The Israeli army has launched a massive simultaneous offensive in three areas of the northern West Bank, which it plans to continue for several days and has already left 10 Palestinians dead. Foreign Minister Israel Katz speaks of a “war” and calls for action as in Gaza, “including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and any other measures that may be necessary.” Hundreds of soldiers have been taking part since dawn in what Israel calls an “anti-terrorist operation” supported by combat helicopters, drones and military vehicles.
Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometres away, near the Syrian-Lebanese border, a drone killed three militants from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and a fourth from Hezbollah, by pulverising their vehicle with a missile. The Israeli army – which does not usually confirm or deny such operations – acknowledged that the target was a recruiting commander for the Islamic Jihad, Faris Qasim.
In Jenin, armoured vehicles are blocking access to hospitals and soldiers are searching each ambulance, which has collected two bodies. Two airstrikes have caused the other eight. One on a vehicle in a nearby village, Seir, and another on the Fara refugee camp in the town of Tubas. There are also 22 wounded, the Palestinian Red Crescent reported. The army claims to have killed “nine terrorists” and seized numerous weapons, and stresses that it does not intend to invade or evacuate the hospitals it has surrounded, but to prevent militants from entering there.
Minister Katz justified the military operation by saying that Tehran “is working to establish an eastern terrorist front against Israel in the West Bank, following the model of Gaza and Lebanon, by financing and arming terrorists and smuggling advanced weapons from Jordan.” “We must address the threat the same way we address the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza,” he wrote on X, the social network formerly called Twitter.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has cut short his official visit to Saudi Arabia – during which he already met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – to return to the West Bank city of Ramallah.
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The nine dead on Wednesday are joined by another five from the day before, adding to the bloody drift – overshadowed by the daily massacres and devastation in Gaza – in this territory that has been militarily occupied for more than half a century. It is, apparently, the beginning of one of the largest operations in the West Bank since the Second Intifada (2000-2005): in the midst of ceasefire talks in Gaza, after 40,500 corpses and almost eleven months of war; with a draw on the Lebanese front until the next clash with Hezbollah and awaiting the announced reprisal, separately, by Iran and the Houthi militia in Yemen for the double Israeli assassination of leaders of its allies Hamas and Hezbollah.
Even before October 7, the West Bank has been experiencing levels of violence unprecedented in two decades. Although localized, aerial bombardments have returned and “targeted killings” have skyrocketed. The frequency with which civilians are killed and violence is also increased by the most fundamentalist settlers, whose mobilization as reservists has also blurred the line between civilians and the military.
Palestinian deaths in the West Bank, mostly at the hands of soldiers, have exceeded 600 since October 7, 2023, almost twice a day. The Israeli army claims to have foiled hundreds of attack plots, which has kept the death toll of its nationals relatively low compared to the Second Intifada. There are 22 so far this year, half of them military, mostly stabbed or run over.
Hamas almost completely abandoned the large-scale suicide bombings in cafes and buses that marked the 1990s and 2000s two decades ago, and won the election after the end of the Second Intifada. Last week, however, it announced the return to the forefront of “martyrdom operations,” after admitting that it tried to detonate a bomb in Tel Aviv, apparently in a synagogue. The device only killed its carrier, exploding prematurely.
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