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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/israels-greatest-fear-is-fpv-drones-in-the-hands-of-west-bank-fighters/">palestinechronicle.com</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Israel\u2019s Greatest Fear is FPV Drones in the Hands of West Bank Fighters</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">August 15, 2026</div></div>
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<img src="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/westbank_raids_army_qnn.png" alt="" title="westbank_raids_army_qnn" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" width="558" height="374" style="margin-right: 25px;">
Israeli army operations intensify across the occupied West Bank amid escalating settler violence. (Photo: QNN)
<p><strong>By <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/robert-inlakesh" title="Display all articles for Robert Inlakesh">Robert Inlakesh</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>
<h3><span>If the West Bank resistance gets their hands on FPV drones,
this means small teams can run covert operations that target settlements
and checkpoints.</span></h3>
</blockquote>
<p><span>Israeli army-backed settler militia assaults across the
occupied West Bank are driving renewed speculation that the unbearable
violence could lead to a significant escalation. Although there has
clearly been an effort by the Israeli authorities to drum up violence,
they also understand that there is a major risk involved in continuing
on this trajectory.</span></p>
<p><span>Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s Defense Minister,
Israel Katz, has ordered his military to draw up plans to officially
hand over control of Israeli illegal West Bank settlers to the police.
This would make hardline Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir responsible
for managing security matters in the occupied territory, a man who just
last month advocated for turning West Bank cities into Gaza.</span></p>
<p><span>Previously, the majority of Israel\u2019s efforts at ethnically
cleansing the territory were focused on what is known as Area C,
constituting roughly 60% of the occupied West Bank. Area C is under full
Israeli military occupation and is home to over 500,000 illegal
settlers, whose \u201csecurity\u201d is provided by the Army. Around 300,000
Palestinians also live in this zone, created by the controversial Oslo
Accords signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO) in the early to mid-1990s. The total Palestinian population of the
West Bank is currently around 3.5 million.</span></p>
<p><span>This system has been in place for decades now, during which the
Palestinian Authority (PA) was supposed to have security and civil
control in Area A (18% of the land) and civil control in Area B (22% of
the land). What this enabled over time was for Israel to create a
system, working hand in glove with their PA allies, to divide the
occupied territory into dozens of isolated enclaves that were separated
from one another.</span></p>
<p><span>Most Palestinians live in the major cities of the West Bank or
the peripheries of those cities. Cities like Ramallah, Nablus, and
Al-Khalil are supposedly therefore under PA Security Force control \u2013
although Israel enters whenever they choose and coordinates with the PA.
The system has created bubbles under occupation, whereby most
Palestinians conform to the Palestinian Authority. The PA also employs
some 22% of the population.</span></p>
<p><span>Although settler attacks and settlement expansion have long
been a major issue inside the occupied territory, the situation has
rapidly deteriorated in recent years. The trend was already growing
prior to October 7, 2023, but has since exploded. Now, there are
dedicated armed and trained militias who run a coordinated campaign of
mass displacement.</span></p>
<p><span>According to Israeli Human Rights Group B\u2019Tselem, at least 64
Palestinian communities and towns have been entirely displaced with
another 15 having been partially displaced, since October 7, 2023. Daily
settler attacks have also made travel, particularly after dark, much
more difficult in the West Bank. Routine pogroms are launched, using
arson to burn down homes and agricultural lands. Israeli settlers also
execute Palestinians, often as the Israeli Army watches on, without
consequence. Currently, homes in the village of Qusra \u2013 located in Area B
\u2013 are being besieged by Israeli settler militia forces, as the Israeli
Army chose to help them and even ordered families to evacuate their
village.</span></p>
<p><span>Area B is no longer safe and the PA has been transformed into a
shameless subcontractor for the Israeli military, only there to
coordinate their retreat from areas that Israelis choose to invade and
arrest, or even kill, Palestinians who choose to pursue armed
resistance.</span></p>
<p><span>Palestinian Resistance factions began rising from the Jenin
Refugee Camp, Nour al-Sham Refugee Camp and the Old City of Nablus in
2021, with the trend initially spreading to surrounding areas and
refugee camps across the territory. The Palestinian Authority\u2019s Security
Forces decided to collaborate with Israel to murder countless fighters
and have others arrested; in a series of cases, they did Israel\u2019s dirty
work for them directly.</span></p>
<p><span>The Israeli Army then ethnically cleansed Jenin Refugee Camp
and Nour al-Shams Refugee Camp, displacing tens of thousands, before
turning these areas into mini Gazas. Israel has even created a
specialized settler-run military unit called the Desert Frontier.</span></p>
<p><span>Since the beginning of the Gaza Genocide, the West Bank
unemployment rate has skyrocketed from around 12% to roughly 32%. The
PA, despite being a collaborator that sought to blame Hamas for the fate
of Gaza and refused to pursue a unified Palestinian front, has been
deprived of its own tax revenues and is being held hostage by its
Israeli bosses. </span></p>
<p><span>Although the West Bank population has done virtually nothing to
rise up in support of their people in Gaza throughout the genocide, the
rapid deterioration in their own living condition could end up
resulting a major escalation. The PA is hopelessly corrupt and is widely
viewed as a collaborator body in the West Bank, while inflation
increases, roadblocks appear everywhere, villages are placed on
lockdown, and settler attacks are constant.</span></p>
<p><span>Part of Israel\u2019s plan has always been to engineer a situation
that causes a major escalation, then use Palestinian retaliation as a
pretext for a major ethnic cleansing campaign, but it cannot be carried
out like it was in Gaza. What holds the Israelis back is one main issue:
the safety of the settlements.</span></p>
<p><span>Previously, small localized Palestinian resistance cadres were
only capable of defensive actions and a few offensive attacks on
occasion. However, this situation could dramatically change with the
introduction of a single weapon into the equation: First Person View
(FPV) drones.</span></p>
<p><span>Israel has abysmally failed to combat FPV UAVs fired towards
their position by Hezbollah, exposing a major weakness. In the occupied
West Bank, these drones would represent a major game-changer.</span></p>
<p><span>In Gaza and Lebanon, FPV drones are limited by distance and so
are only effective at targeting Israeli military forces as they enter
these territories. In the occupied West Bank, it will change everything.
One of the major issues that resistance factions have faced there is
that they are quickly discovered if they participate in armed resistance
and building rockets or more sophisticated weapons is a difficult task
for such groups.</span></p>
<p><span>If the West Bank resistance gets their hands on FPV drones,
this means small teams can run covert operations that target settlements
and checkpoints, in addition to military vehicles or soldier
gatherings, with ease and at a safe distance, enabling them to avoid
detection. These drones are relatively simple to assemble, cheap and
tracing the components in order to knock out production supplies is
extremely difficult.</span></p>
<p><span>It has already been well established that there is an abundance
of expertise in the West Bank when it comes to assembling explosive
devices, which is the only other component needed to make a deadly
weapon that Israel cannot shoot down. This potential threat has already
caught the attention of the Israeli security establishment, because
there is no solution to this problem.</span></p>
<p><span>Amidst a major escalation erupting in the occupied West Bank,
the introduction of the FPV drone to the battlefield is extremely
likely. If managed correctly, it could end up redefining the nature of
the armed struggle in occupied Palestine. Such a UAV strategy,
considering the terrain and proximity of Palestinian resistance groups
to settlements, could take some time, however, as it must be implemented
in the correct manner and timed well.</span></p>
<p><span>Considerations for the groups would include factors such as the
number of cells at their disposal, training, secure supply of the drone
components and the size of the arsenal they will prove capable of
building. Secrecy will be key, as one of the biggest challenges of the
West Bank for any armed group is the hostile environment, having to
evade not only the Israelis, but also the Palestinian Authority.</span></p>
<div>
<p><br></p>
<p><span><em>\u2013 Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary
filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He
contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. </em></span></p></div>
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