While all eyes are directed to Gaza, the West Bank is witnessing dangerous events that will irreversibly change the facts there. The settlers saw the war on Gaza as an opportunity to change the reality of life in the West Bank and do everything that they would not dare do at other times. They mistreat their Palestinian neighbors, attacking them and assaulting their property with greater violence than on normal days, while the Israeli army does not deter them, and in many cases even protects them, acts aggressively, and uses lethal tools against the Palestinians.

These two steps are linked to each other, and have a common result: the evacuation of Palestinians from their villages and lands, especially in two distant points in the West Bank: south of Mount Hebron and north of the Jordan Valley. There, facing the most vulnerable populations, groups of shepherds who have no one to protect them, a real transfer is taking place that no one in Israel is talking about.

Since the beginning of the war, residents of 16 shepherd groups in the south of Mount Hebron have been forced to leave their villages, for fear of settlers. In northern Ghor "Valley", 20 families left their villages for the same reason.

Meanwhile, more Palestinians are being killed, almost daily, throughout the West Bank, some of them innocent. In the Tulkarm area alone, about 50 people have been killed since the beginning of the war, and in the Ramallah area, 30 people have been killed. Some of them were killed by settlers whose hands became lighter on the trigger, given their knowledge that no harm would come to them in light of the war and under the extreme right-wing government.

Soldiers also easily shoot at Palestinians, in addition to suicide drone attacks on crowded residential areas in the refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarm.

Simultaneously with the killing, the demolition is taking place: Last week, Gideon Levy and Alex Levack reported that the destruction turned the Jenin camp into a miniature of Gaza (“Haaretz,” 8/12), and this is how the Washington Post described the camp’s situation in a special investigation on Jenin. .

In addition, confrontations occurred between the Israeli army and residents in the northern Jordan Valley. For example, residents of villages in the northern Jordan Valley were prevented from being supplied with water for two consecutive days (“Haaretz,” 12/15). In addition to the difficult economic crisis, as well as the absolute prohibition of Palestinian workers from entering Israel to work, there are dozens of strict checkpoints that increase the suffering of the Palestinians.

The Prime Minister failed miserably on October 7. Now, through the support he has provided to the settlers and the army, and through his toxic rhetoric against the Palestinian Authority, he is causing the deterioration of an additional front that could explode in the face of all citizens of Israel.