(This text was translated from its original Arabic version.)
On Tuesday afternoon, January 21, 2025, a number of Palestinians were killed in the Jenin camp. Dozens of others were injured in an attack by the Israeli occupation army, just two days after the first prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel under the first phase of the truce deal announced on Thursday evening, the 16th of the same month.
It became clear that the Israeli campaign on Jenin comes within a broader context, targeting the entire West Bank in a manner linked to the Israeli war of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Minister of Finance, the second minister in the Ministry of Security, and the leader of the “Religious Zionism” party, Bezalel Smotrich, stated that the West Bank had joined the goals of the war and called the campaign “Iron Walls.”
The campaign on the West Bank began before the first exchange operation. It was represented by the complete and total closure of all cities, villages, and towns in the West Bank and their isolation with barriers and iron gates. The occupation forces activated nearly 900 barriers and iron gates in one moment. What is the relationship between this campaign on the West Bank and the war on Gaza, and the deal signed between Hamas and “Israel,” and does it have any bearing on evaluating this deal and the results of the Israeli war of aggression up to the present moment?!
The campaign on the West Bank comes in two related contexts. The first is the existing colonial situation in the West Bank, whose ongoing tools include open and successive security campaigns, and the second is the prisoner exchange deal with Hamas, as “Israel” has become looking for a soft spot in which to compensate for what appeared to be Israeli failure within a number of the declared goals of the war on Gaza, despite the enormous disaster that “Israel” inflicted on the Gazans by annihilating and destroying their lives and their urban and urban landmarks, and this disaster must be included in the calculation of this war, but it is not sufficient for the Israelis, given some slogans, such as “comprehensive victory” and “changing the Middle East and given the strategic objectives that envision, on the one hand, erasing the shame of October 7 and, on the other hand, achieving a decisive and unambiguous victory by eliminating Hamas, the leader of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, but Israel found itself forced to sign an understanding with the movement that he entered the longest war in his history to eliminate it, and took his full opportunity, Western supplies, Arab silence, and time to take the form of sweeping annihilation and destruction.
In light of these slogans and goals, it was not easy for “Israel” to go to this deal, which in this regard, and when all elements of the scene are taken into consideration, represents a resounding Israeli failure, as the price paid by the Palestinians, which is a genocide that does not end at the ceasefire because it has turned into a permanent structure within Gazan society, due to the social and economic consequences of the Israeli war of extermination, is an obscene Israeli crime. Still, in the overall view, it is not sufficient for Israel to say that “Israel” has won and achieved its goals from the war on the Gaza Strip. This would mean that the failure of October 7 would be reinforced in the long war that Israel called “Iron Swords” and Netanyahu called the “War of Resurrection.” In this case, the Israeli army will not recover its reputation, nor will Israeli intelligence, after a Palestinian organization with rudimentary equipment survived amid genocide, carpet bombing, depopulation, siege, and supply disruptions, and the Israeli military will not regain its reputation. The theories of deterrence, restoring prestige, and erasing failure will be severely tested after the papers for the deal are laid out for signing in Doha.
The campaign on the West Bank, in this case, has become an Israeli need, calling for Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s theory of the “iron wall” to return the Zionist project to the beginnings of its doubt, suspicion, and uncertainty before the establishment of the Israeli entity. The “iron wall” theory has two sides: an inner side that is directed at Israeli society in Palestine and an outer side that is directed at the enemies of “Israel.” To the extent that the Palestinians and Arabs can be made to despair of the possibility of defeating “Israel” and imposing permanent psychological defeat on the Palestinian and Arab consciousness, the Israelis can be reassured about the stability and steadfastness of the Zionist project.
Within this complex wall, theories of deterrence and imposing prestige are connected, and the myths of the invincible army and the intelligence that never sleeps are elevated. However, that was struck for the first time on October 7. The deal returned to revive October 7 once again in the Palestinian and Arab consciousness on the one hand and the Israeli consciousness on the other.
The genocidal war failed to restore the full image of the Iron Wall that existed before October 7. This was confirmed, at least until now, by Israel signing a deal with principles and foundations that it had rejected throughout the past months. The formula of the agreement that was presented in July 2024 and approved by Hamas at the time, and the occupation disavowed, the occupation has now agreed to it again, which is likely to give the Palestinians renewed hope in confronting the Israeli will of genocide and to turn the war into an element of internal Israeli polarization. The one who agreed to what he rejected a few months ago bears political and moral responsibility before Israeli society for the dozens of soldiers who were killed in the recent Gaza battles and for the Israeli hostages who were killed, lost, or wounded throughout the last months of the war. However, more important is that confidence in the Iron Wall remained fragile and disturbed after the war ended, at least temporarily, thanks to this formula of the deal that Netanyahu previously saw as “surrendering to Hamas’s conditions.”
For this reason, the campaign on the West Bank came in an attempt to resume the construction of the “iron wall” from the soft underbelly, to continue the policy of making the Palestinians despair of the doctrine of rejection, resistance, and rebellion, and to convince the Israeli public that “Israel” did not emerge from the Gaza war in failure and disappointment by being forced to sign a deal with Hamas, but rather emerged strong with a continued will for war and fighting. Then, the official Israeli discourse included the renewed campaign on the West Bank in the war of genocide on Gaza itself.
Interpreting the campaign from this perspective is based on the direct Israeli discourse. It is clear, and Smotrich has taken the lead in announcing this campaign, that the campaign is presented to the right-wing Israeli public, especially the public of the religious nationalist movement, the heart of the biblical settlement movement, and within the framework of the bilateral understanding between Netanyahu and Smotrich, not only to ensure Smotrich’s continued presence in Netanyahu’s government, but because this settlement movement is Benjamin Netanyahu’s permanent lever, so the campaign is a sale of a position to this movement, and an attempt to compensate for the failure in Gaza.
The campaign was driven by this consideration and organically related to internal Israeli considerations at the level of policymakers and between agencies and institutions. It came at the invitation of the head of the Israeli “Shin Bet” agency, Ronen Bar, an invitation that crystallized in the form of a detailed proposal before the Israeli cabinet and its security cabinet and was expressed by various agencies and levels from the Minister of War to the Chief of Staff. This means that the Israeli security and military institutions wanted to protect themselves from settling internal scores by publicly preempting the potential dangers in the West Bank to compensate for the failure when they did not predict Hamas’s intentions before October 7 and were unable to resolve the war in a manner consistent with the goal of “comprehensive victory,” especially since Israeli assessments of the deal, which is supposed to lead to a permanent cessation of the war, see it as a clear Israeli failure, as in the public statements of many Israeli strategists and security figures, most notably Giora Eiland, the author of the “Generals’ Plan.”
Thus, the “iron fences” in the West Bank are an attempt to compensate for the failure of the “iron swords” in Gaza and are entirely connected to the public Israeli reviews of the failure in Gaza. In this case, it is not possible to evaluate this war in its entirety without noting those Israeli evaluations from circles outside the current political or professional interests and the official conduct of the current leadership and political circles, including the details from the general Israeli psychological breakdown and the Israeli television channels being forced to cover the scenes of the handover of the Israeli female prisoners in Gaza by the Qassam fighters as if the war had not yet begun, and transmitting this from the Al Jazeera channel, which is banned by Israel, to preventing any celebratory manifestations in Jerusalem and the West Bank for the released Palestinian prisoners, to the deliberate Israeli delay of the release of the Palestinian prisoners until the dawn of the day after the scheduled date in an attempt to besiege the already sorrowful Palestinian joy.
Much can be said about what led the Israelis to reach the deal they were fleeing from, from the end of the war on Lebanon, which strengthened the position of the Israelis demanding that priority be given to the return of the prisoners even by stopping the war, to the transformation that occurred in the American administration with the departure of the Biden administration and the arrival of the Trump administration. However, the most crucial factor is the steadfastness of the fighters in the field until the last minute, the steadfastness of the Palestinian negotiator in the face of the enormous pressures from multiple sources, and the depletion that occurred in “Israel” economically and socially despite the open American and Western supply bridge.