In-depth: Israel has increased violent raids on Palestinian towns and villages, with residents fearing that the military is ‘rehearsing’ for annexation.
In recent months, Palestinians say there has been a dramatic increase in aggressive and extended Israeli raids on towns and villages across rural areas in the occupied West Bank – especially those close to illegal Israeli settlements.
This has prompted concerns among residents over whether Israel is rehearsing for long-proposed plans to annex and impose its sovereignty onto the West Bank – as Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has repeatedly threatened.
The military incursions have been carried out in Palestinian areas classified as Area B under the Oslo Accords, which are supposedly under the civil administration of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and in Area C, which has been under Israeli administration since the 1993 Accords.
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Besieged and paralysed
At dawn on Sunday 24 November, Israeli forces entered the village of Al-Mughayyir, in the countryside east of Ramallah.
They imposed a tight siege after sealing off every entrance to the village except one, completely severing the village from its surroundings, explained community activist Kazem Hajj Mohammed to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister edition.
He said Israeli forces had stormed one of the houses and turned it into a military barracks and base – in which soldiers then carried out field “interrogations” with residents.
Meanwhile, another group of soldiers raided other houses in the village amid intermittent clashes with the inhabitants.
The siege lasted two days and brought life in Al-Mughayyir to a complete standstill. The schools were forced to close for both days, and many of the locals couldn’t go to work due to the closure of the roads out of the village and the presence of armed Israeli soldiers in the streets.
The justification Israeli forces had given for the raid and siege was due to young people “shining laser beams” at settlers’ cars on the bypass road next to the village, said Hajj Mohammed.
Military barracks
Just five days earlier on 19 November, Burqa village, north of Nablus in the West Bank, was subjected to a 24-hour military operation during which around 50 houses were raided, and dozens of local men interrogated by Israeli soldiers. Some were beaten so badly during the interrogations they had to be hospitalised.
Anti-settlement activist Sami Douglas, who lives in Burqa, described what happened as “a mini military operation”.
Burqa was transformed into a “barracks” for the Israeli soldiers, he says, who spread out in its neighbourhoods and streets and occupied several buildings.
 Israeli settlers gather near the fields of Palestinian farmers in the village of Burqa in the occupied West Bank on 20 October 2024. [Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty] |
They also blocked off the road into the village, preventing anyone from entering or exiting. Douglas explains how teams of 7-10 soldiers raided one house after another, destroying residents’ belongings and furniture under the pretext of conducting searches, as well as physically and verbally assaulting residents.
In his view, Israel’s actions are part of a set of systematic policies which aim to establish deterrence through terrorising Palestinians.
This was the aim of the threats and warnings issued by Israeli officers to parents and teachers, which stated that if their children or pupils threw stones at Israeli army vehicles or settlers’ cars when they passed near the village, the “punishment would be severe”.
Establishing a new reality
Some view the increase in these violent and disruptive raids as an Israeli attempt to “pre-emptively deter” any acts by Palestinians in the case they come into contact with Israeli settlers – such as throwing stones at their cars as they pass close to Palestinian villages.
However, others believe Israel’s motive in the uptick of aggressive raids is to train new recruits to mount incursions into residential areas and “deal” with Palestinian residents. They see this as coinciding with the growing conversation in Israel around imposing Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.
Douglas believes Israel is carrying out such regular – almost daily – incursions to establish a new reality, whereby Palestinians are forced to live constantly under threat and with the possibility that the Israeli army could appear at any moment and turn their homes into military barracks, paralysing life in their villages.
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He says the objective is to create a psychological state among Palestinians where they feel the occupation is present all the time and in every place – whether in their homes, streets, mosques or schools.
“We have got to the point that the sheer number of raids has left Palestinians indifferent – as though they are just part of daily life,” he adds.
He believes this policy is having a deep impact on the psyche of Palestinians: as soon as people wake in the morning they reflexively check their phones for any news on raids or arrests.
Terror tactics
In the south of Nablus governorate lies the village of Madama, which experienced two days of terror when Israeli forces invaded on 21 November, closed down the village, and imposed a curfew on residents.
Abdullah Ziyadeh, head of Madama village council, said that the residents awoke that morning to over 300 soldiers streaming into the village, occupying rooftops with snipers and raising the Israeli flag on top of the buildings.
 A Palestinian man inspects a car, reportedly burnt by Israeli settlers, in Al-Mughayyir village on 26 May 2023. [Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty] |
More than 80 percent of the houses in the village were raided and ransacked, and Madama residents reported that Israeli soldiers were taking anyone who had the Telegram app on their phone for interrogation, a practice that has become common across the West Bank since 7 October 2023.
Since then, simply having Telegram appears to have become tantamount to an offence – with many Palestinians tortured for having the app on their phones due to the widespread belief among Israeli soldiers that Palestinians used Telegram to follow the unfolding of Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on 7 October 2023.
A rehearsal for what’s next
Specialist in Israeli affairs Azzam Abu al-Adas says what is happening in the countryside of the West Bank may be seen as a “rehearsal” for the coming phase – in light of Smotrich’s repeated statements about annexing the West Bank.
Abu al-Adas says that this decision is starting to be applied – with the imposition of a new de facto reality “where occupation troops maintain a permanent presence in residential areas”.
He points out that the change is that these raids are not a response to lone incidents, like stone throwing, but constitute a deliberate policy aiming at “sending a message” to the Palestinian community, both in the rural villages and urban areas.
The message is that the lives of Israeli settlers are worth more than those of Palestinians by all metrics.
The objective in making these violations part of daily routine – with the army sometimes deliberately carrying out incursions without a clear reason – is to demonstrate its permanent presence and assert dominance over the daily lives of Palestinians, he says.
