Israel Is Ethnically Cleansing the West Bank, Too

Hanin Majadli

Jul 18, 2025

https://archive.is/jTphZ

All eyes are on the Gaza Strip, and rightly so. An unprecedented war of annihilation is being waged there that hasn't left a stone standing. But precisely because of the blinding light of the flames in Gaza, we need to turn our gaze – or, more accurately, broaden it – to the West Bank. Under the smokescreen of Gaza's destruction, Israel has been working simultaneously on two tracks – a genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

Since October 7, 2023, at least 964 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, most of them by gunfire from either soldiers or settlers. This year, 2025, is already the deadliest year for West Bank Palestinians since the century began.

Jenin, Tulkarm, Nablus and the Mount Hebron region are undergoing a systematic process of displacement and destruction. Homes are being demolished and burned, residents are being beaten, civilian infrastructure is being destroyed and entire communities are being uprooted. There have been hundreds of incidents of violence, theft, and arson. At best, the establishment turns a blind eye and often collaborates.

The war in Gaza has enabled Israel to advance a new political reality of scorched earth in which the space allotted to Palestinians can be shrunk further and further. The system is sophisticated, brutal and effective. In the West Bank, there is quiet ethnic cleansing, and in Gaza, total annihilation. But the goal is the same in both places – to push the Palestinians over the edge until they disappear from the landscape.

I sometimes wonder about Israelis who oppose the government, and ostensibly the occupation as well, but still say their son or daughter is now serving in the army. Don't they feel even a smidgen of shame? Don't they feel even the slightest discomfort when they hand their children over to a system that commits crimes against humanity? Aren't they embarrassed?

At a time when most Israelis still send their children to serve in the system of occupation in both the West Bank and Gaza, a small group of Jewish citizens who have chosen to stray from the usual path is operating within this landscape. It's paltry, yet it inspires hope. They don't don olive uniforms and guard checkpoints; they guard olive groves, springs and Palestinian villages alongside the families who are living under threat, the stolen flocks and the destroyed orchards.

They stand there in the knowledge that their status as Jews enables them to reduce the use of guns. Precisely because they recognize that Jews enjoy more protection under Israel's discriminatory laws – this is what it means to exercise one's privilege – their presence in the West Bank has become a critical, even decisive, factor.

They aren't "bleeding hearts" or "hipsters," and their activities aren't meant to salve their consciences. But even if they were, their direct intervention is welcome in a reality of daily terror.

In a country that talks in the language of genocide and is carrying out a policy of destruction and annihilation, a society that has become hostile to any deviation from the bloodthirsty national consensus and a political climate where advocating mercy is radical and demanding that the mass killings stop is considered hostile propaganda, it's not just Palestinians who are vulnerable to violence. Jews who refuse to cooperate with the regime are as well.

Their very insistence on upholding basic human morality demands inconceivable courage. Consequently, now of all times, when Israel is degenerating into an overt military dictatorship – including for Jews who oppose the regime – we must remember who stood on the right side of history. The people who go out to protect the Palestinians under fire will be the Righteous Among the Nations of the future.