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The Israeli army is creating a ‘new security reality’ in the northern West Bank to advance colonization

In recent weeks, the Israeli army has launched a renewed military campaign in the northern West Bank. Palestinians say these operations aim to establish a new “security reality” to facilitate the rebuilding of Israeli settlements dismantled in 2005.

Mondoweiss, By Shatha Hanaysha  December 16, 2025 

On December 3, Israeli forces raided a home in the town of Qabatiya, south of Jenin, tearing down a map of Palestine hanging on the wall and confiscating another. The homeowners, a woman and her 11-year-old daughter, were detained for several hours and subjected to on-site field interrogations as Israeli troops vandalised the rest of the house before eventually withdrawing.

Noura Muhammad, the homeowner, told Mondoweiss that Israeli soldiers broke down the front door when they arrived, immediately asking her whether there was any “gold or money” in the house.

She added that after detaining her and her daughter alongside their neighbors, the soldiers interrogated the child, asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” 

“They were attempting to get inside my daughter’s head to understand the future,” Noura told Mondoweiss, explaining that this is a common question that Israeli soldiers ask children to see whether they answer that they want to become resistance fighters. “They’re asking because they’re afraid of that future,” she explains.

In another home, a Palestinian youth with EU citizenship who spoke to Mondoweiss on the condition of anonymity said that Israeli soldiers had detained and interrogated him for hours, while telling him, “Why are you here? Leave the land of Israel.”

These are not isolated incidents. Over the past several weeks, the Israeli army has launched a renewed military campaign in the northern West Bank, first in Tubas and its neighboring villages and then extending to areas such as Jenin, where Israeli soldiers executed two young men in late November. Since then, Israeli forces have repeatedly conducted raids into cities and towns, imposed curfews, invaded homes before converting them into military outposts, forcibly displaced residents, and detained, interrogated, and arrested hundreds of young men.

But what is behind this renewed military campaign, and why is it unfolding only now? While the official Israeli narrative claims that it is “combating terrorism,” locals in Jenin and other parts of the north say it is really about establishing a new reality on the ground of total Israeli dominance. The objective: to create the necessary “security conditions” to allow the unhindered resettlement of areas of Jenin that Israel had evacuated in 2005.

Military escalation as land confiscation

Israel is attempting to create a new status quo in the West Bank as part of its objective of altering the north’s geography. It is doing so by seizing and repurposing Palestinian land to serve colonization and settler infrastructure, and the ongoing military activities in these areas are a part of that effort, locals say…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Israel moves to reinstate evacuated settlements

The colonization of these lands occurs through both military and semi-legal means, according to Amir Daoud, Director of Publishing and Documentation at the Colonization & Wall Resistance Commission. The first stage of the colonization process starts with the seizure of land following the issuing of a military order related to road construction, Daoud says. He explains that such orders aim to establish an Israeli military foothold over the land before eventually handing it over to settler groups, complete with a permanent infrastructure that the army would have built for ostensibly military purposes. In the second stage of this process, Daoud continues, settlement activity gradually yet systematically returns to the area under the army’s control following the passing of amendments to Israeli laws

regulating settlement construction. In the case of the Jenin area, this was achieved through the amendment (and eventual repeal) of the Disengagement Law of 2005, which led in that year to the unilateral Israeli withdrawal of all settlements from Gaza and four settlements from the northern West Bank……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

‘Functional coordination’ between settlers and the army

Daoud explains that the pattern has become clear: settlers build a road illegally, after which the army intervenes by issuing a military order that declares it a closed military zone, thereby granting the road “legal cover.” Later, it becomes a civilian settlement or is used to expand settlement infrastructure…………………..

For this strategy to be effective, there must be a degree of coordination between settlers and the military. Daoud describes this as “functional coordination,” and the way it works is that settlers first impose their presence on the ground by constructing supposedly “unauthorized” outposts, and then the army converts it into a fixed reality by converting it into a closed military zone, only to later be opened up for civilian use.

Daoud also stresses that the ongoing military operations in the north can only be understood as part of the effort to create a “new security reality” that is more conducive to settlement expansion……….

The resulting picture is one in which military and settler activities are proceeding in an integrated manner, Daoud stresses; it is all part of a single project aimed at “reshaping the geography and demography” of the northern West Bank………………………………………………….. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/12/the-israeli-army-is-creating-a-new-security-reality-in-the-northern-west-bank-to-advance-colonization/

December 19, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Education, MIDDLE EAST