The West Bank, Once Quiet, Is Now Flooded With Iran-Backed Terror Groups
29th August 2024
Iran has spent the last decade quietly smuggling advanced weapons into the West Bank to arm more than two dozen militant factions responsible for a spate of recent terror attacks, experts say, culminating on Wednesday in a massive Israeli military operation to root out Tehran’s proxies.
Regional analysts have been warning for some time that a weakened Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank has set the stage for Iran-backed groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) to usurp control over the area and use it as a launching pad for Oct. 7-style attacks in densely populated areas near Jerusalem. Now, Tehran is funding, arming, and directing a constellation of more than 20 militant groups that see the West Bank as a pathway to terror in central Israel, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank.
“Arms have flooded the West Bank, and terrorist organizations that used to be confined to some areas in the northern Gaza Strip have now flourished,” Joe Truzman, an FDD research analyst who focuses on Palestinian militant groups, told the Washington Free Beacon. “Now, there are more than two dozen branches established by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in the West Bank,” a sharp uptick from previous years.