The Islamic Republic has shipped explosive drones, anti-tank missiles, and rocket-propelled grenades—armaments not typically used in the West Bank—to terrorist groups near Israeli cities
Iran has spent the past several months quietly smuggling advanced arms to a growing number of terrorist proxies in the West Bank, ramping up its efforts to transform the territory into a Gaza-style militant hub that can replicate Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attacks since the Israel-Hamas ceasefire began a month ago, according to Israeli intelligence centers and regional analysts.
After the Donald Trump-backed ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect last month, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) moved the center of its operations against Israel to the West Bank. While PIJ is the most prolific of the Iran-sponsored terror groups operating in major cities like Hebron, Nablus, Jenin, and Jericho, it is far from the only one: Others among the 28 detailed in a Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) database include factions within the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Hamas’s West Bank cells. The terror groups—some of which have only recently begun setting up shop and receiving Iranian weapons—have acquired advanced rockets, explosive drones, anti-tank missiles, and rocket-propelled grenades—armaments the Islamic Republic’s proxies in the West Bank have not typically used in the past.
The quality and quantity of arms Tehran has sent to the Palestinian territory underscores its ambition to turn the areas outside Jerusalem into a launching point for another large-scale attack on Israel. Its terrorist proxies share that assessment: Almost immediately after the Oct. 10 ceasefire began, Hamas made clear the West Bank “would continue to be a leading arena of resistance,” according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, a research institution closely aligned with the IDF.
Just last week, the IDF intercepted a drone carrying 10 guns and various other forms of weaponry on its way from Jordan to the West Bank. That came after an October incident in which the IDF stopped a shipment from Iran’s Quds Force—a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps—to proxy groups in the West Bank containing 15 anti-tank rockets, 29 explosive charges, 4 armed drones, and an assortment of firearms.
Amir Avivi, a former senior Israeli military officer who regularly advises the country’s government, told the Washington Free Beacon Iran views the West Bank as its best chance to maximize its proxy war against Israel after the hits the Islamic Republic, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza have taken over the past year.
“Iran is really, really focused on trying to create another front,” Avivi said. “It didn’t just start after the 12-Day War, but they feel that this is the area they need to focus on because they’re having less success in Lebanon and in Gaza.”
Iran “pretty much lost Hezbollah, Syria, and Hamas as assets, so they focus more and more on the terror cells” operating in the West Bank, he continued. Now, the Islamic Republic is “trying to send substantial amounts of weapons capabilities through the Jordanian border.”
While the Islamic Republic’s attempt to turn the West Bank into a hotbed of terror has not received significant attention in Western media, Israeli officials are on high alert. Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told the U.N. Security Council in September the threat from the West Bank is “real and imminent,” the Free Beacon reported at the time.
The Israeli military has taken continuous action to impede terrorist activity, conducting a number of high-profile raids on weapons depots the Palestinian Authority is either incapable of or unwilling to prevent Iranian proxies from establishing.
In February of this year, the IDF thwarted a plot stemming from a “joint Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades command center” within the West Bank’s Nur Shams refugee camp, a report from the David Institute for Security Policy details. Terrorists successfully planted explosives on buses expected to be “in five separate locations, spread across at least three different cities, and targeted civilians during busy Friday morning shopping hours.” Three of those bombs detonated at 9:00 pm instead of 9:00 am while sitting in a depot, allowing Israeli authorities to locate and neutralize the others.
The David Institute noted “the planning and financing of these devices were Iranian,” adding Iran has labeled the West Bank Israel’s “soft underbelly” given its close proximity to Israeli cities and Ben Gurion International Airport.
Israeli forces in July disrupted an operation in Hebron where they discovered “large caches of weapons, improvised explosive devices, explosives, and firearms,” as well as “underground infrastructure used for concealment,” according to the David Institute report. At least 60 militants from 10 separate terror cells—most of them former prisoners with experience on the battlefield—had planned to attack Israel on multiple fronts.
FDD senior research analyst Joe Truzman told the Free Beacon Iran’s move to bolster its proxies in the West Bank is “a deliberate strategy to stretch Israeli forces thin” and “maintain pressure on multiple fronts.”
“Iran continues to prosecute its shadow war against Israel by funneling weapons to a network of terrorist clients in the West Bank,” he said. “It is upping the ante by sending game-changing weaponry that can inflict heavy casualties and destabilize the territory.”
Israel has recently uncovered weapons manufacturing sites in the West Bank as well, something Danon said reminds Israeli officials of the same methods Hamas began using in Gaza when the IDF withdrew from the territory in 2005. Photographs from one Hebron-based weapons depot found last month include missile production facilities, indicating various Palestinian terror cells now have the capability to manufacture advanced weapons on their own.
Hezbollah in Lebanon is unable to pose the same threat against Israel as it once did, Avivi told the Free Beacon, but Iran has been working to open a pipeline from the country into the West Bank. Israeli forces prevented two attempts by the Quds Force to smuggle weapons from Lebanon into the West Bank in July, the Amit Center’s report shows.
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