Barely 48 hours after the Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza came into effect on Jan. 19, the Israeli Defense Force announced “Operation Iron Wall,” a large-scale military defense offensive in the Jenin refugee camp in northern West Bank to “defeat terrorism.” Israeli attacks have since spread to other nearby towns. On Feb. 3, Israel used explosives to destroy 20 apartment buildings in Jenin as part of the military’s operation that has thus far displaced over 20,000 Palestinians.
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz, declared that troops would maintain a permanent presence there once the military operation was over. Adding instability to the volatile situation in the Middle East, President Donald Trump said on Feb. 4 that the U.S. should “own” the Gaza Strip, “level the site” and develop it, explicitly calling for the ethnic cleansing of 2 million Palestinians from their homeland, while not ruling out the deployment of U.S. troops to Gaza.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian activist and volunteer director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University. Here he talks about the escalating Israeli attacks in the northern West Bank, his expectation that the offensive will soon expand south, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit with President Trump and growing international solidarity with the Palestinian people.
MAZIN QUMSIYEH: What Israel did in the Gaza Strip, they are repeating here – ethnic cleansing, destruction, arresting people, shooting people. It’s starting here in the West Bank and it’s starting in the north of the West Bank. But throughout the West Bank, Israel has taken over all of Area C – basically, 60 percent of the West Bank has become essentially off-limits to Palestinians and the settlers are rampaging with the soldiers and harassing everybody in the area, so it’s tough. It’s not easy. But it’s still not as bad as what transpired in Gaza.
But I’m sure it’s getting there. Netanyahu will be in Washington, D.C. to meet with Trump and he will get a green light from him to do even more, and get an update from him on their partnership in terms of ethnic cleansing of the people of Gaza. Trump is already pressuring Jordan and Egypt to take Palestinians cleared out of Gaza to make nice beachfront property for settlers.
MELINDA TUHUS: So far, Jordan and Egypt have said No way. Do you think they’ll end up taking people from Gaza?
MAZIN QUMSIYEH: Well, judging from history, they can verbally say “No” and under the radar do what is required of them, as has happened in the past. Power and money speaks, so I wouldn’t be surprised.
Already, Egypt has hosted many Palestinians at the price that was taken from both the U.S. administration and also from the Palestinians themselves, to leave Gaza. There are estimates of 100,000 Palestinians who had to pay $5,000 each to leave the Gaza Strip during this war through the Egyptian border.
MELINDA TUHUS: They seem to be doing pretty much what they did do in Gaza in Jenin. I read that fighters in Jenin were actually able to unite across different groupings and have put up more of a fight against the Israelis than maybe is happening in other places. Is that right?
MAZIN QUMSIYEH: Well, there is some elements of that, too, but it’s the refugee camps, not really Jenin per se as a city. It’s the refugee camps, so in Jenin, in Tulkarm and in Nablus and even in Bethlehem, where I am – refugee camps are centers of resistance, for obvious reasons. These are people who were kept cooped up in a refugee camp for 76 years; their parents and grandparents are refugees. So they’re more likely to be resisters than the urban areas that don’t have refugee camps or have fewer refugee camps.
MELINDA TUHUS: Is it true that things in the West Bank have heated up in terms of Israeli attacks even more since the ceasefire was declared in Gaza?
MAZIN QUMSIYEH: Yes, the Israeli government decided to shift the forces here to the West Bank since the ceasefire, and of course since things quieted down a bit on the Lebanese border, the Israeli army, which is stretched and doesn’t have enough forces or enough equipment after much of it was destroyed in the attack on Gaza, they moved some of the units here to the West Bank and so indeed that escalated the pressure on the West Bank.
MELINDA TUHUS: A lot of times the Palestinians seem to be standing alone and they’re not getting support from the international community. Have any other governments made statements?
MAZIN QUMSIYEH: There’s close to 30 governments that now joined the struggle to label Israel, to call it what it is, which is a violation of the International Convention Against Genocide and Israel is now at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. As far as western governments – Germany, Britain, the US – these have colonial governments. They are under the thumb of Zionism and they’re willing to wreck their own economy to continue to be partners in crime with the genocide that Israel is committing in Gaza and now spreading to the West Bank.
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