The West Bank region of Palestine, which gets its name from its location west of the Jordan River, is Palestinian land illegally seized in war and occupied by Israel. It is home to three million Palestinian people. 

Since October 7, Israel has radically escalated what had been an ongoing reign of terror and death in the West Bank. And that reign of terror is a one-two punch of official Israeli military rampage and unofficial KKK-style “settler” terror by heavily armed Jewish fascists.

Mass Murder, Including Nearly 100 Children

Across the West Bank, the Israeli military has conducted near-nightly raids since October 7. The raids have killed over 300 people, including more than 81 children, and injured more than 4,000 Palestinians. According to the UN, at least 105 deaths were caused by Israeli air strikes or other military operations in densely populated refugee camps or urban areas.¹

Eight-year-old Adam Samer Al-Ghoul was shot to death on November 29 during an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp. In response to inquiries by Canada’s CBC broadcast network, Israeli officials responded that the killing of this eight-year-old was because “explosive devices were hurled at the [Israeli military] forces who responded with fire toward the terrorists and hit them.” This is how the Israeli authorities justify murdering an eight-year-old child who they claim was in the vicinity of people hurling Molotov cocktails at an Israeli armored personnel carrier.²

The Jenin camp is one of 19 refugee “camps” in the West Bank that were established after the Nakba, the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. Jenin is one of the poorest and most isolated of these “camps,” with lack of access to meaningful education or jobs. As such, it has historically been a hotbed of resistance or opposition to Israeli rule in one form or another. In Jenin alone, since October 7,  the New York Times reported at least 330 residents have been arrested and 67 killed.

The escalation of official terror in the West Bank after October 7 has included rounding up thousands of Palestinians. A UN report published on December 28, 2023, reported some 4,785 Palestinians have been detained in the West Bank since October 7.³

The UN reported that, "Some [detainees] were stripped naked, blindfolded and restrained for long hours with handcuffs and with their legs tied, while Israeli soldiers stepped on their heads and backs. Detainees were spat at, slammed against walls, threatened, insulted, humiliated and in some cases subjected to sexual and gender-based violence.”⁴

Since October 7, Palestinians in the West Bank have been forced to stay awake until dawn, anxiously checking for alerts. “There’s no such thing as sleeping at night in the camp these days,” one said. “We are always lying awake, waiting.”⁵

Intensified Terror on Christmas

On and before Christmas, the Israeli military conducted more raids in the cities of Bethlehem, Jenin (the city that adjoins the Jenin Refugee Camp), Hebron and Tubas overnight. Three people were injured in the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem.

On December 26, at least six Palestinians were killed by an Israeli drone strike during a raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp in the north of the West Bank. Al Jazeera reported that the six were watching the Israeli raid when “The drone came from above, and the men simply didn’t stand a chance. This was a deliberate kill shot.” Two days of murderous raids on this camp have created an atmosphere of anxiety and terror among the residents.

The Palestinian Red Crescent (Palestine’s version of the Red Cross) said the Israeli military blocked ambulances from transporting the dead and wounded. Al Jazeera reported that “People tried to help [the victims], but for at least an hour and a half, the Israelis wouldn’t allow ambulances to get in.” And that sources at the local hospital said an Israeli soldier went into an ambulance and stabbed a man in the neck.”⁶

The Jenin-based Freedom Theatre, which was recently raided and vandalized by Israeli soldiers, posted video on social media showing the sky lit up with Israeli flare bombs on Christmas night.

“Settler Terror”—Hand-in-Glove with Official Terror

The increase in official Israeli violence and terror in the West Bank has gone hand-in-glove with intensifying, ferocious terror against Palestinian people by Israeli “settlers” and other Zionist thugs.

Palestinian Christian churches and communities are among the targets of Jewish fascist vigilante terror in the Palestinian section of Jerusalem (East Jerusalem). On December 28, the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem reported that 30 armed individuals “in ski-masks with lethal and less-than-lethal weaponry including powerful nerve agents that have incapacitated dozens of our clergy broke into the grounds of the Cow’s Garden [the center of a Christian community in Jerusalem] and began their vicious assault.” 

There are over 700,000 Israeli “settlers” in the West Bank, with the “cutting edge” of them being heavily armed Jewish supremacist terrorists. Settlers carried out 366 documented terrorist raids on Palestinian communities since October 7, killing eight people⁷ and driving over 1,200 people, many of them rural farmers who are a cohering force in Palestinian society, from their homes and farms. 

As the year ended, ongoing “settler” terror against Palestinians in the West Bank included setting trees on fire, setting homes on fire, physical attacks and killings. A researcher for the Israel-based human rights group Yesh Din, said that since October 7, their group has documented more than 172 incidents of “settler” violence in more than 80 Palestinian communities across the West Bank. 

In scenes that evoke the Nakba of 1948, the original ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionists, whole villages are being sent into exile. A Yesh Din researcher reported, “This [driving Palestinians from their homes and destroying and depopulating Palestinian communities] is basically the endgame of this settler violence… At the moment, Palestinians all over the West Bank are absolutely terrified."

Biden’s “Emphatic” Bullshit = Genocidal Ethnic Cleansing on the West Bank

On November 18, Joe Biden published a guest editorial in the Washington Post titled The U.S. won’t back down from the challenge of Putin and Hamas. It was an attempt to rally people in this country around an extremely aggressive and reckless foreign policy, including amped up political, diplomatic, financial and military backing for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.⁸ 

In that editorial, Biden claimed, “I have been emphatic with Israel’s leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable. The United States is prepared to take our own steps, including issuing visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank.”

The “threat” of visa bans is a cynical sick joke. It is a meaningless penalty. And Biden knows very well that “Israel’s leaders” are themselves Jewish fundamentalist and secular rabidly genocidal fascists. And that they are all in with these “extremist” settlers. In fact, key members of the cabinet of Prime Minister Netanyahu (Netan-NAZI) are “settlers” themselves. And the settler terror is only possible with the backing of the Israeli government whose police and military enable or stand aside while “settler” terrorists attack Palestinian homes, farms, and communities.

At this very moment, Biden is pulling out all stops to keep death machinery flowing into Israel which makes possible both the unofficial and official terror, torture, and death being inflicted on the West Bank.

And this is an expression of the reality that Bob Avakian speaks to in Some Basic Truths About the U.S.-Supported Israeli War Against Palestine:

Israel, backed by “western” imperialists—and above all, the U.S.—is the dominant and oppressive force in its relation with the Palestinian people. Israel was founded, 75 years ago, on the basis of massive terror against masses of Palestinian people, and has carried out repeated atrocities against the Palestinian people ever since. This is a matter of historical fact.