants were the only ones reported killed on the twenty-ninth, in a day that saw fewer raids but a sustained Israeli presence. That presence included the maintenance of the IDF's blockade around Jenin's central hospital, as Israeli troops set up checkpoints for ambulances coming in, along with Internet and cellular services shut down, and some areas without water or sewage services. With sixteen people reported dead by the end of the day on Thursday, this is now Israel's deadliest single operation in the West Bank since before October 7, 2023. ## Israel's Stated Rationale and Iran's Alleged Role When it comes to the reasons why these West Bank raids have taken place, the obvious place to start is Israel; after all, it is the Israeli government and the IDF that have chosen to launch these operations at all. According to Israel, the intent is to conduct counterterrorism operations, in what the IDF states will be a multi-step process. Per Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, posting online in the early hours of the incursion, the IDF is working to dismantle a terror threat in the West Bank in the same way it has been dismantling terror threats in Gaza. Katz also stated that temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents is apparently on the table. Shortly after Katz's statement, IDF spokesman and Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani indicated that there is not a soon-to-be-instituted plan for evacuations, but that local residents can leave if they like. Early on, international news outlets indicated that the operation was likely tied to a prior airstrike on Monday, the twenty-sixth, in the West Bank, when five people, described by the IDF as terrorists, were killed in an area called Nur Shams. As operations continued, Israel clarified the terror threat it claimed to be observing in the West Bank. Foreign Minister Katz offered that "Iran is working to establish an eastern terrorist front against Israel in the West Bank, according to the Gaza and Lebanon model"—with those models Katz referenced being the Hamas and Hezbollah organizations. IDF sources have claimed for several months that Iran is working through smuggling routes across the Middle East to flood the West Bank with as many weapons as possible and create a potential new front in Israel's war against its Palestinian population. Over the last year, roughly 150 attacks have been launched against Israelis from the northern West Bank, according to IDF figures. Per the aforementioned IDF spokesman Nadav Shoshani, current operations are targeting "a mixture of terror groups and terror cells," and IDF statements have indicated that in addition to the "armed terrorists" that its forces have killed, other wanted suspects have been taken into custody as weapons and military supplies have been seized. IDF troops have been able to dig up and dismantle improvised explosive devices, including dangerous roadside bombs. ## Palestinian Perspectives and the Pattern of Settler Violence Palestinians in the West Bank, however, have offered a competing explanation on why Israel has chosen to launch such an incursion. The real objective, many people there suspect, and the Hamas organization claims, is for Israel to broaden its control over the West Bank and advance its occupation. Those suspicions are helped along by a situation widely regarded as discriminatory law enforcement in Palestine, where Palestinians who attack Israelis in the West Bank are swiftly, and sometimes fatally punished, but Jewish settlers who carry out attacks against Palestinians, often with just as lethal consequences, go without any serious rebuke. Settler attacks are not an isolated phenomenon, either; the UN's Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has counted nearly 1,300 attacks since October 7th of the previous year. Per the AFP, a total of over 650 Palestinians, including many militants, have been killed in the West Bank in that same time-frame, by a combination of IDF soldiers and settlers. According to both the IDF and the West Bank's major militant organizations, the current fighting is largely or fully between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters. But it is just as important to understand the public perception of the incident as it is to understand the reality, because both, not just one or the other, will guide future action on both sides. ## Decades of Occupation, Resistance, and the Symbolic Weight of Jenin Living under Israeli occupation since the late 1960s, Palestinians in the West Bank have long held a bitter animosity toward Israel. Their more militarily powerful neighbor has asserted a status quo where Palestinians have no right to vote, little means to advocate for themselves, and have to abide what is largely seen as a puppet government, backed by the Israeli leadership. The construction and expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank has been a major point of conflict, and has been condemned by much of the world for decades. A deep cultural ethos of resistance to Israel has been a major part of life in the West Bank for a very long time, and the population there lost faith, long ago, in peace processes that are now remembered as a charade by Israel. Armed resistance is now a mainstay of the West Bank, generally framed as freedom-fighting by its supporters and as terrorism by its opponents, and major explosions of violence have left deep marks on the people there, regardless of what side of the conflict they are on. The city of Jenin holds major symbolic value to both sides; for Israelis, it is remembered as the point of origin of dozens of suicide bombers who attacked Israel during the Second Intifada, a long stretch of violent revolt against Israel's occupation in the early 2000s. For Palestinians, it is both a long-respected center of resistance and popular discontent, and the site of a 2002 battle where dozens of Palestinians, about half believed to be civilians, and about two dozen Israeli soldiers were killed. ## Cutting the Grass: A Strategy Under Strain Since the start of the Israel-Hamas War in Gaza, the West Bank has largely become an afterthought for global governments and press. But even before the start of this operation, the West Bank has not been a quiet part of Israel, by any means. Although no single violent incident has risen to the scale and scope of this current Israeli operation since the start of the war in Gaza, the West Bank has nonetheless been a violent and difficult place. On one side, Israeli and other Jewish settlers living in the West Bank have attacked and repressed local Palestinians with impunity, organizing into militias that are empowered by, and often reinforced by local IDF forces, and that have committed numerous and sometimes fatal attacks against Palestinians. On the other, dozens of shooting attacks against Israelis have been traced back to the West Bank over the last year, and just a couple of weeks before this operation, an attempted suicide bombing was botched by pure chance, when an aspiring bomber from the West Bank had his backpack bomb detonate just moments before he may have breached a synagogue during evening prayers. In October and December of the previous year, and in January and April of 2024, prior raids by the IDF killed several dozen people, including at least eight children. Israel has long employed a strategy referred to as "cutting the grass," engaging in frequent and sporadic operations to destroy and root out active militant threats, without committing to a long-term engagement of troops. As one former IDF intelligence officer, Michael Milshtein, put it to the Associated Press: "You see something growing, you need to cut it. But it means that in two months, you will be there again." By all indicators, that is still the approach, but the size and scale of this current advance into the West Bank indicates that the grass, so to speak, had gotten a bit too long. By Israel's own statements, on the purported flood of weapons into the West Bank and the rising terrorist threat that it is responding to, the situation in the West Bank is not sustainable forever. There are plenty of proponents of mowing the grass in Israel, just as there are many people who say it does not work and has never worked, but as an antidote to the rise in anger and violent intent that Israel is calling out in the West Bank, mowing the grass does not appear to be a sufficient answer. Hamas, Fatah, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad indicated during this most recent operation that they were not avoiding a fight; they were spoiling for one, and if that is where their sentiments are, at this stage of the current conflict, then it may not be possible to refer to "low-grade hostilities" in the West Bank for much longer. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What triggered the IDF’s August 2024 West Bank operation? In the pre-dawn hours of August 28, 2024, the IDF launched its largest West Bank military operation in decades, sending several hundred soldiers into Jenin, Tulkarem, Tubas, and Nablus. Israel stated the operation was a counterterrorism effort to dismantle armed militant networks, and Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz explicitly tied it to what he described as an Iranian effort to establish an eastern terrorist front in the West Bank modeled on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. ### Which Palestinian militant groups were involved, and how did they respond? Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Fatah all announced that their fighters were detonating bombs against Israeli military vehicles within hours of the operation beginning. The most notable engagement came in Tulkarem, where five Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants, including Mohammed Jaber (Abu Shujaa), were cornered in a mosque and killed in a shootout with the IDF. Despite these retaliatory attacks, no Israeli fatalities were reported by the end of August 29. ### Why does the city of Jenin hold particular significance in this conflict? Jenin holds major symbolic weight on both sides. For Israelis, it is remembered as the origin point of dozens of suicide bombers who attacked Israel during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s. For Palestinians, it is a long-respected center of resistance and popular discontent, and the site of a 2002 battle in which about half of the roughly two dozen Palestinian deaths were believed to be civilians. During the 2024 operation, the IDF surrounded Jenin’s main hospital with earthworks barriers and shut down internet, cellular, and in some areas water services. ### What is the IDF’s "cutting the grass" strategy, and why is it under strain? "Cutting the grass" is Israel’s long-standing approach of conducting periodic, targeted operations to destroy active militant threats in the West Bank rather than committing to a permanent large-scale engagement. As one former IDF intelligence officer told the Associated Press, if you see something growing you need to cut it, but it means returning again in two months. With nearly 150 attacks launched against Israelis from the northern West Bank over the prior year and Iran allegedly flooding the region with weapons, Israel’s own statements suggest the situation is no longer sustainable under this limited strategy alone. ### How do Palestinians interpret the stated Israeli rationale for the operation? Many Palestinians suspect the real objective is to broaden Israeli control over the West Bank and advance the occupation rather than purely counterterrorism. This suspicion is reinforced by what is widely regarded as discriminatory law enforcement: Palestinians who attack Israelis face swift and sometimes fatal punishment, while Jewish settlers who carry out attacks against Palestinians, of which the UN counted nearly 1,300 since October 7, 2023, face little serious rebuke. Hamas, Fatah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad all indicated they were spoiling for a fight rather than avoiding one. ## Related Coverage - [Israel's Raids in the West Bank: What Happened, and Why It Matters](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/israels-raids-west-bank-what-happened-why-it-matters) - [Israel has Shattered the Ceasefire in Gaza. Here's What You Need to Know.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/israel-has-shattered-the-ceasefire-in-gaza-heres-what-you-need-to-know) - [Israel Eliminates Houthi Prime Minister in Sana'a Airstrike](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/israel-eliminates-houthi-prime-minister-sanaa) - [Bloodshed in Syria. Here's What We Know.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/bloodshed-in-syria-heres-what-we-know) - [India-Pakistan Escalation Explained: Operation Sindoor, Aerial Battles, and the Risk of Full-Scale War](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/india-pakistan-escalation-operation-sindoor-aerial-battles-war-risk) ## Sources 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. [1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-idf-west-bank-operation-palestinians-killed/ [2]: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-west-bank-raids-explain-74d61deb5ef9173a54d07ebc826caa94 [3]: https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-news-08-29-2024-ee53e1dbf7ece94151088308510e8679 [4]: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/least-7-killed-israeli-strikes-west-bank-2024-08-28/ [5]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4xl4pvn0yo [6]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2ny546m7go [7]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/28/world/israel-hamas-gaza-war [8]: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/29/world/israel-hamas-gaza-war#un-world-food-program-gaza [9]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/world/middleeast/west-bank-what-where-who.html [10]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-we-know-about-who-israel-is-targeting-in-west-bank-raids [11]: https://www.vox.com/2018/11/20/18080034/west-bank-israel-palestinians <!-- youtube:IElQCGMLXWg -->