The Israeli military on Wednesday launched the largest, deadliest attack in the West Bank this year, killing at least 16 people over the course of several days, including a top militia commander. Violence in the West Bank — perpetrated by the military, Israeli settlers and Palestinian fighters — has steadily increased over the past 10 months.

Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, at least 660 Palestinians and 15 Israelis have been killed in the West Bank, according to the United Nations. That number is smaller than the more than 40,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza in the past 10 months, but it is still a reminder of the depth of the ongoing violence in the West Bank.

The Israeli military has carried out several raids on Palestinian refugee camps since the war in Gaza began. The latest operation began early Wednesday morning, with air and ground forces targeting Tulkarm in the northwest, Jenin on the territory’s northern border and the Far’a refugee camp in the territory’s east. The Shin Bet, an Israeli security service affiliated with the country’s intelligence services, and the Israel Border Police were also involved in the raids, which were apparently aimed at what Israeli officials called “terrorist infrastructure.”

Israel claims that Mohamed Jaber — a commander of a group affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad — and Hamas commander Wassem Hazem were both killed, along with other militants, during the raid. Israeli officials have accused Hazem of plotting, along with other militia members, attacks in the West Bank. Like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad helped carry out the Oct. 7 attacks; both groups also claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv earlier this month that wounded one Israeli.

“If you think about it from this kind of tactical perspective, suicide bombers are probably coming out of the West Bank more than Gaza, probably because Gaza is already a war zone,” Raphael Cohen, director of the strategy and doctrine program at RAND Project Air Force, told Vox, adding that Hamas officials have called for more suicide bombings on Israeli soil. That may be part of what motivated Israel’s recent operation.

There is also a growing number of Palestinians taking up arms in the West Bank in general, some out of anger and disgust over the brutal destruction of Gaza, but also because military incursions and attacks by Jewish settlers in the West Bank have become increasingly violent and terrorizing. Saif Aqel, a youth leader with the political group Fatah, told the Washington Post that Jaber had been radicalized by Israel’s repeated incursions into the West Bank, saying, “The environment he lived in made him that way.”

As part of the operation this week, the Israeli army has blocked and destroyed roads and blocked entrances to hospitals, witnesses said, and also cut off electricity, water, mobile phone and internet services. The Israeli army has denied blocking access to medical facilities.

The West Bank lies to the east of Israel, bordering Jordan and the western shore of the Dead Sea. Before 1967, Jordan controlled the region; Israel conquered the area and kept it under military occupation until the Oslo Accords of 1993, when it was divided into three “areas” ostensibly under Palestinian Authority control. However, Jewish Israeli colonization of the area accelerated, and the Israeli military also arrived to protect them. Now the Palestinian Authority, which is the nominal government, has little actual control over the West Bank.

Gaza, Jerusalem and the West Bank are recognized as occupied territory under international law, and therefore Israel is obligated to protect the people living there. Israel denies that it is occupying Palestinian territories, but last month the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel is occupying Palestinian territories and must end its occupation immediately.

Under the order, which is enforceable by the UN Security Council, “Israel must withdraw its forces from all parts of the Occupied Territories, including the Gaza Strip, and expel all settlers from the West Bank, including illegally annexed East Jerusalem,” Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns, said in a statement. Israel’s allies on the Security Council, including the United States, have given no indication that they intend to enforce the court’s decision.

This has allowed Israel to continue the war in Gaza, trapping Palestinians living in the West Bank in a cycle of violence: since October 7, there have been at least five major Israeli military operations in the West Bank, and settler violence has also increased.

These settlers are Israelis, often affiliated with the country’s right wing and often heavily armed “to the teeth,” according to Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer specializing in international human rights law.

They have expanded their settlements further and further into land that the United Nations has said is off-limits to Israeli control. Israel calls them “illegal” settlements, but does not stop people from building outposts or evicting Palestinians from their homes and land. Some settlers have also moved closer to cities. Settlements are also often subsidized by the Israeli government, which provides them with higher-quality infrastructure, roads, water and schools in their settlements than what the government provides to Palestinian villages.

Some Palestinians have taken up arms against these settlers, and sanctioned Israeli military operations have also emboldened vigilantes and new anti-Israel militant groups. Israel has responded by sending more troops, creating what seems an inevitable cycle.

“The cities (in the West Bank) should be free of army presence, but the army has been conducting these incursions, so these (militant) groups emerged in response,” Joost Hiltermann, director of the Middle East program at the International Crisis Group, told Vox. “So then the army responds to these groups, and you will see an escalation.”

The city of Jenin and the refugee camp on its outskirts – two sites of fighting this week – are often targeted because, as Buttu explained, these sites and all of Gaza are the main sites of Palestinian resistance in the occupied territories.

Overall, there is little sign that the militants or Israel will change their strategies in the West Bank. That has some countries, notably France and Britain, worried that the rising violence could turn the West Bank into a second Gaza.