Global Courant
Israel says it is targeting the refugee camp because it is home to Palestinians responsible for a spate of attacks on Israeli civilians in recent months. Israeli forces said early Tuesday they had been able to find and seize weapons and explosives and destroy tunnels and command posts.
“In recent months, Jenin has turned into a safe haven from terrorism. We will end this,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, adding that the operation was conducted with “minimal harm to civilians.”
Some Palestinians say this violence is the result of more than 50 years of occupation by Israeli forces. They observed a general strike in the West Bank in protest.
Tuesday’s suspected attack in Tel Aviv left a woman, 46, in a serious condition with multiple injuries, and three others with moderate or minor injuries, according to a spokesman for Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service.
Hamas, which claimed responsibility, is classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and others.
International alert
The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank condemned the incursion, saying late Monday it would freeze the few remaining points of cooperation with Israel and minimize contact with Israel’s main benefactor, the United States.
A State Department spokesman said it supported Israel’s “right to defend its people” against “terrorist groups.” Meanwhile, they warned that it was “necessary to take all possible precautions to prevent the loss of civilian life” and urged “Israeli and Palestinian security forces to work together to improve the security situation in the West Bank.”
International bodies have also expressed concern.
UN envoy to the Middle East Tor Wennesland warned that the escalation in the West Bank was “very dangerous”.
Lynn Hastings, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in the Palestinian Territories, tweeted that she was “alarmed” by the “size of the Israeli forces” and took note of the airstrikes in a densely populated refugee camp. She said the UN was mobilizing humanitarian aid.
The intensity of the incursion was reminiscent of Israeli military tactics during the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s.JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP – Getty Images
Some commentators within Israel have also suggested the move could be an attempt to appease members of the country’s far-right government, which is dominated by West Bank settlers and their supporters.
“Proud of our heroes on all fronts and especially this morning of our soldiers operating in Jenin,” tweeted National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultra-nationalist who recently called on Israel to kill thousands of militants if necessary. “Praying for their success.”
Israeli forces routinely carry out raids on the occupied West Bank, even though the Palestinian Authority has full control over administrative and security issues in the area.
More than 140 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank this year, according to the Associated Press, part of a more-than-year-long spike in violence that led to the area’s worst bloodshed in nearly two decades. At least 26 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks on Israelis, the news agency said.
Israel says most of those killed in recent raids are militants, but others — including youths who protested the raids and other people not involved in clashes — have also died.
Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, areas the Palestinians seek for their hoped-for independent state, in the Middle East war of 1967.
Lawahez Jabari reported from Jenin, in the West Bank, and Alexander Smith reported from London.
The Associated Press contributed.
