Israel used drones to strike targets in a militant stronghold in the occupied West Bank early Monday morning and deployed hundreds of troops to the area, in a raid that resembles large-scale military operations carried out during the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago. Palestinian health officials said at least eight Palestinians were killed.
Troops remained inside the Jenin refugee camp at noon Monday, moving forward with the largest operation in the area in more than a year of fighting. It came at a time of mounting internal pressure for a tough response to a series of attacks on Israeli settlers, including a shooting attack last week that killed four Israelis.
Black smoke billowed from the busy streets of the camp and the drone of drones could be heard overhead as the military advanced. Residents said power was cut in some parts and military bulldozers forced their way through the narrow streets, damaging buildings as they cleared the way for Israeli forces in another reminder of the latest uprising. Palestinians and neighboring Jordan condemned the violence.
Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an army spokesman, said the operation began shortly after 1 am with an airstrike on a building used by militants to plan attacks. He said the objective of the operation was to destroy and confiscate weapons.
“We are not planning to hold the land,” he said. “We are acting against specific targets.”
He said a brigade-sized force, roughly 2,000 soldiers, was taking part in the operation and that military drones had carried out a series of 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 series of attacks was an escalation not seen since 2006, the end of the Palestinian uprising.
While Israel described the attack as a pinpoint operation, smoke billowed from inside the crowded camp, with minarets of mosques nearby. Ambulances rushed to a hospital where the injured were carried on stretchers.
According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, the military blocked roads inside the camp, seized houses and buildings and placed snipers on rooftops.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said at least eight Palestinians were killed and more than two dozen wounded on Monday, three of them seriously.
In a separate 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, surrender, raise the white flag and stand firm on their land in the face of this brutal aggression,» Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for the Palestinian president, said in a statement. .
Jordan called on Israel to stop its incursions into the West Bank.
The Jenin camp and an adjacent town of the same name have been a flashpoint as Israeli-Palestinian violence has escalated since spring 2022.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen praised the efforts of the military during a speech to foreign journalists and accused arch-enemy Iran of being behind the violence by funding Palestinian militant groups.
«Because of 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 «specifically» to avoid civilian casualties.
Palestinians reject such claims, saying the violence is a natural response to the 56 years of occupation since Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war.
Jenin has long been a stronghold of armed struggle against Israel and was a major sticking point in the latest Palestinian uprising.
In 2002, days after a Palestinian suicide bombing during a large Passover gathering killed 30 people, Israeli troops launched a massive operation in the Jenin camp. For eight days and nights they fought the militants street by street, using armored bulldozers to destroy rows of houses, many of which had been booby-trapped.
Retired Brigadier. General Amir Avivi, who served as a battalion commander in the northern West Bank in 2002, described Monday’s operation as an «attack» in which the army advances and then withdraws.
But Avivi, who is chairman 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 few days.
Monday’s raid came two weeks after another violent clash in Jenin and after the army said a pair of rockets were fired from the area last week and fell on the West Bank. The rockets exploded shortly after launch, causing no damage in Israel, but marking an escalation that raised concerns in Israel.
“There has been a dynamic here around Jenin for the last year,” Hecht said, defending Monday’s tactics. “It has been intensifying all the time.”
But there may also have been political considerations at play. Leading members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, which is 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 this morning especially of our soldiers operating in Jenin,» tweeted National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist who recently called on Israel to kill «thousands» of militants if it is necessary. «Praying for your success.»
More than 130 Palestinians have been killed this year in the West Bank, part of a more than a year-long spike in violence that has seen some of the worst bloodshed in the area in nearly two decades.
The outbreak of violence intensified last year after a series of Palestinian attacks prompted Israel to intensify its incursions into the West Bank.
Israel says the raids are meant to push back the militants. The Palestinians say such violence is inevitable in the absence of any political process with Israel and increased West Bank settlement construction 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 territory.
Israel says most of the dead have been militants, but stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and people not involved in the fighting 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. Palestinians seek those territories for their long-awaited independent state.