The West Bank has long been a landscape of slow-burning tension, but Tuesday brought a sharper jolt. Near the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, an Israeli man was killed, and three others were wounded in a ramming and stabbing attack. Northward, near Tulkarem, a protest at the edge of the Nur Shams refugee camp spiralled after Israeli soldiers opened fire, injuring a child and an Al Jazeera journalist.

Four Palestinians were arrested. Nur Shams itself has changed beyond recognition since Israeli forces seized control at the start of the year, emptying it of residents. Wandering through it now feels like stepping into a place that has been hollowed out neither a community nor a battlefield, but something in between.

Israel frames its operations as preemptive strikes against militant networks that have taken root in northern towns. Palestinian officials say the operations are manufacturing the instability they claim to prevent. The reality is that the West Bank has become a tangle of raids, checkpoints, and improvised acts of defiance, each feeding the next.

What stands out is the absence of a centre of gravity.  Communities operate in a kind of limbo, unsure whether the next day will bring another raid, another attack, or simply more waiting. Tuesday’s events underline a truth rarely stated outright: the West Bank is drifting, slowly but unmistakably, towards a conflict of its own.