PALESTINIAN REGION, JENIN:
On Monday, Israeli forces murdered eight Palestinians in what they called an “extensive counterterrorism effort” in the occupied West Bank. This operation involved drone strikes and hundreds of troops.
Jenin was the subject of the largest West Bank raid in years, led by Prime Minister Benjamin’s hard-right administration and involving armoured vehicles, army bulldozers, and drones.
As Palestinians hurled rocks at soldiers and smoke billowed from explosions and burning barricades, an AFP correspondent reported that the city and the surrounding refugee camp, a militant stronghold, had been rocked by firefights and explosives.
Palestinian Red Crescent director in Jenin Mahmoud al-Saadi said, “There is bombing from the air and an invasion on the ground.”
Multiple buildings and locations have been bombed, and smoke can be seen coming from all directions.
The Palestinian health ministry reported eight deaths and fifty injuries, ten of them serious. This number is higher than the seven lives lost in a similar Israeli operation on Jenin two weeks ago, which also featured the uncommon deployment of helicopter missile fire.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned what it called “an open war against the people of Jenin” by the Israeli military.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told reporters, “we are striking the terrorism hub with great strength,” while army spokesperson Richard Hecht indicated that “brigade-level” numbers of troops were involved in Monday’s operation.
A mosque in the Jenin refugee camp was the site of an alleged gunfight, with the army claiming that weapons and explosives were afterwards discovered there.
I watched them take bulldozers inside the camp and damage buildings,” Badr Shagoul, a local of Jenin, told AFP. This is where humans lived.
An AFP correspondent said late Monday that combat was still going on and that the hospital mortuary had victims wrapped in blankets and others extensively bandaged.
Qasem Benighader, a nurse, reported that numerous patients had been injured by explosives dropped from planes or by gunfire.
“This is the worst raid in the last five years.”
Since there has been a rise in attacks on Israelis and Jewish settlers’ violence against Palestinians in the region’s northern West Bank, Israel has stepped up its operations there.
Mahmoud Hawashin, a resident of the Jenin refugee camp, described the situation as “catastrophic” and predicted that “for every action, there is a reaction.”
More Palestinian bloodshed means more Israeli bloodshed, as the saying goes.
“All options are open to strike the enemy in response to its aggression in Jenin,” the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad declared.
The Palestinian health ministry reported that a young man had been killed by Israeli fire near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
The military claimed it had attacked a “joint operations centre” belonging to the Jenin Brigade, as well as a weapons cache, a “observation and reconnaissance site,” and a hiding place for purported assailants of Israeli targets in Jenin.
Read Twelve Palestinians, including four children, were killed by Israeli forces’ attacks.
Hecht told reporters that the camp residents had some idea that they were about to be attacked, but that the decision to launch an airstrike on the camp’s heart had caught them by surprise.
He emphasised that the forces were still inside the camp, but that they were searching for “specific targets” rather than “trying to hold ground.”
Hecht stated, “We are still seizing weapons and ammunitions,” adding that there was no set end date for the operation.
In response to “an Arab mobilisation to counter the Israeli attack on Jenin,” the Arab League has announced that an emergency meeting will be held on Tuesday.
Since last year, violence between Israelis and Palestinians has worsened, and it has gotten much worse under Netanyahu’s coalition administration, which includes extremist right-wing friends.
The Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmud Abbas, exercises limited administrative authority in the Jenin area.
Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel has occupied the West Bank.
Approximately 490,000 Israelis now live in settlements illegal under international law on the territory, excluding annexed east Jerusalem.
The Palestinians, who demand their own sovereign nation, demand that Israel vacate all territory occupied since 1967 and destroy all Jewish settlements.
But Netanyahu has vowed to “strengthen settlements” and has shown no interest in resuming peace talks, which have been dormant since 2014.
According to Jordan, Israel’s raid was a direct breach of international humanitarian law and its occupying power responsibilities.
Two Palestinian gunmen killed four Israelis near the West Bank village of Eli a month after the Jenin raid. They shot the attackers to death.
Israeli officials claimed that three members of a West Bank “terrorist cell” were killed in a drone strike the previous week.
An AFP calculation based on official sources from both sides puts the death toll for this year at at least 185 Palestinians, 25 Israelis, 1 Ukrainian, and 1 Italian.
They consist of fighters and civilians on the Palestinian side, and largely Israeli civilians with the exception of three Arab minority members.
