The IDF has undergone a drone revolution in the West Bank.
From the end of the Second Intifada in 2005 until the summer of 2023, there were drone or airstrikes of any kind in the West Bank.
That changed around the time of the IDF’s large Jenin operation in the summer of 2023, when the IDF started to deploy drones to attack Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank once more.
But it radically changed with the start of the ongoing war, with drones and other air support now becoming a regular part of IDF operations against West Bank terrorists.
Recently, The Jerusalem Post interviewed Judea and Samaria Chief Targeting Officer Col. “M” and Air Force Drone Commander Maj. “N,” 35, about the revolution in drone use, which they have been at the forefront of in the area.
M told the Post, “We work hand in hand with the different security forces, focused on Judea and Samaria as opposed to Gaza and Lebanon. There are also military altercations in the West Bank.”
“We connect the different staff groups so that our drone staff feels like they are with the combat fighters in the alleys of the West Bank,” said the IDF’s West Bank targeting chief.
He added, “We get precise information. Maybe one hour before, the drone and the targeting team carried out an operation in the North or the South, and now they are shifting to the West Bank, so we need to give them all of the information that they need about the incriminated targets as well as where our forces are maneuvering. This has had great results.”
“There are lots of activities in the West Bank, especially on the borderline with the Palestinian areas. But the area is an inseparable part of the drone team mission – we can act anywhere and everywhere,” he added.
At the brigade level, “we carry out operations even in the Tulkarm refugee camp. We do not hide from any refugee camp. Also, recently we acted in Nur Shams. There was a cell which was attacking our forces,” and the IDF attacked it.
“After an attack by our forces on the terrorists, they moved their wounded and bodies to a hospital. We learned about this from the air and followed them to the hospital. They had smuggled their weapons into the hospital, a lot of weapons. This gave us the feeling that they were using the local population” to shield them, said M.
Weapons transfer to terror groups
Further, he said that various enemies (Israel has repeatedly publicly accused Iran) are “trying to send the terror groups weapons. We are combating this phenomenon [and its impact on] terror attacks in the West Bank.”
N SAID he is a reservist drone operator commander in the Air Force.
“I am in the Air Force’s targeting command cell. We are maneuvering seven days a week, 24 hours a day, to keep the pressure on West Bank terror groups. Israel’s citizens do not realize how many operations we carry out – we are involved in all of the fronts,” said N.
These interviews took place by telephone and to underline the complexity of the operations, although the Post spoke to these officers at the same time, they were not in the same places themselves, given that M generally resides in various West Bank offices, and N generally resides in various air force bases, not in the West Bank.
“In a recent operation with the Shin Bet Shabak, we eliminated a terror cell in Jenin who were planning to carry out an immediate attack on IDF forces and Israeli civilians,” said N.
Moreover, he said, “We had a feeling of tremendous satisfaction and a feeling of pride to defend our country from these dangerous terrorists.”
“Later, we also understood that they had carried out a recent terror attack in the Jordan Valley against Yonatan Deutsch. So, this was closing a circle that our enemies could not escape quietly. This was very important for me,” he said.
A previous IDF statement identified Wail Lachloach, 31, from Qabatiya, as Deutsch’s killer on August 11. The IDF also noted that Lachloach continued recruiting new terrorists and planning new attacks in Jenin after killing Deutsch.
N added, “All of this year since last year in October – the cursed Shabbat – we have worked very hard for the state’s security – it’s us, our friends, our neighbors, and our nation. I am very proud to be a part of this. Some say we are being worn down after confronting this for a whole year. I don’t feel worn down.”
When to use a drone in the West Bank
The drone operator commander was asked about how they measure when to use a drone in the West Bank versus on another front, and he responded, “We take into account how pressing a situation is” on the disparate fronts.
ISRAEL HAS been heavily criticized for killing a high number of alleged Palestinian civilians. The two IDF officers were asked how they handled the challenge of Hamas using human shields.
M said, “We are meticulous to remain professional, and we only attack targets that are unambiguously declared hostile. If there is doubt, then there is no doubt – meaning we don’t attack.”
“There have been many attacks where terrorists should be thankful they kept their lives when we chose not to fire because there were civilians close by,” he said.
He added, “Terrorists exploit this. They move around and carry out both attacks and plant weapons like improvised explosives with children alongside them. They carry out lots of their planning in hospitals and mosques.”
“During an operation not long ago in Jenin, there was a terror cell which we couldn’t eliminate because there were children with them,” M said.
Describing the situation, he stated, “The terrorists went into a civilian house with weapons and then left the house without the weapons [having left the weapons inside]. They also take off their bulletproof vests, and the children hide everything in other places.”
“This disrupts us a lot, but we don’t give up,” said M.
“This happens a lot. We have to track people for many hours with lots of patience. But eventually, we can declare them an incriminated target and attack. We have undertaken 70 attacks and killed 150 terrorists.
In total, the IDF recently updated that there have been around 100 air strikes in the West Bank since the start of the war.
He noted, “Our team and the air force work together with maneuvering forces in the field, but since this is not a battlefield, we encounter many more civilians.”
“It is more challenging, but we are professional and make decisions in coordination with commanders in the field, the Operations Command at headquarters, the targeting command cells, and the air force.”
N added, “We follow international law. We are also morally committed to ethics in combat. And it is also in our interest. Unlike our enemy, we do everything we can to avoid harming civilians, all the way from the planning to the operations stages.”
Like M, N said that sometimes an attack must be delayed, but he said that the drone team almost always eventually, with patience, “gets their man.”
Ultimately, M said, “We built up faith among the different officials: the field commanders, all of the elements of Israeli ground firepower, and the air force, and this has led to great results.
Using airpower is a force multiplier for our forces. Field commanders now take this into account in their planning, and we are happy that these commanders count on us to help remove threats.”
“The air force has accomplished unprecedented things – there is nothing like this anywhere in the world in terms of integrated air and ground forces warfare. We are there for them for whatever they need,” concluded N.