Netanyahu is doing what his government promised all along: level the West Bank just as it did Gaza. The program looks like yet another Nakba.
by Diana Buttu, reposted from Zeteo, March 2, 2025
Note from the editor: Much of our mainstream media, across the West, seems intent on ignoring what is happening in the Occupied Palestinian Territories these days, and especially events in the West Bank. Zeteo, however, remains committed to covering the ongoing occupation and Israel’s atrocities, and we are proud to have the well-informed Diana Buttu, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and former PLO legal adviser, writing for us. Please do become a paid subscriber to Zeteo so you can read her columns, in full, without a paywall, and support independent journalism. – Mehdi
When Israeli tanks invaded Jenin last weekend, a friend in Bethlehem called me to say, “Is this really happening, again? At least we know what to do this time!” She was trying to sound upbeat, but I knew that she was masking what we felt back in 2002 when we saw tanks invade our city of Ramallah. I still remember the moment that the Israeli army forced me out of my home in the middle of the night in Ramallah and running to avoid live bullets at 2 am. I was not allowed back into my home for days. This time around, it is different. The 40,000 people who have been forced out of their homes in West Bank cities like Jenin and Tulkarm will not be allowed to return – ever – and the army has said it will stay for a year.
In Tulkarm, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, late last week, made sure to post a picture of himself seated in the house of a Palestinian family. On the walls of that home, the Israeli army put up the Israeli flag and the flag of the Israeli army brigade that took over the house. Netanyahu and his army generals casually sat on their living room furniture and made themselves at home in a place that is not their home, a place to which they were not invited and in which they do not belong.
Israeli Prime Minister Benajmin Netanyahu and Israeli soldiers take over the home of a Palestinian family in Tulkarm, occupied West Bank. Photo: Israel’s GPO (source)
This image is strikingly similar to the hundreds, if not thousands, of images that Israeli soldiers have proudly displayed over 15 months of genocide in Gaza, with Israeli soldiers making themselves at home in the homes of Palestinians from Gaza who have fled Israel’s bombs. (Not ironically, this is precisely what Israelis did in 1948 – “make themselves at home” in places that were not, in fact, their homes.)
But the similarities between what Israel did to Palestinians in 1948, what it did in Gaza, and what it is starting to do in the West Bank are not simply pictures. Netanyahu and his ministers have declared precisely what they intend to do in the West Bank.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced, “Tulkarm and Jenin will look like Jabalia and Shuja’iyya. Nablus and Ramallah will resemble Rafah and Khan Younis. They will also be turned into uninhabitable ruins, and their residents will be forced to migrate and seek a new life in other countries.”
Not to be outdone in the War Crimes Olympics, Netanyahu announced, from outside the Tulkarm house that he took over, “Just before the start of Shabbat, I have arrived here, at the Tulkarm refugee camp, to be with our heroic soldiers. They are doing a tremendous job.” He was sure to add that they are “leveling entire streets” and destroying homes. A day later, Israeli tanks rolled into Jenin and Tulkarm, with the Israeli army callously flattening anything in its way. Israel’s assaults have killed more than 51 Palestinians since Jan. 21 and forced more than 40,000 Palestinians to flee their homes – the biggest single displacement in the West Bank since Israel occupied the territory in 1967. Palestinians were forced to flee with snipers aimed at them from rooftops.
Meanwhile, Israeli settlers are distributing leaflets in the West Bank telling Palestinians that they have “no future in Palestine” – the same type of leaflets that were dropped on the Gaza Strip telling Palestinians that they will be ethnically cleansed from Gaza. The videos of the settlers handing out the leaflets are all the rage in the settler WhatsApp groups, with mixes of the videos set to a top hit in Israel invoking the biblical story of the nation of Amalek (whose people God commanded the Israelites to exterminate – a story often referenced by Israeli extremists to justify the killing of Palestinians). You, too, can get one of the leaflets by simply calling a number!
Nakba 2.0
The timing and tactics are not at all coincidental. Israel’s attack on the West Bank came just days after the start of the ceasefire in Gaza. Needing to show its military prowess on a stateless refugee population in Gaza was not enough; it needs to show that same military prowess on a stateless refugee population in the West Bank. Having failed in Gaza – and indeed, Israel has failed – it has turned its sights on the West Bank.
Last October, Israel’s Knesset passed two laws effectively shutting down the operations of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA). The first bans UNRWA from operating in Israel’s “sovereign territory” (an area that Israel has never defined), while the second bars Israeli officials from any contact with UNRWA. These two bills have forced UNRWA to cease most of its operations in Jerusalem, with its headquarters expropriated and now apparently slated to become condos no less.
But the real impact of Israel’s actions has not been enacted in any law, but rather in how it has conducted itself: Israel is systematically destroying Palestinian refugee camps throughout the West Bank in the (mistaken) belief that it can bulldoze away their problems. And as talk of “transfer” (a euphemism for ethnic cleansing) is now normalized regarding Palestinians in Gaza, it’s also now commonplace for Palestinians in the West Bank. Incidentally, for US President Donald Trump, ethnic cleansing is now accompanied by good old-fashioned gaslighting, too: Gaza is so damaged – a “demolition site” – that it is better for people to simply move elsewhere! The care – the concern – is overwhelming.
And, just as the world was silent as Jabaliya and Shuja’iyya (and other Palestinian towns in Gaza) were flattened, with electricity, water, sewage, and telecommunications infrastructure destroyed, so too expect the same handwringing over the West Bank. In fact, members of the international community cannot seem to muster words beyond “concerned.”
Up next: bombing hospitals, universities, and mosques. But at least the Trumpians will be so concerned about the destruction that they will ask us to leave Palestine – you know, for our own safety. This is the Gazafication of the West Bank, a Nakba 2.0, as promised.
Diana Buttu is a Haifa-based lawyer and analyst who was a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team in the early 2000s and is a frequent commentator and writer on Palestinian and Israeli issues. She writes Zeteo’s ‘A Diary from a Palestinian in Israel.’
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