Only weeks ago the Israeli state’s genocidal war upon Gaza crossed the horrifying threshold of 40 thousand killed. Now they have opened a new chapter in this grim era of their continued onslaught of occupied Palestine.

After ten months of intensified daily raids and terrorist attacks both by settlers and the military following the October 7 attack, the West Bank is now under the largest assault it has seen since the end of the Second Intifada in 2005. This is being carried out under the pretense of targeting Hamas militants, both through ground invasion and drone bombardment.

The offensive is directed at the northern cities of Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas. In the process, the IDF have announced they killed three Hamas operatives, including Wassem Hazem, the “head of Hamas in Jenin.” These three hits were extracted at an appalling human cost to the area’s inhabitants who have lived under Israeli military occupation for almost 60 years.

At the time of writing, at least 20 civilians have been killed in the assault. IDF forces have laid siege to Jenin, utterly demolishing 70% of its roads and infrastructure and cutting off 80% of the city’s water supply, including the entire Jenin refugee camp. Mass communities have been expelled from their homes, expanding the region’s already catastrophic refugee crisis. All this is in addition to the almost 700 Palestinians who have been killed and 5.5 thousand who have been injured in the West Bank since the current war on the occupied territories began. During the same time more than 9,300 have been arrested and detained without trial, a 100% increase from the amount held in prison prior to the war.

Fears have risen that the state will carry out mass expulsions of Palestinians, expand Israeli settlements, and in their words, “thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state.” This would be in the context of an Israeli government in crisis, with political contradictions between the main opposition parties, the ruling Likud party, and religious far right, Netanyahu facing corruption charges and waves of enraged mass mobilizations.

On Sunday night, hundreds of thousands of Israelis went out on the street and a general strike was called on Monday against the Netanyahu regime’s complete failure to return the Israeli hostages in Gaza, after six of those hostages were found dead. It has never been more obvious that this war is not in the interest of any ordinary working class people in the region and the safe retrieval of the hostages has never been the priority of Israeli capitalism, which only seeks to take maximum advantage to perpetuate its domination and expropriation.

Socialist Alternative and our international organization, the ISA, calls unequivocally for an immediate end to this unjust, calamitous war on the beleaguered, scattered and decimated Palestinian people; an immediate swap deal for the release of all Israeli hostages still in Gaza and Palestinian political prisoners held in Israel; an immediate end to the siege and occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem; and the immediate recognition of the Palestinian right of self-determination.

Escalating Tensions Throughout the Region

Israel’s insatiable warmaking has spread to Lebanon, Iran, Syria and Yemen, where they have carried out targeted assassinations and air strikes throughout the past year. This has further stoked the ire of Hezballah and the Houthis, and most dangerously, drawn the direct fire of Iranian imperialism, the specter haunting myriad other powers in the region and the link in the chain of the Chinese-Russian imperialist sphere in the Middle East.

This is the broad environment of heightening tension in which the Israeli state’s yearlong aggression in Gaza has now extended to the West Bank, using the same methods of drone bombings, civilian expulsions, and concerted destruction of infrastructure, albeit on a smaller scale.

Consequently the shallow negotiations for a ceasefire and the release of the hostages have stalled, undercut by Israel’s military expansion and assassination of Hamas’s chief negotiator last month. Documents revealed in August show that Netanyahu has actively sabotaged negotiations while Israel continues its program of heightening and spreading carnage on Palestine and across the Middle East.

What Is the Role of the Palestinian Authority?

Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party government in the West Bank has long played a collaborationist role with the occupation, as they made abundantly clear with their repression of the teachers’ strike last year and violent crackdown of protests in the advent of the war. They have also overseen a massive economic crisis.

This role of facilitator to the occupation has further enabled the rise of nationalistic and Islamist factions dominating the popular resistance movement. These sections do not point toward the necessary mass working class struggle and are ultimately serving as forces of reaction, playing into the hands of the military state.

What is needed to put a stop to imperialist war in the Middle East is independent, international working class organization, using militant tactics such as general strikes and mass direct actions, united on its own program for peace, prosperity, and socialism.