With ceasefires on two fronts, Israel takes aim at West Bank
Drone strikes in Jenin’s crowded refugee camp have been followed by IDF raids in what Israel says is a major counter-terrorism operation in the Palestinian territory.
Israel launched what it called a major counter-terrorism operation in the West Bank, expanding its campaign against militancy in the Palestinian territory after more than 15 months of deadly war in Gaza.
Israeli forces from the military, police and internal-security service began the operation in the West Bank city of Jenin’s crowded refugee camp Tuesday with drone strikes and raided it with light armoured vehicles, statements and footage released by Israel’s military show.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said 10 people were killed by Israeli forces in Jenin, all of whom were between the ages of 16 and 57 years old.
Israel said Wednesday it had killed 10 militants since the operation began.
While Israeli forces have frequently operated in the West Bank throughout the war in Gaza, it had remained a secondary theatre with Israeli military manpower stretched thin between the primary fronts of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
With ceasefire agreements on both those fronts, the Israeli government on Saturday added the defeat of surging militancy in the West Bank as an aim of the war that began with Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed about 1200 people.
“This is an additional step in achieving the objective that we have set – bolstering security in Judea and Samaria,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday, using Israel’s official term for the West Bank.
Netanyahu said the operation is part of a methodical confrontation against Iran and its allies from Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria, who have joined forces against Israel over the course of the current war.
Jenin’s refugee camp has long been a locus of Palestinian militancy and clashes with Israeli forces.
This is the third major Israeli military operation in Jenin’s refugee camp in less than two years.
There was one in August, and another in July 2023.
The latest raid follows a series of recent Palestinian attacks on Israelis emanating from Jenin and elsewhere in the northern West Bank.
Israeli officials are concerned about Hamas and other Iran-allied militant groups using the West Bank to open another front with Israel.
The war in Gaza ignited wider hostilities, including a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and the first-ever exchanges of direct fire between Israel and Iran last year.
Hamas has already called on Palestinians to increase attacks from the West Bank against Israelis.
“A salute of honour to all the heroes of the West Bank. Today, the responsibility grows heavier on our people there,” Abu Obeida, the spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, said in a speech on Sunday as a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect.
Obeida added a “special tribute to Jenin, the sister in spirit to Gaza, in heroism and resilience.”
Since the start of the Gaza war, there have been more than 2000 attempted terrorist attacks in the West Bank and Israel’s internationally recognised borders, and 46 Israeli and foreign nationals were killed in those attacks in 2024, according to Israel’s military spokesman Nadav Shoshani.
On Saturday, a 19-year-old Palestinian from Tulkarem, another city in the northern West Bank, severely injured an Israeli in a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv.
Earlier this month, Palestinian gunmen from Jenin opened fire on Israeli civilian vehicles driving in the West Bank, killing three.
There is also pressure from far-right officials in Israel’s governing coalition, who are frustrated with the ceasefire in Gaza, to crack down on militants in the West Bank.
“After Gaza and Lebanon, today we have begun, with God’s help, to change the security concept in Judea and Samaria,” Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister and head of the far-right Religious Zionism Party, said on Tuesday.
Shoshani, Israel’s military spokesman, declined to comment on the duration of the Jenin operation and on whether it was expected to expand, but said it would be “relatively similar” to the operation in August, which lasted around a month and included other cities in the northern West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority, which governs most Palestinians in the West Bank, criticised the Israeli operation, saying it displaced families and destroyed civilian properties.
What makes Israel’s current operation in Jenin unusual is that it dovetails with a similar weekslong operation by the PA to uproot militants from the same area.
The PA’s operation, which analysts said was the most severe fighting between the body’s security forces and militants in nearly two decades, ended in a truce just days before Israel’s began.
Analysts said Israel’s operation risks undermining the PA’s own initiative to uproot militants and fuels domestic criticism that the Palestinian body is aiding Israel’s security agenda rather than serving Palestinian interests.
“The timing of it right now to me is most definitely undermining the PA, but Hamas and Islamic Jihad are real terror threats against Israel,” said Miri Eisin, a former deputy head of the Israeli military’s combat intelligence corps.
Eisin said the PA was fighting for its own self-interest and isn’t a reliable partner when it comes to Israel’s security.
She said Israel is guilty of the same, cracking down on Palestinian militants but failing to prevent attacks by West Bank settlers against Palestinians in recent days.
The Jenin refugee camp is now “nearly uninhabitable” and some 2,000 families have been displaced from the area since mid-December, said Roland Friedrich, director of West Bank affairs for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.
Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a US-based non-profit monitoring service, recorded roughly 240 armed clashes, air strikes and attacks in Jenin, including its refugee camp, since October 7, 2023.
More than 838 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces since the start of the war in Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry says.
Israel’s military says most were militants, while Palestinians dispute that.
The Wall Street Journal
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