Troops remained in the Jenin refugee camp in the morning in what appeared to be the biggest operation in the area in more than a year of fighting. It came amid growing internal pressure in Israel to respond harshly to a series of attacks on Israeli settlers, including a shooting last week that left four dead.
Black smoke billowed from the streets of the crowded camp as the operation continued, upending daily life for the population, with power cuts and a military bulldozer passing through narrow streets, another reminder of Israeli raids in the intifada. The Palestinians and neighboring Jordan condemned the raid.
The operation began after 1 a.m. with an airstrike on a building used by militants to plan attacks, according to Lt. Col. Richard Hecht. The objective of the operation was to destroy and confiscate weapons.
“We are acting against specific targets,” Hecht said, and the forces did not plan to maintain a presence there.
The contingent at the site was brigade-sized, some 2,000 soldiers, he said, and military drones had made previous strikes to clear the way for ground forces. Although Israel has carried out isolated airstrikes in the West Bank in recent weeks, Hecht said Monday’s attacks marked an escalation not seen since 2006, when the Palestinian uprising ended.
Although Israel described the attack as a precision operation, smoke billowed from the overcrowded camp, near the minarets of mosques. Ambulances were rushing to the hospital, where wounded were on stretchers.
Armored bulldozers pushed through narrow streets to clear a path for troops, damaging property in their path. Neighbors reported power outages in large areas of the camp.
According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, the soldiers blocked streets inside the camp, seized houses and buildings and placed snipers on rooftops.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported five Palestinians dead and 13 wounded, three of them seriously, on Monday morning. Hecht said up to seven militants were believed to have been killed.
In another incident, Israeli forces killed a 21-year-old Palestinian near the West Bank city of Ramallah, according to the ministry.
“Our Palestinian people will not kneel, they will not surrender, they will not raise the white flag, and they will stand firm on our land in the face of this brutal aggression,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for the Palestinian president, said in a statement.
Jordan called on Israel to stop incursions into the West Bank.
The Jenin camp and the neighboring town of the same name have been a hotspot of violence between Israelis and Palestinians that has escalated since the spring of 2022. Monday’s raid came two weeks after another violent confrontation in Jenin.
“There has been a dynamic here in Jenin over the last year,” Hecht said, defending the tactics used Monday. “It has been intensifying all the time.”
However, there were also political factors at play. Leading members of the far-right Israeli government, which is dominated by Israeli settlers and their allies, have called for an increased military response to the violence in the area.
“Proud of our heroes on all fronts, and this morning especially of our soldiers operating in Jenin,” tweeted National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist who recently called for Israel to kill “thousands” of militants. if it was necessary. “Praying they succeed.”
With Monday’s deaths, the number of Palestinians killed this year in the West Bank reached 131, in more than a year of violence in the region, which has recorded the heaviest bloodshed in nearly two decades.
The outbreak of violence began last year after a series of Palestinian attacks prompted Israel to redouble its incursions into the West Bank.
Israel says the raids are intended to end gun violence. Palestinians say such violence is inevitable in the absence of a political process with Israel, increasing settlement construction in the West Bank and violence by extremist settlers. They see the increase in the Israeli military presence in the area as a tightening of the occupation that began in the territory 56 years ago.
Israel says most of the dead were militants, but young people protesting against the incursions and people not taking part in the clashes have also been killed.
Palestinian attacks recorded so far this year have left 24 dead.
Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Six-Day War. The Palestinians claim those territories for a future state.
FUENTE: Associated Press
