Ramona Wadi
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz proved Israel can commit genocide and get away with it when he advocated for the same tactics to be applied against Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. “The Jenin refugee camp must be evacuated of its citizens, and it must be handled similarly to the Gaza Strip,” Katz stated in a meeting with the Yesha Council leaders.
Under cover of the genocide in Gaza, Israel has not forgotten the occupied West Bank. Since 7 October, the Israeli military raided Jenin refugee camp over 70 times, killing 142 Palestinians. The kill toll in the occupied West Bank since 7 October has reached over 600, while over 5,400 were injured.
Katz’s statement came mere days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the occupied West Bank “part of our homeland” in an interview with TIME magazine. “We intend to stay there,” he added. Netanyahu’s comments were tied to a question regarding Bezalel Smotrich’s approval of unauthorised settlement outposts. “We’re not going to do ethnic cleansing of Jews anymore than we’re going to do ethnic cleansing of Arabs,” the Israeli prime minister concluded.
Of course Israel will not ethnically cleanse its settler society, which it depends upon to survive, but the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has been ongoing since 1948.Whether through genocide or forced displacement, for the occupied West Bank to be populated with settlers means that Palestinians will be forced out. And Israeli politicians are increasingly closing the gap between Gaza and the occupied West Bank in terms of tactics, while Katz is now openly advocating for genocide in Jenin.
The international community’s comfort in reinforcing the divide between both territories worked in Israel’s favour, and possibly that was the intention all along. Only humanitarian aid was a common factor, albeit applied differently.
In Gaza, it was to reinforce the political isolation of Hamas, while in the occupied West Bank, donors opted for illusory state building even as Israel’s intent to thwart it was evident. Now the facades are crumbling as the genocide in Gaza rages on without repercussions for Israel, and what better time to announce further annihilation of Palestinians, starting from Jenin? While Israel’s foreign minister builds upon the ongoing raids on the refugee camp, Netanyahu lays claims to the territory.
The international community meanwhile, tries to salvage its humanitarian paradigm, to no avail, because Israel determines its relevance.
Israel biding its time to act is not a strategy the international community will be keen to discuss. But it needs to be stated that international complicity in allowing the Zionist colonial project to usurp Palestine set the Palestinians up for genocide. Not even the illusion created by the international community through the humanitarian paradigm can hold its ground if Israel decides Jenin is the first stop after Gaza. While world leaders talk about Gaza in all the wrong ways, the occupied West Bank is mired in a silence that refuses to hear of Palestinians being killed in a territory allegedly marked for state building and prosperity.
(Ramona Wadi is an independent researcher, freelance journalist, book reviewer and blogger. Her writing covers a range of themes in relation to Palestine, Chile and Latin America.)
