For the IDF, there are no innocents on the West Bank
JVL Introduction
There is nothing new in this report. We know it only too well.
But Gideon Levy is undeterred. While it is continues to happen he will continue to report it, inveigh against it. Maybe one day the world will listen?
“While Israel was grieving for its dead and hostage (after October 7) the settlers were quick to discern a golden opportunity. With their sharp senses they realized that this was the moment they had been praying for all those years: a big war motivated by a desire for vengeance, under the cover of which one may do anything.”
And they are doing anything and everything with the West Bank has been under an insane siege since then, with random army raids, pogroms, and torture centres where people starve to death.
As Levy points out,
“All this,has happened with almost no Palestinian terror activity in the West Bank. All this has been happening for almost three years, without an end in sight. Perhaps it’s time to say, enough?”
This article was originally published by Haaretz on Sun 28 Jun 2026. Read the original here.
First, there were no innocents in Gaza. Now, the IDF Is applying the same policy in the West Bank
October 7, which enabled a genocide in Gaza, loosened all restraints in the West Bank as well. Now the verdict that there are no innocent civilians has been applied to the Palestinians of the West Bank, too
October 7 turned the West Bank upside down.
As in Israel, nothing is the same as it used to be before October 7 between Jenin and Hebron. It’s an occupation with new rules, crueller than ever. Not a single shot was fired by Palestinians in the West Bank on October 7, and not on most of the many days that followed, yet they are being punished by Israel as they haven’t been since the Nakba.
The verdict that there are no innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip has been applied to the inhabitants of the West Bank as well, which is why it is permissible and necessary to abuse them more than ever. The West Bank, on its part, is responding with total helplessness, similar to what happened to its residents in 1967.
Since October 7, Israel has adopted a policy of relentless and increasing harassment, despite the long period that has elapsed since then. The West Bank’s punishment is shaping up as a life term in prison. Its inhabitants have behaved perfectly as far as Israel is concerned, submissive, bleeding and leaderless. They haven’t expressed any significant opposition to what is being done to their brethren in Gaza, but this hasn’t helped them. Their sin was and remains that they are Palestinians. With or without terrorism, they are always at fault.
October 7, which enabled a genocide in Gaza, loosened all restraints in the West Bank as well. While Israel was grieving for its dead and hostages, the settlers were quick to discern a golden opportunity. With their sharp senses they realized that this was the moment they had been praying for all those years: a big war motivated by a desire for vengeance, under the cover of which one may do anything.
The revolution in the West Bank took place on several tracks, well-planned and coordinated, suffocating its residents from every possible direction. It included taking draconian steps that have not been reversed since then and which are likely destined to remain in place forever. Evil burst forth from all directions, and Israel, to the west of the Green Line, averted its gaze.
The West Bank has been hemmed in almost hermetically. Hundreds of yellow gates that had been installed at the entrance to every Palestinian town and village were closed and locked. There is no community in the West Bank today that is not under at least a partial siege. The main entrances to cities such as Nablus, Hebron and Ramallah were locked, as were the entrances to villages, and residents are forced to drive along dirt roads. There are no more normal roads for Palestinians.
This insane siege continues to this day. It has nothing to do with security. Last week, the Israel Defense Forces’ legal adviser in charge of the West Bank remembered to note that the IDF was illegally restricting Palestinians’ freedom of movement (as Haaretz reporter Yaniv Kubovich reported on Thursday). It’s nice that he remembered, but his statement won’t change a thing. The settlers want roads Palestinians cannot travel on and that’s what they’ll get.
The second calamity to befall the Palestinians was the total prohibition on working in Israel, which means a total prohibition on making a living for almost three years.
Army raids have also become more frequent and random than before. Then came the pogroms. And then the local settler “security squads,” a deceptive name for settler militias. Every local security coordinator has become a general and every settler a king. Some 150 violent outposts have been established, taking over hundreds of thousands of acres, more than any other “official” settlement program.
And then came National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, turning prisons incarcerating thousands of prisoners and detainees – some of them innocent, most of whom are political prisoners, many others held without trial – into horrific torture centers. People are starving to death there.
The army also relaxed its rules of engagement. Since October 7, more than one thousand Palestinians have been killed in the placid West Bank, including more than 200 children. Very few of them posed any danger to anyone, if at all. Soldiers who had served in the Gaza Strip, their jealous friends and deranged and bloodthirsty settlers all embraced mass and indiscriminate killing as a modus operandi in the West Bank too.
All this has happened with almost no Palestinian terror activity in the West Bank. All this has been happening for almost three years, without an end in sight. Perhaps it’s time to say, enough?
Pure evil!
Yoav Gallant called the indigenous population ‘human animals’. Oh that stench of colonial fascist superiority.
We are a family of archeology and Paleantology. My own discipline is Philology. Cuneiform being my speciality. I do not regard myself ‘religious’ but I recognise there are things I cannot explain fully academically.
I have read and studied the Qumran scrolls widely known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
There are 3 things in the Damascus scrolls – Wealth, Fornication and Defilement of the Sanctuary…. it goes on to say – (rough translated) Belial is loose upon Israel and causing them to fall/stumble. It refers to the Prophet Isaiah to whom God spoke with -”Fear and a Pit and a Snare are upon you, O inhabitants of the Land’.
It is also worth quoting form The Community Rule (1QS) to give an understanding who are considered the people of God – ‘Those born of Truth spring from a fountain of light, but those born of falsehood spring from a source of darkness. All the children of righteousness are ruled by the Prince of Light and walk in the ways of light, but all the children of falsehood are ruled by the Angel of Darkness and walk in the ways of darkness’.
I know many zionist slick to quote the mention of the Mernepehth stele which translates – ‘Israel is wasted, bare of seed’.The Damascus rule (3CD – ‘the children of Jacob strayed and were punished….and HE cut off their males in the wilderness….through the first members of the Convenant sinned and were delivered up to the sword..’ This should give an idea what modern Israel assumes is/are the ‘chosen ones’.
The Damascus Rule (1CD) -…’they justified the wicked and condemned the just, and they transgressed the Covenant and violated the Precept. They bandied together the life of the righteous…’ – Sounds about right regarding all those that justify and watch the evil this ‘Israel’ does. Yup the just are condemned as it is written.
Chapeau Gideon Levy! – and Haaretz for publishing him.
Sharing a +972 article in which Israeli economic researcher and BDS activist Shir Hever argues Israel’s “zombie economy” – based on massive military expenditure, foreign credit and political denial – is leading directly to the IDF behaving as private militias used to rather than as a disciplined modern army does. Please see https://www.972mag.com/israel-genocide-economy-gaza-war/ .
The Dec 2025 article makes “human sense”, I feel. It gives an excellent overview of the interactions between Israel’s finances, politics and its hard-pressed and now despairing people.