Al-Haq once again issues a stark call for urgent international intervention, as Israel’s settler colonial apartheid regime escalates and further intensifies hostilities sending armoured tanks into the West Bank. On the 32nd day of Israel’s brutal military onslaught on the northern West Bank and the worst atrocities since the Second Intifada, Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered an “intensive operation” in the West Bank to “increase preventative activity against additional attacks in Israeli cities”. The order came in the aftermath of a reported attack on empty buses in Tel Aviv, which later saw the arrest of two Jewish Israelis and a Palestinian, in a case “placed under a gag order by the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court”.
Notwithstanding, Prime Minister Netanyahu staged the issuing of a statement from occupied Tulkarm –– where both Netanyahu and Israel’s occupying forces are unlawfully present –– reiterating “We are . . . leveling entire streets and eliminating terrorists. I have instructed to augment the forces in [the West Bank] and to launch additional operations”. Surrounded by heavily armed IOF, Netanyahu posed for trophy photographs in the family home of forcibly displaced Palestinians in Tulkarm refugee camp. Israel’s Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich stated “[o]ur response” to the bus attack “must be an immediate return to fighting and systematically crushing terrorism until it is destroyed, in Gaza and [the West Bank]. We will make sure that this will be the case.”
Since 21 January 2025, Israeli occupying forces have killed at least 51 Palestinians including seven children, in its so-called ‘Operation Iron Wall’ in the West Bank. IOF “air strikes, armoured bulldozers, controlled detonations, and advanced weaponry” in the West Bank have been described by the United Nations as “a spillover of the war in Gaza”, causing levels of forced displacement not witnessed since the Naksa in 1967. Just days after the ceasefire in Gaza was agreed, Israel forced over 40,000 Palestinians from their homes across the governorates of Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas –– with Israeli forces telling Palestinians they will never be allowed to return. Israel’s Minister of Defence, Israel Katz has instructed the IOF “to prepare for a long stay in the camps that were cleared, for the coming year, and not allow residents to return” setting out Israel’s intention to “continue to clear refugee camps”.
The IOF has levelled entire neighbourhoods; demolished Palestinian homes, destroyed roads and renamed streets with Hebrew signposts; while installing roadblocks, trench fences, and at least 20 new gates at the entrances of towns and villages. Dozens of men and boys have been separated from their families and arbitrarily detained in Israel’s notorious torture detention centres. Local infrastructure has been devastated, with over 3.3 kilometres of sewage networks and 21.4 kilometres of water pipelines being severely damaged in Jenin alone.
Al-Haq warns that Israel’s escalated attacks on the West Bank are part of its settler colonial intentions to annex de jure the territory, erase Palestinian presence and further entrench its discriminatory apartheid policies and practices. Al-Haq reminds Third States of their obligations under the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion, to ensure that Israel brings the illegal occupation to an immediate end, including non-recognition and not aiding Israel’s internationally wrongful acts, by ending all settlement activities, fully evacuating all illegally present settlers from the Palestinian territory, including Israeli government ministers living illegally therein, repealing discriminatory laws altering the demography of Palestine, returning the forcibly displaced Palestinian population and providing full compensation and restitution.
Al-Haq stresses that the failure of State Parties to the International Criminal Court to arrest Netanyahu, while facilitating his transatlantic flights through their sovereign airspace, not only breaches their obligation to cooperate with the International Criminal Court, it is fuelling the continued Israeli aggressions on the protected Palestinian population, by a wanted international fugitive. Al-Haq calls on the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to add crimes pertaining to the settlements, apartheid and genocide to the charges against Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, and expedite other arrest warrants of Israeli military and political leaders –– to end international impunity for Israeli crimes, and the destruction of the Palestinian people.