Child deaths surge amid ‘Gazafication' of West Bank, report says

The Guardian

10-03-2025

Israel has brought the military tactics of its war in Gaza to the occupied West Bank, where Palestinians face mass forced displacements, a surge in airstrikes, and a sharp rise in attacks on children and other civilians, a Palestinian-Israeli rights group has said.
B'tselem has detailed the impact of Israel's most intense operations in the area for at least two decades in a report that describes what it calls a 'Gazafication' of Israel's occupation there.
Israeli airstrikes in the West Bank since 7 October 2023, the beginning of the Gaza war triggered by Hamas's attack on southern Israel, have killed more Palestinians than during the violence of the second intifada of the 2000s with children killed at an unprecedented rate during the territory's occupation, according to data collected by B'tselem over more than two decades.
Military operations launched in three West Bank refugee camps in January also forced 40,000 people from their homes, the largest displacement since Israel's occupation began in 1967. Israel's defence minister, Israel Katz, said troops would remain 'for the coming year', meaning residents would not be allowed back in that time.
Israel says its operations target militant Palestinian groups. The refugee camps are historically home to fighters who consider themselves armed resistance.
'Israel's complete disregard for international law in the war in Gaza is now being replicated to the West Bank,' said B'Tselem's executive director, Yuli Novak.
'Its activity there, as yet on a smaller scale than in Gaza, is already causing indiscriminate and disproportionate killing and destruction.'
The parents of a boy shot when he went to buy bread, and the uncle of two children, aged five and eight, who were killed in an airstrike are among relatives of six child victims who told the Guardian about how attacks documented by B'tselem have shattered their lives.
Rigd Gasser, father of 14-year-old Ahmad Rashid Jazar, said his son was hit in the chest by a single bullet on 19 January while leaving a shop in his home village of Sebastia, where he had been on an errand to buy bread.
Gasser was in a cafe when he heard the gunshots and rushed out when he heard calls for help. 'I got closer and recognised my son. I knew him by his clothes, his body was all covered in blood,' he said.
'Since the beginning of the war, they [Israeli forces] have been coming here every day. They launch raids in the morning and evening.'
Israel sent in a surge of troops, including tanks, to the West Bank after the Gaza ceasefire began in January. Military operations in the three refugee camps – Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams – came on top of what had been Israel's deadliest bombing campaign in the occupied territory. In the 17 months since 7 October 2023, B'tselem documented64 airstrikes that killed 261 Palestinians, including both militant and civilian casualties and at least 41 minors.
That is more than three times the total toll from airstrikes during the second intifada, which lasted more than four years, when B'tselem recorded 78 deaths including 10 children between 2000 and the end of 2004.
The group's report described the increased use of airstrikes as part of a 'broader conceptual and operational shift' in Israeli military tactics which put civilians at greater risk. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to questions.
Muhammad Khreiwish's niece and nephew were among the youngest victims. Sham Abu Zahara, eight, and Karam Abu Zahara, five, were killed with both their parents and another uncle on 3 October 2024, when an airstrike targeted a cafe in Tulkarm.
The cafe was on the ground floor of an apartment building, and the Abu Zahara family lived next door. Khreiwish was arriving to visit his sister Saja when an explosion threw him off his bike. As people raced away from the site, he ran in to look for the family.
Inside he was met by a horrific scene of destruction in their bloodied apartment. 'I found pieces of bodies that I couldn't recognise, and then I saw my niece,' he said. He called for help but she had been killed immediately. All he could do was wrap her shattered body and take it to the hospital morgue.
The strike killed 18 people and at least six of them, or a third of the total, were civilians, B'tselem investigators found.
The Abu Zahara siblings were two of 180 children killed by Israeli forces over the 17 months since the Gaza war began, the deadliest period in the West Bank of Israel's nearly 60-year-long occupation according to B'tselem.
Until 2023 the most dangerous time for Palestinian children in the West Bank was the second intifada, when B'tselem documented 246 children killed in 63 months – a rate of killing half current levels from all Israeli operations.
B'tselem said looser rules of engagement were one reason for the rise in child deaths. The Israeli military has expanded its 'open fire' rules, with soldiers now allowed to shoot to kill targets including anyone they suspect is 'messing with the ground', Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
Reda Basharat, eight, and Hamza Basharat, 10, were killed just outside their house by a drone strike on 8 January.
The children couldn't go school that morning because Israeli forces had launched a raid on near their village, Tammun, and so roads were closed, Hamza's mother, Eman Basharat, said.
Hamza, born after a years-long IVF struggle, was a cheerful child who normally loved studying and was angry about missing an English test scheduled for that day.
Because their own area was quiet, the boys were sitting outside with their 23-year-old cousin Adam, who was drinking a morning coffee when they were targeted. Eman raced out to look for her son as soon as she heard the explosion.
She found Hamza injured and struggling to breathe. 'I held his body. I cleaned the blood from his face and I recited the shahada (the Muslim profession of faith). He died in my arms, he didn't look like he was in pain.'
Israeli soldiers arrived soon after and took away all three bodies for several hours, before returning the children to their grieving families without explanation.
'When I think about what happened to my son and remember the images of their bodies, and I see what is happening in Gaza on TV, I felt suddenly that they are doing the same thing,' Eman Basharat said.
It is a comparison that has also been made by Israeli officials. The West Bank campaign was a based on 'a lesson from the activity that took place in Gaza and other places', Katz told the Knesset, Israel's parliament. 'We need to clean up a place and not allow terrorism to return to it.'
Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has said Palestinians in the West Bank should know 'If they continue with terrorism … their fate will be like Gaza'. The 'Tulkarm and Jenin (refugee camps) will look like Jabaliya and Shujayah'.
A IDF spokesperson has previously denied that soldiers forced Palestinians from their homes, saying camp residents who chose to leave to escape fighting were 'allowed' to do so.
Dozens of homes have already demolished. Similarities with larger scale displacement and destruction in Gaza were clear to Palestinian families crowded into mosques, wedding halls and the homes of relatives where they had sought refuge.
The Guardian spoke to three families who said they were ordered to leave their homes either directly by Israeli forces or through messages broadcast on loudspeakers.
Fatma Shab, 63, is living in the women's area of wedding hall, separated from her severely ill husband, Yusuf Shab who is 68. Permanently connected to oxygen, he cannot walk and had to be evacuated by ambulance.
As Israeli forces advanced they fled from their home in Nur Shams refugee camp to the house of their son, which has since been demolished. Soldiers broke into the building and told them to leave immediately, with no time to pack.
So they moved again to a nearby Kafr al-Labad town where they have found temporary, basic shelter in al-Diah wedding hall. They only have two bathrooms for 14 people, and just drapes separating crowded sleeping areas.
Even so, the families sheltering there are terrified they will have to leave after Ramadan, as it will be needed again for weddings once the holy month is finished.
'People here are kind, but in my home I am more comfortable,' Shab said. 'Even just being able to go to my closet to choose some clothes to wear. Now I'm just wearing what I have on, there are no choices.'
She doesn't know if she will see the house she built with her husband for their retirement ever again. 'It's just a short distance away, but I can't go home,' she said. 'In Gaza they were forced out and killed, and here now it's the same.'