West Bank Palestinians fear Gaza-style clearance in Jenin; Israeli foreign minister in Europe for talks

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called for a constructive dialogue but braced for criticism from some European countries as he arrived for talks on Monday in Brussels.

Germany’s likely next chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday he had invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit and would find a way for him to do so without being arrested under a warrant by the International Criminal Court. 

West Bank Palestinians fear Gaza-style clearance

Israeli bulldozers have demolished large areas of the now virtually empty Jenin refugee camp and appear to be carving wide roadways through its once-crowded warren of alleyways, echoing tactics already employed in Gaza as troops prepare for a long-term stay.

At least 40,000 Palestinians have left their homes in Jenin and the nearby city of Tulkarm in the northern West Bank since Israel began its operation just a day after reaching a ceasefire agreement in Gaza after 15 months of war.

“Jenin is a repeat of what happened in Jabalia,” said Basheer Matahen, spokesperson for the Jenin municipality, referring to the refugee camp in northern Gaza that was cleared out by the Israeli army after weeks of bitter fighting. “The camp has become uninhabitable.”

He said at least 12 bulldozers were at work demolishing houses and infrastructure in the camp, once a crowded township that housed descendants of Palestinians who fled their homes or were driven out in the 1948 war in what Palestinians call the “Nakba” or catastrophe at the start of the state of Israel.

He said army engineering teams could be seen making preparations for a long-term stay, bringing water tanks and generators to a special area of almost one acre in size.

No comment was immediately available from the Israeli military but on Sunday, Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered troops to prepare for “a prolonged stay”, saying the camps had been cleared “for the coming year” and residents would not be allowed to return.

The month-long operation in the northern West Bank has been one of the biggest seen since the Second Intifada uprising by Palestinians more than 20 years ago, involving several brigades of Israeli troops backed by drones, helicopters, and, for the first time in decades, heavy battle tanks.

“There is a broad and ongoing evacuation of the population, mainly in the two refugee camps, Nur Shams, near Tulkarm and Jenin,” said Michael Milshtein, a former military intelligence official who heads the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies.

“I don’t know what the broad strategy is but there’s no doubt at all that we didn’t see such a step in the past.”

Israel launched the operation, saying it intended to take on Iranian-backed militant groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad that have been firmly implanted in the refugee camps for decades, despite repeated Israeli attempts to root them out.

But as the weeks have gone on, Palestinians have said the real intention appears to be a large-scale, permanent displacement of the population by destroying homes and making it impossible for them to stay.

“Israel wants to erase the camps and the memory of the camps, morally and financially, they want to erase the name of refugees from the memory of the people,” said 85-year-old Hassan al-Katib, who lived in the Jenin camp with 20 children and grandchildren before abandoning his house and all his possessions during the Israeli operation.

Already, Israel has campaigned to undermine Unwra, the main Palestinian relief agency, banning it from its former headquarters in East Jerusalem and ordering it to stop operations in Jenin.

“We don’t know what is the intention of the state of Israel. We know there’s a lot of displacement out of the camps," said Unrwa spokesperson Juliette Touma, adding that refugees enjoyed protected status regardless of their physical location.

The camps, permanent symbols of the unresolved status of 5.9 Palestinian refugees, have been a constant target for Israel, which says the refugee issue has hindered any resolution of the decades-long conflict.

But it has always held back from clearing them permanently. On Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar denied that the operation in the West Bank had any wider purpose than combating militant groups.

“It’s military operations taking place there against terrorists, and no other objectives but that,” he told reporters in Brussels where he met European Union officials in the EU-Israel Association Council.

But many Palestinians see an echo of US President Donald Trump’s call for Palestinians to be moved out of Gaza to make way for a US property development project, a call that was endorsed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the operation in the northern West Bank appeared to be repeating tactics used in Gaza, where Israeli troops systematically displaced thousands of Palestinians as they moved through the enclave.

“We demand that the US administration force the occupation state to immediately stop the aggression it is waging on the cities of the West Bank,” he said.

Israeli hardliners inside and outside the government have called repeatedly for Israel to annex the West Bank, a kidney-shaped area around 100km long that Palestinians see as the core of a future independent state, along with Gaza.

But pressure has been tempered by fears that outright annexation could sink prospects of building economic and security ties with Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, and face a veto by Israel’s main ally, the US.

However, hardliners have been heartened by the large number of strongly pro-Israel figures in the new US administration and by Trump himself, who said earlier this month that he would announce his position on the West Bank within weeks.

EU and Israel resume dialogue with focus on Gaza’s future

Israeli Foreign Minister Saar called for a constructive dialogue but braced for criticism from some European countries as he arrived for talks on Monday in Brussels.

The Israeli minister was meeting senior European officials, reviving a dialogue with the European Union as the bloc considers a role in the reconstruction of Gaza following last month’s fragile ceasefire deal.

“I’m looking for a constructive dialogue, an open and honest one, an

“We know how to face criticism,” he said, adding “It’s okay as long as criticism is not connected to delegitimisation, demonisation, or double standards ... but we are ready to discuss everything with an open mind.”

Saar was to co-chair a meeting of the EU-Israel Association Council with EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas in the first such session since 2022. Talks were set to focus on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Israeli-Palestinian relations and changing regional dynamics.

The Israeli foreign minister said that within the EU “there are very friendly countries, there are less friendly countries”, but that Monday’s meeting showed a willingness to renew normal relations.

The Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, and Israel’s response, exposed sharp divisions within the EU. While all members condemned the Hamas attacks, some staunchly defended Israel’s war in Gaza and others condemned Israel’s military campaign and its toll on civilians.

In February 2024, the leaders of Spain and Ireland sent a letter to the European Commission asking for a review of whether Israel was complying with its human rights obligations under the 2000 EU-Israel Association Agreement, which provides the basis for political and economic cooperation between the two sides.

But ahead of Monday’s meeting, the bloc’s 27 member countries negotiated a compromise position that praises areas of cooperation with Israel while also raising concerns.

The war started when Hamas-led militants launched a cross-border attack on Israeli communities that killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, according to Israel.

The Israeli retaliatory offensive has killed at least 48,000 people, say Palestinian health authorities, leaving some hundreds of thousands of people in makeshift shelters and dependent on aid trucks.

Incoming Chancellor Merz invites Netanyahu to visit Germany 

Germany’s likely next chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday he had invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit and would find a way for him to do so without being arrested under a warrant by the International Criminal Court.

“I think it is a completely absurd idea that an Israeli prime minister cannot visit the Federal Republic of Germany,” Merz said at a press conference, a day after his conservatives won the largest share of the vote in a national election.

Merz said he had told Netanyahu by phone “that we would find ways and means for him to visit Germany and leave again without being arrested”.

Netanyahu’s office said the Israeli leader had congratulated Merz. It also said Merz had told Netanyahu he would invite him to Germany “in defiance of the scandalous International Criminal Court (ICC) decision to label the prime minister a war criminal”.

The Hague-based ICC has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence minister as well as Hamas officials for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza.

All 27 EU countries including Germany are signatories of the founding treaty of the court, the only permanent international tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity, which requires members to arrest its suspects on their territory.

The ICC said that states had a legal obligation to enforce its decisions, and any concerns they may have should be addressed with the court in a timely and efficient manner.

Israel tells troops to ready for ‘extended’ stay in West Bank

Israel sent tanks into the occupied West Bank for the first time in more than 20 years on Sunday as it ordered the military to prepare for an “extended stay” to fight Palestinian militant groups in the area’s refugee camps.

The move came as a fragile ceasefire in Gaza hit new hurdles after Netanyahu ordered a stop to the release of Palestinian prisoners and detainees due to be freed under the truce, in retaliation for public displays of Israeli hostages handed over in exchange in Gaza.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have already been displaced from their homes in the West Bank over the past month as the military has moved into the crowded refugee camps of flashpoint cities like Jenin and Tulkarm, cracking down on Iranian-backed groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Syrian leader to visit Jordan on Wednesday

Syrian transitional leader Ahmed al-Sharaa would visit Jordan on Wednesday and meet King Abdullah to discuss boosting ties between the neighbouring countries, said two Jordanian officials.

The visit is the new interim leader’s third foreign trip along with Saudi Arabia and Turkey since he came to power after leading a decisive rebel offensive which ousted long-time Iran-backed Bashar al Assad.

Sharaa is expected to hold wide-ranging talks over border security and ways of expanding commercial ties.

Assad’s relationships with most of the Arab world and his neighbours were strained throughout the nearly 14-year Syrian war.

Sharaa has pledged to stamp out rampant drug smuggling along the two countries’ borders which proliferated during the rule of toppled Assad and whom Jordan blamed on pro-Iranian militias that held sway in southern Syria.

Jordan, which hosted the first international conference on Syria a week after Assad was forced to flee, wants to see a peaceful political transition in Syria, fearing a return of chaos and instability along its borders.

Officials have said they were ready to help Syria rebuild and promised to help it ease its acute power shortages by supplying it with electricity and gas.

The end of Assad’s rule has upended the geopolitics of the Middle East, dealing a major blow to his ally Iran and clearing the way for other states to build new ties with a country at the crossroads of the region. DM

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