Tensions across the occupied West Bank have spiked sharply after Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz issued a stark warning: Israel will launch an all-out military campaign in the territory if any militant operations planned by groups affiliated with the Palestinian Authority (PA) are uncovered.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Katz outlined the scope of the potential operation, confirming that Israeli forces would target senior PA leadership, the organization’s formal security apparatuses, and what Israel classifies as “terrorist infrastructure” throughout the occupied West Bank. He added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already issued formal orders to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to finalize preparations for the campaign, should the regional security situation deteriorate further.
Katz emphasized that Israeli leadership would not tolerate a return to the sustained uprising that marked the Second Intifada, a period of widespread conflict between 2000 and 2005 that claimed thousands of lives, the majority of them Palestinian alongside hundreds of Israeli civilians and security personnel. “We will not allow a return to the reality of an intifada lasting for years, as was the case in the past,” he stated. “We will not allow a return to the reality of October 7 – we will ensure the security of Israeli residents and communities everywhere.”
Historical context frames Katz’s warning: during the Second Intifada, multiple factions tied to the PA, including the al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades linked to the PA’s ruling Fatah party, participated in armed operations against Israeli targets. In the decades following the intifada, the PA has faced widespread domestic criticism for its long-standing security coordination with Israeli intelligence and military forces, including actions to suppress Palestinian armed groups and political activists in the West Bank.
Katz noted that any large-scale offensive against PA-linked targets in the West Bank would mirror the “security zone” model Israel has already implemented in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon, a framework that creates heavily restricted military-controlled areas along Israel’s border.
The warning comes amid a fresh wave of deadly violence in the West Bank on the same day. The IDF confirmed it shot and killed a Palestinian man who carried out a stabbing attack against an Israeli settler in the northern West Bank. Israel’s national emergency service, Magen David Adom, reported that the injured settler, a man in his 20s, was transported to a nearby hospital in moderate to serious condition.
Separately, the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that Jewish settlers fatally shot a second Palestinian man in Hajeh village, located east of the West Bank city of Qalqilya. The ministry also verified earlier reports that both Israeli forces and settlers opened fire on Palestinian residents in the village, leaving multiple other people wounded.
This ongoing escalation comes amid already heightened Israeli-Palestinian friction across the West Bank, with a sharp rise in settler violence and military raids since the October 7 attacks that triggered the current ongoing Gaza conflict.