West Bank violence ‘about to explode’

When the white van pulled up next to the Palestinian Customs police office in Tubas, a city in the West Bank controlled by Israel, Abdel Nasser Sarhan had no reason to suspect.

According to Abdel Nasser’s colleagues, the van driver got out and greeted him in Arabic.

It was early morning. A 24-year-old police officer in uniform had just arrived on duty.

CCTV footage shows him walking out of the security area, his gun at his side.

A few seconds later, a man wearing jeans and a black t-shirt came towards the white van, with Israeli soldiers in uniform behind him.

He raised his gun and shot Abdel Nasser dead.

Soon, the street is filled with Israeli soldiers. They took out Abdel Nasser’s gun and, as his colleagues tried to remove his body, continued shooting – all caught on CCTV.

When we visited Tubas the next morning, at the end of July, we found a temporary memorial of stones and wilting flowers on the ground where Abdel Nasser fell.

The guard post and adjacent walls were riddled with bullet holes, each with a yellow mark. Spots of blood were disappearing and staining the floor and the door.

In a statement issued on the day of the incident, the Israeli army said that the shooting occurred during an operation to arrest two wanted men.

Abdel Nasser’s colleagues in Tubas said the arrest took place in a nearby house.

The army said the soldiers “encountered armed terrorists” and that “a Palestinian Authority transport officer was killed during the shootout”.

From the CCTV video evidence, this last statement is clearly false.

An Israeli security official contacted by the BBC two weeks later said the incident was “one of hundreds, if not thousands of special operations planned and executed precisely”.

This one was being reviewed, he said, “because it didn’t go as planned”.

It seems clear that this was an operation gone wrong.

No one has suggested that Abdel Nasser or the transport office were the target of this project.

This young security guard seems to have had the misfortune to come across an Israeli operation, where he was shot and killed.

But for Abdel Nasser’s colleagues in the outgoing police, this sad incident is part of a wider pattern of behavior that makes it more difficult than ever for the Palestinian Authority – which is supposed to be responsible for security in areas not under the control of the Israeli military – to do its job. .

“This sounds a warning bell, especially for us in the security department,” said Lt Ibrahim Ayyash, spokesman for the Palestine Customs Police.

“How can we implement law and order and provide services to the people and protect them when you are disrupting my work and killing my officials?”

He said that Customs officials have been reluctant to pull over suspicious vehicles, for fear of tripping up Israeli soldiers working undercover.

“Now it’s up to you, as the tax officer, to decide whether to park the car or not,” he said.

“If you stop it and it has Special Forces [inside]they can kill you.”

As fans of the Israeli TV show Fauda will know, underground operations were a regular feature of life in the West Bank long before the war in Gaza began last October.

Recent evidence suggests that the frequency of such operations has increased, with many cases of CCTV footage showing Israeli units, dressed as civilians, and even medics, snatching wanted Palestinians from city streets and hospital beds.

But such underground operations are part of a much bigger picture.

As all eyes are on Gaza, another war is breaking out in the West Bank, as Israeli forces attack armed groups they say are being manipulated by Iran.

“The situation on the ground is very difficult,” said an Israeli security official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“You could say it’s close to exploding.”

The emergence of a new generation of local armed groups, mainly in refugee camps in the north and West Bank, began around 2021, with the first group from Jenin.

But the war in Gaza has fanned the flames of rebellion in other cities, from Tulkarem to Qalqilya and, more recently, Tubas.

The tightening of security in Israel, the actions of violent groups of Jewish settlers and the belief that the Palestinian Authority is powerless to protect them have all added to the tense situation.

“They are very frustrated with Israel, they are very frustrated with the Palestinian Authority and they are looking for a way out of this frustration,” said an Israeli security official.

The PA Department of Health says that more than 600 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since last October. An estimated 10,000 have been imprisoned, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Society.

At least 17 Israelis, including 12 security personnel, were also killed in the West Bank, according to UN figures.

Some veteran observers fear that the wars could lead to an uprising, or intifada.

“If there is an intifada, this is a very big problem,” General Israel Ziv, former head of the IDF’s Operations Division, told me.

“Militarily, we handle things better or worse. But when it comes to intifada, it’s a completely different story. And it may go beyond that. “

With the Israeli military still focused on the war in Gaza and the escalating conflict with Hezbollah along the northern border, General Ziv said there was a reluctance to see the danger much closer to home.

“It is a big problem that can blow up in our face in a critical area, [close] in the centers of the people of Israel,” he said.

Meanwhile, in the Balata refugee camp, on the outskirts of Nablus, Abdel Nasser’s family is still grieving.

They have viewed CCTV footage from Tubas and drawn their own conclusions about the actions of the Israeli army.

“He came to kill, to kill,” said Abdel Nasser’s uncle, Ismail Mohammed Sarhan.

Abdel Nasser’s father, Mohannad, cannot fully understand the loss of his son.

How was he, I asked him.

“He’s ambitious, he’s kind, he’s always smiling,” she said, unable to hold back tears.