Troops remained in the Jenin refugee camp at noon Monday, in 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 and the sound of drones wafted across the sky as the troops continued their raid. Neighbors reported power outages in large areas of the camp and armored bulldozers advancing through narrow streets to make way for troops, damaging property in their path, in another reminder of the past 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, he said.
“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 rose from the overcrowded camp, near the minarets of mosques. Ambulances rushed to the hospital, where the wounded arrived on stretchers.
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 at least seven Palestinians dead on Monday and some two dozen wounded, three of them seriously.
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.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen praised the army’s efforts in an appearance before foreign journalists and accused his arch-enemy Iran of being behind the violence by financing Palestinian armed groups.
“Due to the funds they receive from Iran, the Jenin camp has become a center of terrorist activity,” he said, adding that the operation would be carried out in a “targeted” manner to avoid civilian casualties.
The Palestinians reject those claims, saying the violence is a natural response to 56 years of occupation since Israel captured the West Bank in the Six-Day War in 1967.
Jenin has been a stronghold of armed struggle against Israel for years and was a major focus of tension in the latest Palestinian uprising.
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.
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Associated Press writer Omar Akour contributed to this report from Amman, Jordan.
FUENTE: Associated Press
