A War Without Headlines: Israel’s Shock-and-Awe Campaign in the West Bank
The most violent period of Israeli aggression in the West Bank since the Second Intifada has been largely overlooked, in part because of the sheer scale and horror of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but it’s consequences could prove just as devastating.

BY Ramzy BAROUD

Shock and awe. The phrase is apt in describing what Israel has done in the occupied West Bank almost immediately following the events of October 7, 2023, and the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein defines “shock and awe” not merely as a military tactic, but as a political and economic strategy that exploits moments of collective trauma—whether caused by war, natural disaster, or economic collapse—to impose radical policies that would otherwise be resisted. According to Klein, societies in a state of shock are rendered disoriented and vulnerable, allowing those in power to push through sweeping transformations while opposition is fragmented or overwhelmed.

Though the policy is often discussed in the context of US foreign policy—from Iraq to Haiti—Israel has employed shock-and-awe tactics with greater frequency, consistency, and refinement. Unlike the US, which has applied the doctrine episodically across distant theaters, Israel has used it continuously against a captive population living under its direct military control.

Indeed, the Israeli version of shock and awe has long been a default policy for suppressing Palestinians. It has been applied across decades in the occupied Palestinian territory and extended to neighboring Arab countries whenever it suited Israeli strategic objectives. 

What is underway, therefore, is a race against time. Israel is working to consolidate what it hopes will become an irreversible new reality on the ground.

In Lebanon, this approach became known as the Dahiya Doctrine, named after the Dahiya neighborhood in Beirut that was systematically destroyed by Israel during its 2006 war on Lebanon. The doctrine advocates the use of disproportionate force against civilian areas, the deliberate targeting of infrastructure, and the transformation of entire neighborhoods into rubble in order to deter resistance through collective punishment.

Gaza has been the epicenter of Israel’s application of this tactic. In the years preceding the genocide, Israeli officials increasingly framed their assaults on Gaza as limited, “managed” wars designed to periodically weaken Palestinian resistance. 

These operations were rationalized through the concept of “mowing the lawn,” a phrase used by Israeli military strategists to describe the periodic use of overwhelming violence to “reestablish deterrence.” The logic was that Gaza could not be politically resolved, only indefinitely managed through recurrent destruction.

What unfolded in the West Bank shortly after the start of the Gaza genocide followed a strikingly similar pattern.

Beginning in October 2023, Israel launched an unprecedented campaign of violence across the West Bank. This included large-scale military raids in cities and refugee camps, the routine use of airstrikes—previously rare in the West Bank—the widespread deployment of armored vehicles, and a surge in settler violence carried out with the backing or direct participation of the Israeli army.

The death toll rose sharply, with hundreds of Palestinians killed in a matter of months, including children. Entire refugee camps, such as Jenin, Nur Shams, and Tulkarm, were subjected to systematic destruction: Roads were torn up, homes demolished, water and electricity networks destroyed, and medical access severely restricted. Israeli forces repeatedly laid siege to communities, preventing the movement of ambulances, journalists, and humanitarian workers.

At the same time, Israel accelerated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities, particularly in Area C. Dozens of Bedouin and rural villages were forcibly emptied through a combination of military orders, settler attacks, home demolitions, and the denial of access to land and water. Families were driven out through sustained terror designed to make daily life impossible.

Yet the most violent period of Israeli aggression in the West Bank since the Second Intifada (2000-2005) has been largely overlooked, in part because of the sheer scale and horror of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The annihilation of Gaza has rendered the violence in the West Bank seemingly secondary in the global imagination, despite the fact that its long-term consequences may prove just as devastating.

At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist coalition succeeded in presenting themselves to the world as reckless, unrestrained, and ideologically driven—willing and able to expand the cycle of destruction far beyond Gaza, into the West Bank and across Israel’s borders into neighboring Arab countries. This performance of extremism functioned as a political strategy.

The consequences are now unmistakable. Large areas of the West Bank lie in ruins. Entire communities have been shattered, their social and physical fabric deliberately dismantled. According to the United NationsRelief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East, more than 12,000 Palestinian children remain displaced, increasingly suggesting a displacement that may become permanent rather than temporary.

History, however, offers a critical lesson. The Palestinian struggle against Israeli settler colonialism has repeatedly demonstrated that Palestinians do not remain passive indefinitely. Despite the paralysis and fragmentation of their political leadership, Palestinian society has consistently regenerated its capacity for resistance.

Israel understands this reality as well. It knows that shock is not infinite, that fear eventually gives way to defiance, and that once the immediate trauma begins to fade, Palestinians will reorganize and push back against imposed conditions of domination.

What is underway, therefore, is a race against time. Israel is working to consolidate what it hopes will become an irreversible new reality on the ground—one that enables formal annexation, normalizes permanent military rule, and completes the ethnic cleansing of large segments of the Palestinian population.

For this reason, a deeper and more sustained understanding of current events in the West Bank is essential. Without confronting this reality directly, Israeli plans will proceed largely unchallenged. To expose, resist, and ultimately defeat these designs is not only a matter of political analysis but a moral imperative inseparable from supporting the Palestinian people in restoring their dignity and achieving their long-denied freedom.

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israel-shock-and-awe-west-bank

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Sawsan Madina

Australia’s new hate speech laws are landing in a climate of deep mistrust and unequal public empathy. When grief, protest and solidarity are treated as threats, social cohesion becomes a hollow promise, Sawsan Madina writes.

Over the past two years, a disturbing hierarchy has become painfully clear. We, Arab Australians, have learnt that not all lives are equal, not all pain is equal and not all grief is equal. We have learnt that the hurt feelings of certain others are much more important than the gash in our hearts. We have learnt that we should not voice our pain. We have learnt that our peaceful protests against the horrors Israel is visiting on the Palestinians offend certain others. We have learnt that empathy and solidarity with some victims of extreme violence are, to certain others, dangerous acts of hate. And now we learn that we must suppress our pain and keep silent about unspeakable crimes lest we be thrown in jail.

Over the past two years, we have learnt to invert every statement by a politician or a mainstream journalist, searching in vain for even-handedness and equal treatment. Sadly, all we found was consistent double standards and blatant hypocrisy.

Could you imagine our politicians granting us the role of monitoring the ABC for anti-Palestinian bias? Could you imagine the Nakba being taught in our schools?

When we voice our pain, politicians say overseas events must not be brought here. But when overseas events distress certain others, they voice their pain freely and politicians fall over each other to comfort them. I have watched our politicians ignore our trauma over the slaughter of tens of thousands and the systematic attempts to erase a people, and I have learnt that our victims are the wrong type of victim. And now we are told that displays of our anguish are offensive, and are to be taken off the streets and confined to the privacy of our homes. The latter, for the time being.

Politicians say our chants and images incite violence. So our calls for freedom must be silenced and our placards with pictures of frozen babies in tattered tents must be put away. They cause discomfort and hurt to certain members of the community. What about our hurt over the occupation and the frozen babies? What about the feelings of those caged and abused under the occupation? What about the agony of the mothers whose babies froze to death? On this the politicians are silent.

Students of history know that repression never leads to security and selective compassion never leads to a cohesive society. People are not stupid. They know when a politician dares not speak of the huge elephant in the room. They know when a politician waffles on in response to a simple, straightforward question. They know when a politician replies ‘‘I won’t get into hypotheticals…" to a question which is anything but hypothetical. They know when a discussion begs a question and the journalist lets the question go unasked.

People know. And they weep and they seethe in silence.

Until they stop treating the various sections of the Australian community differently, and as long as empathy and sympathy continue to be doled out selectively, our political leaders have no right to spout platitudes about unity and social cohesion. Already, these words, once significant, are being hollowed out.

I will end with Jepke Goudsmit’s hauntingly beautiful Lament. Her words are balsam on an open wound.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/01/reflections-of-an-arab-australian-on-the-new-hate-speech-laws/

READ FROM TOP.

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST — PEACE SEEKER.