ON SUNDAY, Israeli military forces deployed tanks into the northern West Bank refuge camp at Jenin, a move denounced by the Hamas resistance movement as revealing the occupying regime’s dangerous intentions to persist with its genocidal war against the Palestinian people.
It marks the first time that tanks have been sent into the West Bank by Zionist forces since 2002, and represents a massive escalation of the war being waged to drive Palestinians from their land.
In a statement released on Sunday, Hamas said: ‘The Zionist entity’s decision to escalate its acts of aggression in the West Bank, and the forced displacement campaigns that have affected more than 40,000 Palestinians in Jenin, Tulkarm, Nur Shams and al-Far’a refugee camps requires all components of Palestinian society and its resistance factions to form a united front to confront such brutal crimes.’
In a post on social media, the Palestinian foreign ministry said: ‘The ministry of foreign affairs and expatriates warns of the Israeli occupation army’s deployment of heavy tanks around Jenin, viewing it as a prelude to expanding its crimes against Palestinian people – particularly in the northern West Bank and its refugee camps.’
The statement warned: ‘This escalation comes as Israeli “defence” minister Israel Katz boasts that the Israeli occupation army will prevent displaced Palestinians from returning to their homes and has ordered an extended military presence in the area.’
The ministry added that the Israeli occupation forces have already ‘forcibly displaced 40,000 Palestinians from refugee camps’ and that it ‘views these developments – including Katz’s statements, the deployment of tanks, and the deliberate intimidation of defenceless civilians – as a grave escalation in the West Bank and a flagrant attempt to entrench genocide and forced displacement against our unarmed people.’
Along with 40,000 forced out of their homes, around 60 have been killed, and hundreds of homes and businesses demolished since the Zionists embarked on war to ethnically cleanse the occupied West Bank of all Palestinians.
The expansion of Israel’s genocidal campaign in the West Bank started on January 21 within days of the start of phase 1 of the ‘ceasefire’ agreement in Gaza.
The Israeli regime has consistently broken the terms of the agreement covering Gaza including this weekend refusing to release 620 Palestinian prisoners who were supposed to be freed on Saturday under the agreement.
Responding to the refusal by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to adhere to the terms of the ceasefire agreement Hamas accused him of playing ‘dirty games to sabotage and undermine’ the deal.
Hamas official Basem Naim told Al Jazeera that ‘Netanyahu is clearly sending a strong message that he is intentionally sabotaging the deal; he is preparing the atmosphere for returning back to the war.’
This deal was forced on Netanyahu following the total failure of the genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza to crush Hamas and the resistance movement.
Now, with the approval, support and complicity of the US, UK and European governments, Netanyahu is determined to go forward to a war across the whole of Palestine from the West Bank to Gaza to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their land.
Now is the time for the working class in the UK, the US and Europe who have, time and again demonstrated their overwhelming support for Palestine, to take action.
In Britain, the working class must force the TUC to immediately call a general strike to support Palestine by bringing down the pro-Zionist Starmer Labour government and replacing it with a workers’ government that will recognise the state of Palestine.
TUC leaders, who have sat back and done nothing while the Labour government supports and arms Zionism’s genocidal war, must be forced to either call a general strike or be sacked and replaced with a new leadership.
This leadership will be prepared to go forward to a workers’ government that will break with the Israeli regime, recognise the State of Palestine and provide all the necessary financial and military support required to go forward to a free Palestine where all races and religions can live in peace.
