Israel’s brutal war in Gaza continues as ceasefire talks have stalled, and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees announced that more than 50,000 children in Gaza require immediate medical treatment for acute malnutrition. On June 17, Gaza’s health ministry reported that more than 37,347 Palestinians have been killed and 85,372 have been injured since Israel’s offensive began on Oct. 7. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disbanded his 6-member war cabinet after a key opposition party member resigned.
But as the world is understandably focused on the ongoing horrific carnage in Gaza, Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank are suffering an explosion of violence. Since the war in Gaza started, Israeli military raids and settler attacks in the West Bank have resulted in the deaths of 521 Palestinians, including 126 children as of June 10. As Israel’s government announced plans to expand illegal Jewish settlement across the West Bank, Israeli settlers continued their attacks and takeover of Palestinian homes and land.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Catherine Cartier, a journalist who is pursuing a master’s degree in global journalism and Near Eastern studies at New York University. Here, she talks about her recent Intercept investigation, titled “Israel’s New Air War in the West Bank: Nearly Half of the Dead are Children,“ which details the rising number of Palestinian civilians being killed by Israeli airstrikes and drone attacks that were last seen in the occupied territory more than 20 years ago.
CATHERINE CARTIER: I think the numbers paint a pretty stark picture, about what’s going on on the ground in the West Bank. And 2023 was the deadliest year that the UN has on record since they started collecting statistics for Palestinians in the West Bank. Israeli soldiers, as well as settlers there, who are often backed and offered protection by soldiers, killed 506 Palestinians.
And it was also the deadliest year on record for children, with more than three times as many children killed in 2023 as were in 2022. And that’s also coming, you know, within a broader picture of daily raids by the Israeli military into the West Bank and ongoing attacks by settlers, according to an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) B’TSelem, have forcibly displaced almost 20 Palestinian communities since Oct. 7, 2023 alone.
So the air attacks that I looked at in my article are just one very small piece of that escalating and intensifying violence in the West Bank.
SCOTT HARRIS: Catherine, please summarize what you found in your investigation into Israel’s airstrikes in the West Bank and the rising number of Palestinian children that are being killed there, both before and after the Hamas Oct. 7 attack and the reintroduction of West Bank air attacks, 20 years after the Second Intifada was over. And that took place, as you said in the article from 2000 to 2005.
CATHERINE CARTIER: So according to the UN, Israeli air attacks in the West Bank have killed 55 people. What our investigation with The Intercept found is that the attacks have killed 24 children, making up over 40 percent of the fatalities, and that’s based on publicly available information, as well as an affidavit from an NGO on the ground that interviews eyewitnesses, called Defense for Children International Palestine.
The reintroduction of these air attacks predates the Oct. 7 attacks. The first attack documented in many, many years was in June of last year and the attacks have intensified after Oct. 7. But they did not begin with Oct. 7.
And as you mentioned, the IDF previously used airpower in the West Bank during the Second Intifada. That was mainly, helicopters. But there are eyewitness reports of drone attacks in Jenin as early as 2004. But this is an almost 20-year period in which the use of helicopters, of air-powered explosives and of drones was not happening or was extremely, extremely rare in the West Bank.
SCOTT HARRIS: Catherine, you describe in some harrowing detail some of these attacks conducted by Israel with drones in the West Bank. In particular, you described some incidents in Jenin and Balata where children were killed as a result of these Israeli airstrikes. Can you describe some of these incidents that resulted in the death of innocents, people who had nothing to do with whatever Israel was conducting a raid for?
CATHERINE CARTIER: Yeah. So I’ll describe a couple attacks in which Israeli air attacks killed unarmed children who were not participating in hostilities. One of these happened in February of this year in Jenin, a child was standing in a street when someone who had been described as wanted by the Israeli Defense Force was targeted in a drone attack. That child, whose name was Said Jaradat, suffered fatal injuries and he passed away shortly after the attack.
Similar incident happened outside of Jenin in January of this year. A 17-year-old was killed by a drone-fired missile. Israeli forces were withdrawing after a raid. They were confronted — this is based on evidence from Defense for Children International Palestine — they’re confronted with a group of Palestinians with explosives. And after Israeli vehicles had left the area, a drone fired on a different group of Palestinians, including this 17-year-old who was standing around a fire at an all-night cafe.
That attack killed seven Palestinians, including four brothers. And there’s similar incidences that have taken place in Tulkarm and Nur Shams refugee camp, as well as in Balata refugee camp, which is, near Nablus.
SCOTT HARRIS: Catherine, tell us about what international law and the Geneva Convention says about this type of military raid in the West Bank, in occupied territory illegally occupied by Israel, as well as what the Israeli courts are saying about these raids and the deaths caused by these aerial attacks, in particular.
CATHERINE CARTIER: Because of the West Bank’s status, there is the Israeli position — and then there are different positions from international law experts who I spoke to during my reporting. Israel’s position here is based on a Supreme Court ruling in 2006, that the law of armed conflict is what governs Israel’s tactics in the West Bank, the Geneva Convention being part of the laws of armed conflict.
However, the experts that I spoke to believe that international human rights law applies. So in this view, this casts Israeli forces more in the role of law enforcement officers rather than combatants in a war and the use of force would only be allowable as a last resort to protect the life of an officer or others from immediate injury or death — whereas, the law of armed conflict is more permissive in terms of the use of force and the use of lethal force.
Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Catherine Cartier (18:34) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.
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