Israel Is Stepping Up Its Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank

Even as Israel attacks Iran and Lebanon, it is also intensifying ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The military and settler militias are using a crisis Israel created as cover for its illegal takeover of the West Bank.

By Elias Feroz and Sarit Michaeli, Jacobin

While international attention is focused on the US-Israeli war on Iran, violence and displacement in the West Bank continue to intensify, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza persists. One of the major groups documenting this violence is the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, which has denounced an ongoing genocide against Palestinians.

In an interview with Elias Feroz for Jacobin, Sarit Michaeli, who is B’Tselem’s international outreach director, outlines what she describes as systemic abuses in the West Bank. Their discussion points to a reality of mass detention, oppressive prison conditions, and escalating violence on Palestinian communities across the occupied Palestinian territories.

Elias Feroz
We first tried to conduct this interview online at the beginning of March, but you had to take shelter because of Iranian counterattacks. What is the situation on the ground like now?

Sarit Michaeli
Yes, we had to run in and out of the shelter constantly. But it’s not just the war with Iran — the situation on the ground in the West Bank is also a nightmare, and of course there is Gaza and everything else that is happening.

Elias Feroz
With so much global focus on the United States and Israel’s offensive against Iran, what immediate effects is B’Tselem seeing on its work and on the situation in the West Bank and Gaza?

Sarit Michaeli
Under the cover of war, the cooperation between the military and Israeli settler militias is deepening the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.