Israel launches massive deadly attack on West Bank city of Jenin

Israeli airstrikes target the Palestinian city of Jenin (photo)

The Israeli military launched a huge attack on the Palestinian city of Jenin, targeting members of the Palestinian resistance against Israel’s occupation and oppression. At least eight Palestinians have been shot dead and over 50 have been injured.

The invasion included over 150 armored vehicles and 1,000 ground troops. The names of the Palestinians killed, their photos, and circumstances are here.

Israeli troops also shot dead a 21-year-old Palestinian in Al-Biereh while he was demonstrating against the ongoing Israeli onslaught against Jenin.

Thousands flee Israel’s biggest West Bank military operation in decades…

by Laurin-Whitney Gottbrath, reposted from Axios

The Israeli military on Monday deployed hundreds of soldiers and launched air attacks on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, killing at least eight Palestinians and vowing to continue the operation for “as long as it takes.”

The big picture: It’s one of the largest assaults on a West Bank city in nearly 20 years.

The raid and drone strikes began early Monday, with Israel saying it had launched an operation targeting “terrorist infrastructures” in the densely populated Jenin refugee camp, which is a militant stronghold.
Gunfights between the Israeli military and Palestinian militants were reported to be taking place by Monday afternoon. At least 50 Palestinians have been injured, with 10 in critical condition, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The Jenin municipality accused Israel of “deliberately destroying” the city’s “water networks’ main lines.”

What they’re saying: “What the Israeli occupation government is doing in the city of Jenin and its camp is a new war crime against our defenseless people,” Palestinian Authority spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement.

The PA was holding an emergency meeting Monday evening local time about the escalating situation in Jenin.

IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht said the Israeli military will continue the operation for “as long as it takes.”

“We want to break that mindset of a safe haven” for “terrorists,” Hecht told reporters.

Neighboring Jordan and Eygpt as well as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation quickly condemned the raid.

The operation “constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law and obligations of the [Israeli] occupation,” Jordanian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Sinan al-Majali said in a statement.

UN envoy Tor Wennesland said on Twitter that the escalation “is very dangerous” and “reminds us of the extremely volatile & unpredictable situation across the occupied West Bank.”

“All must ensure the civilian population is protected,” he said. He added he has been in touch with “all relevant parties to urgently de-escalate the situation.”

Palestinian factions in the West Bank and Gaza said they will not abandon Jenin.

The “Israeli occupation’s attempts to take the battle to the streets of Jenin and the West Bank would be in vain, assuring that Jenin would not be left alone,” senior Islamic Jihad member Khaled Al-Batsh told Al Jazeera.

State of play: The Israeli military over the last year has stepped up its raids in Jenin, where Israel says several attacks against Israeli citizens have been planned and launched. The IDF also conducts near-daily raids in other Palestinian cities and towns.

The Israeli military has killed at least 130 Palestinians in the West Bank in this year, per the UN and news reports. Many have been militants but several civilians, including children, have also been killed.
Last month, the Israeli military killed several Palestinians, including two 15-year-olds, in a large-scale Jenin raid that included the use of armed drones for the first time in about two decades.
Nearly 30 Israelis have been killed in attacks by Arabs inside the West Bank and in Israel over the last year, AP reports.
At the same time, Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians and their homes and cars have increased as well.

UPDATE: Thousands flee Israel’s biggest West Bank military operation in decades

Families leave the Jenin refugee camp on Tuesday. (photo)

Reposted from The Independent

Thousands have fled Israel’s biggest military operation into the occupied West Bank in decades, as a car-ramming in Tel Aviv underlined the risk of violence spreading.

At least 10 Palestinians, including three children, have been killed and over 100 injured during Israeli’s operation in Jenin refugee camp which started with a drone strike on Monday. The United Nations has said Israeli military bulldozers destroyed key roads stopping ambulances from entering the camp, which has lost access to drinking water, electricity and in some areas some food supplies.

“At this moment we are completing the mission, and I can say that our extensive activity in Jenin is not a one-time operation,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

Israel’s military said it aimed to “thwart terrorism and remove threats”, while a defence source said forces had begun to withdraw late on Tuesday.

Jenin mayor Nidal Al-Obeidi said around 4,000 Palestinians, nearly one third of the camp, had fled to stay with relatives or in shelters.

UN agencies said they were deeply “alarmed” and “concerned” by the violence, adding that the level of injuries was placing a strain on the “fragile and underfunded” health system in Jenin while medical teams had restricted access preventing them from reaching the critically injured.

The population of Jenin, located in the far north of the West Bank, are mostly descendants of Palestinians that fled or were forced to flee the conflict which surrounded the creation of Israel in 1948. In the early 2000s it was the theatre of some if the worst bloodshed during the second intifada.

This year the densely populated area, where some 14,000 people live in less than half a square kilometre, has again become the focal point of a wave of violence that has swept the area. In 2023 alone more than 140 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank while Palestinian attacks targeting Israelis have killed at least 26 people.

The Israeli military has described Jenin as a “stronghold of terrorist activity” accusing militant groups of basing fighters within densely populated urban areas. Jenin and the outlying areas have become the target of intensified raids ordered by Israel’s nationalist-religious government.

In Tel Aviv, a Palestinian man drove his car into a crowded bus stop and then began stabbing bystanders, injuring eight people. CCTV video circulated online showed a pickup truck strike two people as it mounted a pavement and bicycle lane at speed. The driver is seen scrambling out of a window, stabbing a cafe-goer and chasing other people with knife in hand.

Hamas said the attacker, identified as 23-year-old Abdel-Wahab Khalyleh, who was shot dead by an armed bystander, was a member. It said the attack was “an act of self-defence in the face of the ongoing Zionist massacre in Jenin”.

In Jenin, drones circulated overhead and sporadic gunfire and explosions sounded near the refugee camp, which fighters from militant groups including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah have fortified with a range of obstacles and watching posts to counter regular army raids.

Power and water supplies remained cut off in the camp and in some areas of the city for a second day after bulldozers that ploughed up roads looking for improvised bombs, cut power cables and a main water pipe.

Israeli forces said they uncovered several underground explosives caches, one concealed in a tunnel under a mosque.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said it has evacuated 500 families from the camp – around 3,000 people. Trucks brought food, water and other supplies collected by volunteers in nearby Nablus.

Medicins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Broders) accused the army of firing tear gas into a hospital, filling the emergency room with smoke and forcing emergency patients to be treated in a main hall.

Dr Wissam Bakr, director of the Jenin Governmental Hospital, that serves the area, said that its staff was overwhelmed.

“The medical teams, especially the surgeons and anaesthetists, have been working for 40 hours nonstop, and still are on top of their work to help the wounded,” he said.

Jihad Hassan, 63, who fled the camp with his family after his son was wounded, said the drone strike had prompted him to leave.

“You don’t hear a sound, you just see the explosion,” he said, as he waited with his son at the Jenin Governmental Hospital. “It is something, when a person is forced to leave their home,” he said.

Many offices and businesses across the West Bank closed on Tuesday in response to calls for a general strike to protest against the operation, which the Palestinian Authority has described as a “war crime”.

Mohammed Moustafa Orfy, Egypt’s permanent representative to the Arab League, said the operation would hinder efforts to bring reconciliation after months of escalating violence.

“What is happening in Jenin, from brutal killing using the Israeli war machine, is aimed at shrinking to a very large extent the chances of reviving the peace process,” he said.

Rishi Sunak said the Israel army must “demonstrate restraint” and prioritise civilian safety, as he urged all parties to avoid “further escalation”.

For a complete list of Palestinians and Israelis killed since 2000, please visit Israel-Palestine Timeline

NOTE: The entire West Bank has been under Israeli occupation since 1967; all its official entrances and exits are controlled by Israeli soldiers, making its Palestinian inhabitants virtual prisoners. Many are families that were ethnically cleansed from Israel during Israel’s founding war (see this and this and this) and its 1967 war. Israeli forces often invade them; one example is here.

Israel was established in 1947 through a war of ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population, both Muslims and Christians, and it continues to steal other people’s land for illegal colonies known as ‘settlements.’ While Palestinians most often use nonviolent resistance, a small number use armed resistance against the invaders.

Thanks to the pro-Israel lobby in the US, Congress disburses over $20 million per day of Americans’ tax money directly to and/or on behalf of Israel.

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