What to know about Palestinian militant groups in the West Bank

Israel says the sweeping incursions are necessary to stave off terrorist attacks on Israelis. Palestinians say the death and destruction caused by the raids fuel further violence.

Here’s what to know.

Which militant groups operate in the West Bank?

Since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power at the head of a far-right government in late 2022, raids in the occupied West Bank have become more frequent and more deadly, driving more young Palestinian men to take up arms, according to residents and analysts.

A constellation of Palestinian militant groups now operate across the West Bank. They exert de facto control over the refugee camps of Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarm in the north, where worsening economic conditions since Oct. 7 have left many people out of work.

These days, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad — both Islamist groups backed by Iran — are the main players. Hamas is weaker in the West Bank than it is in Gaza, which it has ruled since 2007, and focuses on attacking settlers, analysts say.

PIJ is the more popular faction in the territory, fighters and residents say. It leads the Jenin Battalion, an umbrella group that serves as the “cornerstone” of West Bank militancy, Samer Abu Murad, one of its prominent fighters, told The Washington Post last month.

Unaffiliated groups of fighters, such as the Lions’ Den in Nablus, have claimed attacks inside Israel in recent years, though Israel has mostly been successful in stamping them out.

How strong are the groups now?

The militants are loosely organized and poorly trained, analysts say — lacking the discipline, structure and rocket arsenals of Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon.

But they’re nimble and they know the terrain, hiding out in sympathizers’ houses and the warren-like alleys of West Bank refugee camps. They have strong support within their communities — where fallen fighters are celebrated as “martyrs” — and many are willing to die for the cause.

Violent incidents involving West Bank militants spiked by nearly 70 percent between October and June compared with the previous nine months, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), a nonprofit research organization.

Militants and lone-wolf actors have attacked soldiers, police and civilians across the West Bank this year, killing nine members of the security forces and five settlers, according to the United Nations. Palestinian attackers from the West Bank have also killed 10 people inside Israel.

Michael Milshtein, a former head of Palestinian civilian affairs for the Israeli military, said West Bank groups are growing in strength. Hamas’s new West Bank leader, Zaher Jabareen, is pushing an “enormous effort … to inflame the field,” he said.

This month, the group claimed a botched bombing attack in Tel Aviv and vowed to carry out similar operations for as long as the war in Gaza continues. For Israelis, the incident conjured memories of the suicide bombings that terrorized civilians during the Palestinians’ “second intifada,” or uprising, in the early 2000s.

But militants spend most of their time on defensive measures, analysts and fighters say — focused on killing or obstructing Israeli soldiers during raids.

Cooperation between factions has increased since Oct. 7; in June, members of Hamas and PIJ worked together to detonate explosives under a road near Jenin, killing the commander of an Israeli sniper team and wounding 16 soldiers.

A lot of the fighting techniques in Jenin are “really primitive but, at the same time, quite savvy in terms of how they organize ambushes,” according to Tahani Mustafa, senior Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group.

What’s driving West Bank militancy?

Palestinians have engaged in armed resistance against Israel since the state’s founding in 1948, when an estimated 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes.

Many of the displaced settled in refugee camps in the West Bank, the territory Israel captured from Jordan in 1967. Under the U.S.-brokered Oslo accords in 1993, the area was supposed to become part of a Palestinian state. But Israel has deepened its occupation in the decades since and allowed settlements to expand.

During the second intifada, militants carried out waves of attacks against civilian targets in Israel. The Israel Defense Forces responded with large-scale offensives against armed groups and the violence subsided for most of the next two decades.

The situation began to change 2021 when tensions rose in East Jerusalem over the eviction of Palestinian families. The founding of the Jenin Battalion that year ushered in a new generation of Palestinian militants.

In March 2022, after a string of terrorist attacks across Israel, the IDF launched “Operation Break the Wave,” carrying out more than 2,000 raids in just six months and killing more than 200 people, according to ACLED.

Over the following year, the number of active Palestinian armed groups soared. Settler violence helped recruiting — as did dissatisfaction with the Palestinian Authority, widely seen as corrupt and complicit in the occupation.

How has Israel fought the groups?

Major Israeli military incursions have turned parts of the West Bank into war zones.

During raids, military jeeps block exits while IDF bulldozers dig up roads, hunting for improvised explosive devices and destroying pipes and electrical infrastructure in the process. Drones, fighter jets and helicopters circle overhead and take aim at targets below. Civilians are frequently trapped in the middle.

Israeli forces have killed more than 600 Palestinians in the West Bank since Oct. 7, according to the United Nations, a tally that does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The IDF said last month that it had “eliminated hundreds of terrorists” and arrested about 1,850 Hamas operatives in the West Bank since the beginning of October.

Israeli authorities say the incursions are “carried out on the basis of concrete intelligence information” in locations where militants are plotting imminent attacks.

Abu Murad, the PIJ fighter, estimated that Israeli forces have killed 70 to 80 fighters in the Jenin Battalion, but said the group has recruited double that number.

Civilians told The Post the brutality of the incursions has hardened residents and pushed more of them to pick up arms.

West Bank raids, including the one that began Wednesday, reduce the risk of terrorist attacks for a short period, Milshtein said, but only a deeper solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can solve Israel’s security crisis.

“If nothing will be promoted in the political level, we will find ourselves after this successful operation … in a few weeks or months once again in the same situation,” he said.