Since January 20, the Israeli army has been unofficially imposing curfews on the Palestinian villages of al-Funduk and Jinsafut. Armored vehicles of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) patrol its deserted streets. At the exits of other cities and villages in the West Bank, long queues of vehicles are formed, waiting for hours to pass the checks at the Israeli checkpoints.

The IDF’s official justification for this crackdown is the shootings and stabbings that have occurred in recent weeks in the West Bank and Tel Aviv, and the detonations of explosive devices hidden in the streets that have killed and injured Israeli civilians and soldiers.

However, the real cause was the riots caused by Israeli settlerswho were angered by the return of Palestinian prisoners released as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. The villages of al-Funduk and Jinsafut were the main targets of the settlers, who set fire to cars and buildings on 20 January. Security forces were slow to intervene and repel the attacking settlers.

The next day, two Israeli brigades, under the cover of drones and helicopters, arrived in Jenin, the main Palestinian city in the northern West Bank. Jenin has been in conflict for a long time, but in recent months Palestinian Authority security forces have fought hard to restore order. Now the Israel Defense Forces, which have attacked Jenin twice in the past 20 months, are back, in yet another show of force. Israeli security officials deny that the operation was aimed at appeasing the settlers. They argue that the operation was decided on the basis of information that Hamas is trying to open a new front on the West Bank.

“We are determined both to fight Hamas wherever it attempts to operate and to prevent violence by Israeli civilians,” insists a senior Israeli officer. However, these two “quests” cannot be so easily combined. Many Israeli soldiers are settlers, some of whom have not participated in the riots.

Also, many IDF bases in the West Bank are located next to settler settlements and their main mission is to protect their residents. And although the army claims it is cracking down on settler violence, the IDF’s political chief, Defense Minister Israel Katz, announced a few days ago that he had released people suspected of organizing attacks against Palestinians.

Both the settlers and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza and also has a presence in the West Bank, want to incite violence there. For now, Hamas wishes to maintain the Gaza ceasefire agreement, as it provides it with a much-needed respite from the IDF’s incessant attacks, which began in October 2023. At the same time, however, it is called upon to prove that it remains worth fighting for. And he’s using the West Bank to do it.

Meanwhile, the settler movement has made no secret of its desire to rebuild its communities in Gaza, which Israel dismantled in 2005. To achieve this, it wants the war on Israel to continue indefinitely, to perpetuate and Israeli control of the Palestinian enclave. An ignition on the West Bank would help.

Escalating violence in the region could undermine the next round of talks to resume the truce. It could also trigger Hamas attacks against IDF forces in Gaza.

OR exerting political pressure on the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu could also help. One of the leaders of the settler movement is Bezalel Smotrich, an important ally in Netanyahu’s governing coalition. If Israel does not resume the war in Gaza within six weeks, it has vowed to topple the government.

All this raises the question of whether the truce will be able to be maintained beyond the current first phase. Much of that will depend on Donald Trump. This is because, in the last weeks before assuming the presidency of the USA, Trump exerted strong pressure on Netanyahu to accept the deal with Hamas. But in his first hours in the White House he lifted sanctions the Biden administration had imposed on some Israeli settlers.

Meanwhile, some of the people Trump has placed in key diplomatic positions, such as new Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the next US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, have previously supported Israel’s settlement moves in the West Bank. Also, during her Senate hearing on January 21, Trump’s pick for the next US ambassador to the United Nations, Elise Stefanik, reiterated her position on Israel’s “biblical right to the entire West Bank.”

However, the impression of senior Israeli officials and diplomats working with the Americans is that Mr. Trump wants to prioritize building a regional alliancein which Israel and Saudi Arabia will have a central role. Ending the war in Gaza is a key condition of any such plan.

This puts Mr. Netanyahu in a difficult political position. Itamar Ben-Gvir, a former minister of national security and leader of one of the two far-right parties in Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, has already quit the government in protest over the Gaza deal. If Mr. Smotrich also carried out his threats, Netanyahu’s coalition will lose the majority in the Knesset. The opposition has promised to support him until the end of the agreed ceasefire period, but ultimately such a development would mean early elections.

Netanyahu is also facing growing calls to take responsibility for the Israeli leadership’s failed response to the prediction of the bloody October 2023 attack by Hamas that sparked the war. On January 21, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herchi Halevi announced his resignation, claiming responsibility for the massacre. The man who was leading Israel, however, still refuses to do so. An explosion of violence in the West Bank would not help him to postpone the fateful day who will be called to account.