2022 set to be deadliest year for Palestinians in West Bank

A Palestinian protester chants slogans by tires set aflame outside the Gaza City headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), during a demonstration demanding that their homes which were destroyed in the 2014 conflict with Israel be rebuilt. Photo by Mahmud HAMS / AFP.

The UN’s Middle East envoy has said 2022 is on course to be the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the organisation started tracking fatalities in 2005, and called for immediate action to calm “an explosive situation”.

Tor Wennesland told the UN Security Council that “mounting hopelessness, anger and tension have once again erupted into a deadly cycle of violence that is increasingly difficult to contain”, and “too many people, overwhelmingly Palestinian, have been killed and injured”.

The special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process said the downward spiral in the West Bank and current volatile situation stem from decades of violence, the prolonged absence of negotiations, and the failure to resolve key issues fuelling the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Mr Wennesland said his message to Palestinian officials and factions, Israeli authorities and the international community in recent weeks has been clear: “The immediate priority is to work to calm the situation and reverse the negative trends on the ground,” but the goal must be “to empower and strengthen the Palestinian Authority and build towards a return to a political process”.

A Palestinian protester chants slogans by tires set aflame by the Gaza City headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) on September 19, 2022, during a demonstration demanding that their homes which were destroyed in the 2014 conflict with Israel be rebuilt. Photo by MAHMUD HAMS / AFP

In the past month, the UN envoy said, 32 Palestinians including six children have been killed by Israeli security forces and 311 injured during demonstrations, clashes, search-and-arrest operations, attacks and alleged attacks against Israelis.

Two Israeli forces personnel have been killed and 25 Israeli civilians injured by Palestinians during shooting and ramming attacks, clashes, the throwing of stones and petrol bombs and other incidents during the same period, he added.

Mr Wennesland said the month saw “a spike in fatal violence” that has 2022 on track to be the deadliest in the West Bank.

More than 125 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli-Palestinian fighting in the West Bank and east Jerusalem this year. 

The fighting has surged since a series of Palestinian attacks killed 19 people in Israel in the spring.

The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants, but stone-throwing youths protesting against incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.

Israeli arrest raids in the West Bank pose a serious challenge to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority. He relies on security co-operation with Israel, particularly against his Islamic militant rivals, to remain in power. At the same time, this co-operation is deeply unpopular among Palestinians who oppose Israel’s open-ended occupation, now in its 56th year.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war and has built more than 130 settlements there, many of which resemble small towns, with apartment blocks, shopping centres and industrial zones.

The Palestinians want the West Bank to form the main part of their future state, and most countries view the settlements as a violation of international law.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, delivered an impassioned address to the Security Council on Friday, saying: “Our people, our children, our youth, are being killed, and they will not die in vain.

Human rights campaigners from the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Amnesty International Ireland with members of the Oireachtas outside Leinster House, Dublin where they called for the United Nations General Assembly to investigate and end to dismantle Israel’s system of Apartheid Photo by: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos

“What happens next is your responsibility. We knocked on every door, searched for any avenue leading to freedom and dignity, justice and redress, shared peace and security.” He added that, 75 years after the British partition of Palestine, its people are still waiting “for their turn to be free”, and accused Israel of “trying to destroy the state of Palestine”.

Mr Mansour challenged the Security Council to protect and promote the two-state solution, and raised a series of questions alluding to the possibility of further bloodshed and a decades-long fight for freedom if necessary, and possible legal action at the International Court of Justice on Israel’s occupation.

“Either we live side by side, or I fear we might die side by side,” he said of Israel. “Help us live. Our people will not disappear, they will not renege their national identity, they will not accept subjugation. The Palestinian people will be free.” Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, countered that the message in Mr Abbas’s speech to world leaders last month and Mr Mansour’s statement on Friday were the same: “It is a message of false victimhood, lies of oppression and fictions of aggression.

“Israel is in the midst of a terror wave. Since the start of this year alone, there have been over 4,000 Palestinian terror attacks perpetrated against Israelis — car ramming, rock throwing, fire bombings, stabbing, shootings, rockets, and many other acts of Palestinian violence have been become a fact of life for millions of Israelis.” He added that the Palestinian Authority “may play victim here at the council” but on the streets of the West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus they “praise terrorists”.