By Qassam Muaddi  April 14, 2025  3

Israel is expanding its “Iron Wall” offensive in the West Bank as it approves plans to separate the northern West Bank from the south. The plan is an accelerated prelude to Israel's expected annexation of the West Bank.

Israeli forces escalated their offensive in the occupied West Bank last week across Palestinian cities and refugee camps, killing three Palestinians. The escalation came amid renewed Israeli plans to expedite annexation plans to solidify the expansion of key new settlement projects in the central West Bank, including connecting one of the largest Israeli settlements, Maale Adumim, to Jerusalem. 

Last Monday, April 7, Israeli forces opened fire at three children in the town of Turmusayya, northeast of Ramallah, killing 14-year-old Palestinian-American citizen Omar Saadeh. On Tuesday, April 8, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian woman, Aminah Yaaqoub, 30, at an Israeli checkpoint near Salfit in the northern West Bank.

These killings raised the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers since October 2023 to more than 800, as the Israeli army increased its use of lethal force as part of an ongoing military crackdown on the West Bank’s cities and refugee camps.

Earlier this month, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man, Hamza Khamash, 33, and arrested his brother during a raid into the city of Nablus. On the same day, Israeli forces raided the refugee camp of Dheisheh in southern Bethlehem and injured two 15-year-old Palestinian boys and two Palestinian men aged 50 and 46. The raid on Dheisheh lasted for more than seven hours, including house searches and multiple arrests. Israeli forces also threw leaflets in Dheisheh threatening residents of “the same fate of Tulkarem and Jenin” refugee camps if they harbor militant elements in the camp. Leaflets portrayed a picture of a destroyed street in one of the northern West Bank’s refugee camps, where Israeli forces have forced tens of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes.

Israeli forces also intensified their attack on Jenin with airstrikes on the already-depopulated refugee camp, detaining Palestinians in the surroundings of the camp and searching their phones.

This military campaign first began after the signing of the now-broken ceasefire deal in Gaza. The military offensive, dubbed “Operation Iron Wall,” started in Jenin and expanded to other parts of the northern West Bank following the start of the short-lived ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in mid-January. However, the operation is also an accelerated prelude to Israel’s annexation of the occupied West Bank, as pledged by Israel’s far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich.

The plan to bifurcate the West Bank

The launching of the “Iron Wall” offensive has been described by the families of Israeli captives held in Gaza as compensation offered to Smotrich in exchange for accepting the signing of the ceasefire and refraining from quitting Netanyahu’s right-wing governing coalition. 

In reality, Smotrich’s agenda of crushing Palestinian refugee camps is part of the Israeli government’s broader stated agenda for annexing the West Bank. The escalation of Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian cities came as an echo to developments in Gaza, as Israel announced the expansion of its ground invasion in the strip last week, especially in Rafah. This West Bank escalation was also coupled with the expansion of new settlement projects.

On March 30, the Israeli cabinet approved a new settlement roads project east of Jerusalem. The project includes a road that circumvents the center of the West Bank between Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley, allegedly allowing Palestinians to drive directly from Bethlehem to Jericho and isolating both areas definitively from Jerusalem. The current highway, one of the few Israeli highways on parts of which Palestinians are allowed to drive, will be exclusively reserved for Israelis, connecting Jerusalem with Israeli settlements that expand from the east of Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley. Most central to this annexation project is the second-largest Israeli settlement, Maaale Adumim, which houses 40,000 Israelis.

On March 30, the Israeli cabinet approved a new settlement roads project east of Jerusalem. Linking Jerusalem with settlements to the east would cut the West Bank in half. It’s a plan that Israel has had in the works for years but has now gained official approval.

Linking Jerusalem with settlements to the east would separate the south and the north of the West Bank and create a geographical continuity between Israel’s 1948 boundaries, Jerusalem, and Israeli settlements. Most crucially, the West Bank would be bifurcated. It’s a plan that Israel has had in the works for years but has now gained official approval.

The Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan Al-Ahmar, located in the center of the soon-to-be isolated area, would become inaccessible for Palestinian vehicles and would be reached only on foot.

The project would cost $91 million and be covered by money in a special budget reserved for services to Palestinians separate from the Israeli government’s budget. The Israeli organization Peace Now said in a statement that the project “serves no purpose in improving Palestinian transportation. Instead, it is solely aimed at facilitating the annexation of a vast area, approximately 3% of the West Bank, into Israel.”

Israel’s Defense Minister, Israel Katz, stated that the project “will enhance security by separating Israeli and Palestinian circulation,” while the mayor of the Maale Adumim settlement called the project’s approval “a historical moment.” Peace Now warned that the project would “eliminate the possibility of ending the conflict and a two-state solution.”

Earlier this month, while standing alongside Bezalel Smotrich, Katz said in a video that Israel “will not allow the Palestinian Authority and Abu Mazen [the PA President, Mahmoud Abbas] to impose their control on the West Bank’s lands through illegal building that threatens the settlements’ security.” 

Katz added that “just as we crush terrorism in the camps of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams, we will also prevent the Palestinian Authority from controlling lands in Judea and Samaria” — the Israeli term for the West Bank — by preventing the PA’s so-called “illegal building” projects that “threaten settlements.”

Katz made his statements during a tour of several West Bank settlements accompanied by Smotrich. In the video, Smotrich said that “there hasn’t been such a revolution [in settlement building] in Judea and Samaria since 1967.” 

“Israel’s government works on developing settlements and combats Arab illegal building, which has become a scourge to us in recent years,” the Finance Minister added.

Both Katz and Smotrich belong to the Israeli far right, whose voting base comes largely from the settler movement. Smotrich has been leading calls to annex the West Bank since 2015 and has labeled his plan “the definitive solution.” This plan, according to Smotrich, would “end the conflict” by imposing Israeli control over the West Bank and annexing it to Israel’s 1948 boundaries, killing any chances for establishing a Palestinian state. This vision aligns with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s longtime effort to undermine a two-state solution and prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The Israeli far right has dominated Israeli politics in recent years, winning a majority of seats in the Knesset in five consecutive elections in two years. After October 7, 2023, Smotrich stated that his “definitive solution” of annexing the West Bank is “Israel’s response to Hamas.” Since then, Israel has been periodically escalating settlement expansion and violent crackdown on the West Bank, echoing developments in Gaza — with little to no international opposition.

Settler violence in the West Bank has displaced no less than 20 Bedouin communities in the West Bank since October 2023, while the Israeli army and settler attacks have killed more than 800 Palestinians in the same time period. According to UNRWA, Israel’s “Iron Wall” offensive has so far displaced well over 40,000 Palestinians and completely depopulated the Jenin and Tulkarem refugee camps, with Israel’s Defense Minister saying that its residents would not be allowed to return for at least a year.