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.
While Israel has been conducting near-daily raids across the West Bank, operations that receive little media attention, Iran’s terror proxies continue to grow more emboldened. Terror groups in the West Bank, including Hamas and PIJ, have carried out more than 600 attacks since Oct. 7, setting the stage for Israel’s early Wednesday military campaign.
In the largest West Bank operation in a decade, Israeli forces stormed Jenin and Tulkarm, two key militant strongholds, killing at least 10 Hamas militants and arresting thousands of suspected terrorists.
The operation remains ongoing, a reflection of Tehran’s inroads across the West Bank, according to Truzman.
Iran-backed militant groups have already "established a joint operations room in Jenin, in the northern West Bank, to respond to IDF incursions," according to FDD’s terrorism tracker. "This fusion center enables terrorists from different (and sometimes competing) factions to fight the IDF together."
These organizations are armed with a host of advanced weaponry, provided mainly by Iran, including claymore mines, powerful explosive devices, grenade launchers, plastic explosives, anti-tank missiles, RPG launchers, fragmentation bombs, and automatic rifles, according to the think tank.
The influx of this weaponry has not only allowed Tehran’s proxies to grow their numbers, establishing bases across the West Bank, but also carry out more sophisticated attacks against the Israeli military and nearby civilians.
"These groups," Truzman said, "operate in towns and cities across the territory with the aim of attacking [Israeli] troops and carrying out attacks with weapons smuggled into the territory by Iran."
With Tehran’s backing, terrorist forces across the West Bank "are undergoing a transformation, becoming increasingly organized and well-equipped," Truzman said. "Despite Israel’s ongoing efforts to control the violence through almost daily raids on these groups, it is evident that a more effective strategy is necessary to counter the growing influence of Iranian-backed terrorist groups."
While Israel’s fighting has been primarily concentrated in the Gaza Strip and along the northern border with Hezbollah, the Jewish state has also conducted several operations to eliminate senior West Bank terror leaders responsible for weapons smuggling. This includes Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades senior commander Khalil al-Maqdah and his brother Mounir al-Maqdah, both of whom were instrumental in the weapons smuggling plots.
Iran’s focus on the West Bank began around 2014 and greatly intensified throughout 2020 and 2021.
In an August 2022 interview, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander Hossein Salami said, "the West Bank can be armed in the same way, and this process is happening."
A year later, Salami revealed progress had been made, stating that "invisible hands have armed the West Bank, and you [now] see modern automatic rifles and automatic weapons in the hands of the Palestinians."
In turn, "armed groups increasingly clashed with Israeli troops, and shooting attacks against IDF posts and Jewish communities became prevalent" in recent years, according to a June FDD analysis.
Israeli forces have sought to quell the rising violence in recent months, but Tehran’s proxies show no sign of backing down.
Weapons are flowing into the West Bank from Turkey, with Israel foiling a December plot to smuggle thousands of weapons across the border. The arms destined for the West Bank city of Nablus included automatic weapons and rifle parts.
In March, Israel revealed that it had disrupted a plot by IRGC operatives to smuggle another cache of advanced weapons into the West Bank. The operation was run by the IRGC’s Unit 400, an elite security branch, indicating that arming West Bank terrorists remains a top priority for Tehran amid the ongoing war.