Global Courant
Israel used drones to attack targets in a militant stronghold in the occupied West Bank early Monday, deploying hundreds of troops to the area in a raid similar to the large-scale military operations conducted during the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago. Palestinian health officials said at least eight Palestinians were killed.
Troops remained in Jenin refugee camp Monday afternoon, continuing the largest operation in the area in more than a year of fighting. It came at a time of mounting domestic pressure to respond harshly to a series of attacks on Israeli settlers, including a shooting last week that left four Israelis dead.
Black smoke rose from the camp’s bustling streets, and the drone of drones could be heard overhead as the army pressed on. Residents said electricity was cut off in some parts and military bulldozers plowed through narrow streets and damaged buildings as they cleared the way for Israeli troops, another reminder of the latest uprising. The Palestinians and neighboring Jordan condemned the violence.
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht, an army spokesman, said the operation began just after 1 a.m. with an airstrike on a building used by militants to plan attacks. He said the purpose of the operation was to destroy and seize weapons.
“We don’t intend to stand,” he said. “We act against specific targets.”
He said a brigade-sized force — about 2,000 soldiers — took part in the operation and that military drones had launched a series of strikes to clear the way for ground forces. While Israel has launched isolated airstrikes in the West Bank in recent weeks, Hecht said Monday’s string of attacks was an unprecedented escalation since 2006 — the end of the Palestinian insurgency.
While Israel described the attack as a targeted operation, smoke billowed from the overcrowded camp, with mosque minarets nearby. Ambulances rushed to a hospital where the injured were taken in on stretchers.
According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, the military blocked roads within the camp, seized houses and buildings and deployed snipers on rooftops.
The Palestinian health ministry said on Monday that at least eight Palestinians were killed and more than 20 injured, three of them critical.
An armed Palestinian militant takes position during a confrontation with the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Monday.Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP – Getty Images
In another incident, a 21-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire near the West Bank city of Ramallah, the ministry said.
“Our Palestinian people will not kneel, will not surrender, will not raise the white flag and remain steadfast on their land despite this brutal aggression,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for the Palestinian president, said in a statement. .
Jordan called on Israel to end its raids on the West Bank.
The Jenin Camp and an adjacent town of the same name have been a focal point as Israeli-Palestinian violence has escalated since the spring of 2022.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen praised the military’s efforts during a speech to foreign journalists and accused archenemy Iran of being behind the violence by funding Palestinian militant groups.
“Thanks to the funds they receive from Iran, the Jenin camp has become a center for terrorist activities,” he said, adding that the operation would be “targeted” to avoid civilian casualties.
Palestinians reject such claims, saying the violence is a natural response to 56 years of occupation since Israel conquered the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East War.
Jenin has long been a bastion for the armed struggle against Israel and was a major point of friction in the latest Palestinian uprising.
In 2002, days after a Palestinian suicide bombing killed 30 people during a large Passover gathering, Israeli forces launched a massive operation in the Jenin camp. For eight days and nights they battled militants street by street, using armored bulldozers to destroy rows of houses, many booby-trapped.
Retired Brig. General Amir Avivi, who served as battalion commander in the northern West Bank in 2002, described Monday’s operation as an “attack” in which the army penetrates and then withdraws.
But Avivi, who is president and founder of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, an aggressive group of former military commanders, said the size of the force indicated the operation “could last for a longer period of time, not just a few hours, but maybe a couple of days.”
Monday’s raid came two weeks after another violent clash in Jenin and after the army said a few rockets had been fired from the area last week and landed in the West Bank. The missiles exploded shortly after launch, causing no damage in Israel, but marking an escalation that raised concerns in Israel.
“There’s been a dynamic around Jenin over the last year,” said Hecht, defending Monday’s tactic. “It’s been getting more intense all the time.”
But there may also have been political considerations. Leading members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, dominated by West Bank settlers and their supporters, have called for a broader military response to the ongoing violence in the area.
“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.”
More than 130 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank this year, part of a more-than-year-long spike in violence that led to the area’s worst bloodshed in nearly two decades.
The outbreak of violence escalated last year after a spate of Palestinian attacks prompted Israel to step up its raids on the West Bank.
Israel says the raids are designed to beat back militants. The Palestinians say such violence is inevitable in the absence of any political process with Israel and with increasing settlement building in the West Bank and violence by extremist settlers. They see the intensification of the Israeli military presence in the area as an entrenchment of the Israeli occupation of the area.
Israel says most of the dead are militants, but stone-throwing youths who protested the raids and people not involved in the clashes have also been killed.
Palestinian attacks on Israelis since the beginning of this year have killed 24 people.
Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Middle East war. The Palestinians seek those areas for their hoped-for independent state.
