What we know about the targets of Israeli raids in the West Bank

Daniel Byman:

Thus, in the past Israel has been primarily dependent on the Palestinian Authority, the government or, I should say, the de facto government in the West Bank, which has run it jointly with Israel.

Moreover, their security forces have been weakened. Israel has ignored them over time, so Israeli officials are deciding to take action on their own because they believe the Palestinian security forces will not do so.

But to do that, these groups are usually very entrenched in the West Bank, in neighborhoods that are certainly hostile to Israel, and Israeli forces are afraid of IEDs and snipers, so they usually go in with huge armored bulldozers that detonate the IEDs before they can hurt people. They are basically sniper-proof.

But at the same time, they are incredibly destructive. They protect Israeli forces, but they destroy Palestinian neighborhoods. And the much broader Israeli efforts are ways to control more territory, to go after weapons caches, to have a better chance of arresting or killing individuals.

But it is a much more destructive and intrusive approach.