Palestinian Fighters in West Bank Seek to Emulate Hamas in Gaza

The alleys are cast in permanent semidarkness, covered by black nylon tarpaulins to hide the Palestinian fighters there from Israeli drones overhead. Green Hamas flags and banners commemorating “martyrs” hang from the buildings, many badly damaged during Israeli raids and airstrikes to try to tamp down a growing militancy in the territory, fueled by the war in Gaza.

This is not Gaza or a traditional Hamas stronghold. It is a refugee camp in Tulkarm, a town in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the relatively moderate Palestinian faction of Fatah had long held sway.

I recently met a local commander of these young militants, Muhammad Jaber, 25, in one of those dusty, shattered alleyways. One of Israel’s most wanted men, he and other fighters like him say they have switched allegiances from the relatively moderate Fatah faction, which dominates the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to more radical groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

Asked what lesson he had taken from the war in Gaza, Mr. Jaber paused for a moment to think.

“Patience,” he said. “And strength. And courage.”

Refugee camps in the northern West Bank, like the one in Tulkarm, have been hotbeds of militancy for years, well before the war in Gaza, as fighters pushed back against ever-increasing Israeli settlement activity and the failure of the peace process to produce a Palestinian state. After Oct. 7, Hamas urged Palestinians to join its uprising against Israel, a call that seems to have been heeded by some in these camps.

Militants like Mr. Jaber want to push the Israelis out of the West Bank, which Israel occupied after the 1967 war, and some, like Hamas, want to push the Israelis out of the region entirely.