With younger Resistance gen. in West Bank, IOF gambling with new front

The Israeli invasion of northern areas in the occupied West Bank has intensified the risks and dangers facing the occupation’s military, as it grapples with the new demands of a prolonged and multifront war it is currently engaged in, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing several Israeli officials and analysts.

With nearly 11 months of continuous war in Gaza and mounting tensions with Hezbollah in the North, the strain on “Israel’s” army is reaching critical levels, one Israeli military expert said.

“We’ve been fighting this multifront war for 11 months,” Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said on Thursday. “It’s not something we’re hoping that keeps going for a long time, but we’re ready to do it for a long time.”

However, analysts have warned that the reality is somewhere else.

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The Israeli military relies heavily on part-time reservist soldiers, who say they are exhausted from “Israel’s” longest war in decades, the WSJ report said.

20 Palestinians martyred so far

The ongoing invasion, which includes airforce participation, mainly targets Jenin, al-Far’a, and Nur Shams refugee camps, in Jenin, Tubas, and Tulkarm respectively. Around 20 Palestinians have been martyred so far, including several Resistance commanders.

It involves hundreds of Israeli soldiers, including troops pulled from training courses and reserves to serve as reinforcements, according to Shlomo Mofaz, a former senior official in Israeli military intelligence.

Read more: Condemnations of Israeli aggression on West Bank continue

Palestinian Resistance groups have been conducting operations at a high consistent rate since the Israeli invasion began. Fighters are carrying out complex ambushes, which include heavy gunfire and the detonation of powerful explosive devices, resulting in confirmed casualties, including both killed and wounded, among Israeli forces.

“The army today is exhausted. At the end of the day, we have a very limited pool of reservists who are carrying the weight of the fighting. It’s the same people all the time,” said Guy Aviad, a researcher on the Palestinian Resistance group Hamas and a former Israeli military officer as cited by the newspaper.

“The army needs to know how to be spread across several arenas,” said Mofaz. “It has little choice.”

A younger generation of Resistance fighters

Even before the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza was launched last October, the occupation’s crimes against the occupied West Bank were exponentially increasing.

More than 670 Palestinians, including 150 children, have been killed in the occupied West Bank and al-Quds since October 7, a CNN report revealed recently, noting that this represents the highest death toll in 15 years.

Read more: Israeli settlement expansion ‘alarming’, violates int’l law: UN office

On July 19, an advisory opinion issued by the ICJ found that the Israeli occupation of al-Quds and the West Bank since 1967 is illegal and has resulted in settlement policies that breach international law.

Additionally, the Israeli government has approved plans for 24,300 new Israeli housing units in the occupied West Bank from one year through to the end of October 2023, which was the highest record since UN monitoring began in 2017.

A younger generation of Resistance fighters has emerged in recent years amid growing Israeli incursions of the cities and camps of the occupied West Bank and the killing and detainment of Palestinians. Violent attacks by Israeli settlers have also been on the rise – supported by the government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and protected by the Israeli occupation army.

“We’ve seen Palestinians in the West Bank having to go on the defensive. They don’t have anything else. It is a matter of personal security at this point, whether it’s against extreme IDF soldiers or settlers,” said Tahani Mustafa, a senior Palestine analyst at International Crisis Group.