West Bank resistance bolstered by smuggled Iranian weapons: Report

News Desk - The Cradle

Violence has significantly spiked in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, as Israeli troops have killed hundreds of Palestinians and detained thousands more

Iran has been conducting a covert smuggling operation for at least two years to provide the Palestinian resistance in the occupied West 

Bank with guns and ammunition to confront the occupying Israeli forces, according to a recent investigation by the New York Times (NYT).

The weapons Iran has been sending to the West Bank mainly consist of handguns and assault rifles, while the operation relies on the assistance of resistance factions, local gangs, and Bedouin smugglers.

Officials from Iran, the US, and Israel who spoke with NYT say that operatives from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force have established two routes that reach the West Bank. The first sees the weapons cross from Iraq toward Syria and into Jordan, where Bedouins take the shipment and transfer them to “criminal gangs” in Israel.

“One of the Iranian officials said increased security since [7 October] by both Israel and Jordan, has raised the risk of getting caught, especially for Bedouins and Arab-Israelis who play critical roles for their ability to cross borders,” the NYT reports.

In April 2023, Jordanian lawmaker Imad al-Adwan was arrested in the kingdom for transporting weapons in his car while traveling to the occupied West Bank.

The other route reportedly used by the IRGC sees the weapons skip Jordan and instead go from Syria into Lebanon before reaching Israel. However, this route is described as “more challenging” as cross-border fighting between the Israeli army and Hezbollah “is more heavily patrolled by both the Israeli military and UN peacekeepers.”

US and Israeli officials who spoke with the NYT said that the Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus last week was aimed at disrupting their operations, adding that Division 4000 and Division 18840 of the IRGC are involved in the smuggling operation.

In 2014, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called for the arming of the West Bank “as the only solution to confront this brutal entity.”

“The solution is total armed resistance against this regime … Therefore, it is my belief that the West Bank should be armed just like Gaza. Anyone who cares about the fate of Palestine and who is capable of doing something should provide arms to the people [of the West Bank] too,” Khamenei said at the time.

“There was a great focus in order for the West Bank to move from a state of coexistence and calm, to a state of resistance that we see today, and of course all of this is under the directives of Ali Khamenei … During our last meeting with him in Tehran, he renewed the call for that and for the development of resistance in the West Bank,” the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Ziyad al-Nakhalah, said during a speech in Tehran earlier this month.

“It would not have been easy for the Palestinian people to withstand this battle had it not been for Iran’s continuous and consistent support at all political, military, and security levels,” he added.

On Wednesday, a Lebanese man accused of serving as a middleman tasked with transferring funds from the IRGC to the Palestinian resistance in Gaza was found murdered in Lebanon, in an apparent Mossad operation.