The West Bank is experiencing the most violent days in recent times as a result of an operation launched by Israeli forces in the north of the occupied territories on Wednesday, which has left at least 12 Palestinians dead, according to the Israel Defense Forces. The Palestinian Ministry of Health has raised the death toll to 16.
Israeli security forces said they had launched an “anti-terrorist operation” in Jenin and Tulkarem in the northern occupied West Bank early Wednesday morning and had so far killed “five armed terrorists from the air and ground.”
They also reported that four others were killed in an airstrike during a simultaneous operation in al-Faraa refugee camp near Tubas.
Despite calls from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for Israel to halt an operation that “is pouring fuel on an already explosive situation,” Israeli military actions in the West Bank continue.
Local journalists said they had not seen anything of this magnitude and scale in the West Bank since the days of the second Palestinian intifada, the mass uprising against Israeli occupation that took place between 2000 and 2005. The recent operation is considered the largest Israeli military operation in the West Bank since then.
There has been a surge in violence in the West Bank since Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on October 7 and the ensuing war in Gaza.
Where is the West Bank and who controls it?
The West Bank is located west of the Jordan River and east of Jerusalem.
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, approximately 3.2 million people live in the area. Most of them are Palestinians, although there are also many Jews living in settlements considered illegal under international law.
The founders of modern Israel agreed in 1947 that most of the West Bank should become part of a future Palestinian state. However, Israel abandoned this plan after being attacked by neighbouring Arab countries and engaging in several wars with them.
Jordan occupied the area after a ceasefire in 1950, but Israeli troops seized it in the 1967 Six-Day War and it came under military occupation.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Israel established settlements there, sparking resentment among the Arab population and protests from the international community.
Palestinians organized uprisings in the West Bank from 1987 to 1993, and from 2000 to 2005.
Jordan renounced its claim to the West Bank in 1988. Following the Oslo Accords in 1993, the Palestinian National Authority has administered part of the area, while the remainder is under direct Israeli control.
Both Israel and the Palestinians claim rights to the area, but after decades and several failed attempts at negotiations, the dispute remains unresolved.
Where did Israel carry out its operation and why does it say it was necessary?
Israeli forces have simultaneously stormed at least four Palestinian towns in the occupied West Bank: Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus and Tubas, along with nearby refugee camps.
Palestinian media reported that major roads into Jenin were closed and gun battles were reported in the city’s refugee camp. An Israeli army spokesman said “large forces” had entered the city.
Palestinian sources say Israeli troops entered a hospital in Jenin at dawn and blocked access to two other hospitals in Tulkarem.
In Nablus, the military focused on two refugee camps.
At Far’a camp near Tubas, several people were injured in what local sources described as an Israeli drone strike, and Israeli troops were reported to have entered a Red Crescent medical facility there.
Israeli officials reported that nine “armed terrorists” were killed.
At the Nur Shams camp in Tulkarem, Israeli troops surrounded the compound and one resident said there were “multiple points of confrontation.”
Another resident said troops blocked roads leading out of the camp to inspect the identity cards of everyone leaving.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had been “operating in full force since last night in the Jenin and Tulkarem refugee camps to dismantle the Iranian-Islamic terror infrastructures established there.”
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said troops in Jenin and Tulkarem have been carrying out “intelligence-guided counter-terrorism operations” to prevent attacks on civilians.
Since the Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7, Israel has carried out operations in the West Bank almost every day.
What has been the Palestinian response to the operations?
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in the West Bank has urged the international community to help protect hospitals in Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas.
In a statement issued on Wednesday morning, the ministry called for help from the “international community and the Red Cross” and accused the Israeli army of blocking access to ambulances, which “constitutes a flagrant violation” of humanitarian law.
Palestinian authorities reported that the Israeli army closed the roads leading to Ibn Sina Hospital and surrounded Khalil Suleiman Hospital and the headquarters of the Red Crescent and the Friends of Patients society.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has cut short a trip to Saudi Arabia to monitor the situation in the West Bank, Palestinian media reported.
How has the international community reacted?
The UN Secretary-General has called on the Israeli government to end its operations in the West Bank.
The UN Human Rights Office has condemned the “increasingly military response” by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.
The Office says the recent Israeli military operation in the West Bank is being conducted “in a manner that violates international law and risks escalating an already explosive situation.”
“The violence between the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and armed Palestinians in the West Bank does not constitute an armed conflict under international humanitarian law,” the statement said, adding that “the use of force in the West Bank must comply with human rights standards.”
The UN reported last week that 128 Palestinians, including 26 children, had been killed in Israeli airstrikes in the West Bank since October 7.
In total, 607 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in the same period, he added. 11 of them were killed by Israeli settler actions.
What is the situation in the refugee camps in the West Bank?
There are several refugee camps in the West Bank housing tens of thousands of Palestinians whose families were displaced from their homes in what is now Israel.
The camps have high levels of poverty and unemployment, especially among young people.
These, and Jenin in particular, have become bases for many new Palestinian militant groups, explains BBC diplomatic correspondent Paul Adams, and the recent Israeli operation has been an attempt to suppress them.
Israel believes Iran has been helping to form new armed groups in the West Bank, with funding and weapons, to keep Israel cornered on as many fronts as possible, Adams says.
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