What appears from my vantage point to be a major escalation in the Middle East conflict is not exactly getting front-page treatment in the major American press.
NYT (“At Least 10 Killed as Israel Begins Major Military Operation in West Bank“):
Hundreds of Israeli troops launched major overnight raids in the occupied West Bank, Israeli officials said on Wednesday, targeting Palestinian militants after what they called months of rising attacks. At least 10 people were killed.
The operation was concentrated in Jenin and Tulkarm, two cities that have become militant strongholds, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, told reporters. He said the operation was continuing. A Palestinian armed group based in Jenin said it had fired on Israeli forces in two villages on the city’s outskirts, and Palestinian residents in both cities described hearing intermittent gunfire.
The raids on Wednesday appeared to be the largest since July 2023, when about 1,000 Israeli soldiers carried out a 48-hour incursion in Jenin that killed 12 Palestinians, at least nine of whom militant groups claimed as members.
The operation followed months of escalating Israeli raids in the occupied territory, where nearly three million Palestinians live under Israeli military rule. Israel has arrested thousands of Palestinians suspected of involvement in armed groups since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks, an increasingly deadly campaign that has unfolded alongside the war against Hamas in Gaza.
At least 628 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, according to the United Nations, in violence involving both the Israeli military and extremist Jewish settlers.
The Israeli raids have failed to tamp down the armed groups. They have also devastated Palestinian civilians in the territory, who saw Israeli bulldozers tear up roads early Wednesday and feared being caught in the crossfire.
AP (“Israel kills prominent militant as it wages its deadliest West Bank raids since the Gaza war began“):
The Israeli military said it killed five more militants, including a local commander, early Thursday in the West Bank as it pressed ahead with what appeared to be the deadliest military operation in the occupied territory since the start of the war in Gaza.
Israel says the simultaneous raids across the northern West Bank — which have killed a total of 16 people, nearly all militants, since late Tuesday — are aimed at preventing attacks. The Palestinians see them as a widening of the Israel-Hamas war aimed at perpetuating Israel’s decades-long military rule over the territory.
The Islamic Jihad militant group confirmed that Mohammed Jaber, known as Abu Shujaa, was killed during a raid in the city of Tulkarem. He became a hero for many Palestinians earlier in the year when he was reported killed in an Israeli operation, only to make a surprise appearance at the funeral of other militants, where he was hoisted onto the shoulders of a cheering crowd.
The military said he was killed early Thursday along with four other militants in a shootout with Israeli forces after the five had hidden inside a mosque. It said Abu Shujaa was linked to numerous attacks on Israelis, including a deadly shooting in June, and was planning more.
[…]
Hamas repeated its calls for Palestinians in the West Bank to rise up, calling the raids part of a larger plan to expand the war in Gaza. The militant group has called on security forces loyal to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which cooperate with Israel, to “join the sacred battle of our people.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has also condemned the Israeli raids, but his forces were not expected to get involved.
[…]
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have spent months trying to mediate a cease-fire that would see the remaining hostages released. But the talks have repeatedly bogged down as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed “total victory” over Hamas and the militant group has demanded a lasting cease-fire and a full withdrawal from the territory.
CNN (“Israel launches large-scale West Bank raid as minister calls for Gaza-style operation“) adds:
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the operation had been staged to “thwart Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructure,” claiming that Iran was working to establish an “eastern front” against Israel.
“We must deal with the threat just as we deal with the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever steps are required,” he wrote on social media. “This is a war for all terms and purposes and we must win it.”
The operation comes as Israel steps up its military operations in the West Bank, where clashes have become more frequent since Israel began its war in Gaza in response to Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7.
The IDF’s international spokesperson, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, said in a briefing that Israel had identified “a systematic strategy in Iran” of smuggling weapons and explosives into the West Bank.
“Specifically, about Jenin and Tulkarm, we’ve seen over 150 shooting and explosive attacks originated from these areas alone over the past year,” Shoshani said on Wednesday.
Whether this latest incursion was tactically desirable is hard to say. There’s little doubt that Iran is backing anti-Israeli forces in the West Bank and elsewhere and there have been repeated attacks from that territory into Israel since the Hamas war began last October. Thus far, the ratio of militants to civilians killed has been almost surgical—certainly in comparison to the larger war effort.
At the operational level, this seems like an expansion of the war aim from simply “destroying Hamas” to a larger effort to weaken Palestinian forces of any stripe. And, strategically, this seems rather obviously to increase the likelihood that the slow-simmering set of proxy wars between Iranian-backed forces throughout the region and Israel escalates into a full-scale conflict between Israel and Iran.
Already, Israeli forces are mired in multiple conflicts. It’s not clear to me that they can sustain a war effort of that magnitude.
