Defense Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday told top IDF commanders that they should produce a plan for invading more Palestinian West Bank refugee camps.
This comes after US President Donald Trump on Monday warned Israel to reverse its trajectory to be more supportive of the Palestinian Authority and less aggressive in the area.
Katz contended that the IDF’s taking control of portions of refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur al-Shams since around January 2025 has helped reduce the broader terror and violence from West Bank Palestinians by 80%.
Such statistical comparisons are always difficult because while Palestinian West Bank terror is down in many respects in 2025 as compared to 2023-2024, it is still far higher than it was for many years prior to 2022.
However, the defense minister’s point was that having IDF soldiers stationed semi-permanently in Palestinian areas where terror had festered the most has taken away the ability of terrorists from those areas to plan any larger or centralized violence.
As IDF sources recently said, having soldiers project Israeli power and security in areas where the military and the PA were once afraid to enter has both physically prevented terrorists from gathering in those areas and allowed IDF forces to more quickly stamp out even smaller terror movements nearby as they start to play out.
Trump pushes for Israel to reduce military activity in West Bank
Yet, Trump is pushing for Israel to undertake fewer military actions in the West Bank, to boost the PA’s strength and deployments, to freeze settlement expansion, and to more aggressively crack down on violent Jewish extremist actions against Palestinians.
In addition to his call for placing more soldiers permanently in other Palestinian areas, Katz said the IDF must generally remain proactive in the West Bank in order to prevent any potential future attempted invasion of the settlements by Palestinians similar to Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel.
There has been heavy criticism of the IDF for relying too much on the fence with Gaza and passive patrols of the border for its defense strategy; Katz was therefore suggesting that the IDF continue to confront Palestinian terrorists on their turf before they can get near Israeli civilian areas.