Israel is carrying out a violent raid in Jenin just as a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip was approved [Getty/file photo]
Israeli forces continued their violent military campaign in the West Bank’s Jenin for a second consecutive day, where at least 10 people were killed.
Forty others have been wounded in Israel’s so-called “Iron Wall” operation, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Israeli forces have also been blocking ambulances from reaching the wounded, it added.
Military vehicles stormed the city at dawn on Wednesday, while online footage showed bulldozers heading towards Jenin.
“[Palestinians] were scattered in the streets surrounding the hospital and inside its departments, amid a difficult humanitarian situation, and some of them are in the open without shelter or tents,” public relations officer Bashir Matahin told the Turkish Anadolu agency.
Matahin said the Jenin Municipality building has also said it will open its headquarters to receive the displaced from the camp.
Since Tuesday, the Israeli army, along with the Shin Bet intelligence services and the Border Police, launched a deadly military operation in the West Bank city.
Israel claims it is carrying out the operation against the Jenin Brigades, and says it is targeting the group as part of its ongoing action against the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance”.
It also said that saying that its goals were to maintain “operational freedom” in the West Bank and target “terrorist infrastructure” and “ticking bombs”, while far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said the attacks “marked a start in a campaign to protect Israeli settlements in the West Bank”.
Jenin’s governor Kamal Abu al-Rub said that Israel wants to turn the governorate into a “miniature, destroyed Gaza,” and that Israel seeks to paint an image of the West Bank as unstable and marred with violence.
Meanwhile, Gaza-based Palestinian groups Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) have called on the West Bank’s Palestinians to join in the fighting against the Israeli army.
In a Telegram statement, Hamas urged Palestinians to “mobilise and intensify resistance action against the occupation forces and militias of settlers, and support Jenin and all provinces”.
The groups also mourned those killed in Jenin by Israeli forces, praising “the bravery of the resistance fighters, their confrontation and clashes with the occupation soldiers”.
In response to Israel’s latest violent conduct in the West Bank, the UN’s special rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, warned that Israel’s genocide of Palestinians “will not be confined to Gaza” if its forces aren’t forced to stop its violence in the West Bank.
“As the long-awaited ceasefire in Gaza took place, Israel’s death machinery escalated its firing in the West Bank, killing 10 people in Jenin [on Tuesday],” Albanese said in a post on X.
The operation comes days after a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip was approved. Analysts are pointing out that the Jenin escalation serves as a “distraction” from the truce, as it is viewed as a “domestic failure” of Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet.
Father of three shot, killed while driving
Also on Tuesday, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man in Jenin as he was driving his car with his wife and three children with him, Palestinian media and Anadolu said.
A video shared online shows Israeli soldiers shooting at the vehicle several times, prompting the panic-stricken family inside to scream and plead for help.
Another video showed the driver losing control of the car before crashing into the pavement as Israeli soldiers continuously fired at it.
The victim was identified as Ahmed Shaib, who, according to the director of public relations in the Jenin municipality, “was returning from a kindergarten with his children”.
Matahin said Shaib was “on the outskirts of the Jenin camp, heading to the commercial square in the city of Jenin, when he was shot by a sniper stationed at a military point in the area”.
Increased violence, arrests, checkpoints
Elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli forces shot and injured a Palestinian man in the Shuafat refugee camp, north of east Jerusalem.
Local media outlets published video clips showing Israeli border guards raiding the camp in large numbers, after which violent clashes erupted between young men and occupation forces inside the camp, eyewitnesses said.
The Israeli army fired bullets, tear gas, and sound bombs during their raid.
Israeli forces have gone on to arrest dozens of Palestinians throughout the occupied territory since Tuesday.
At least 25 people have been arrested, mostly men in their twenties and thirties, in the governorate of Bethlehem, Hebron, Jenin and Tulkarem, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said.
As part of its violent campaign in the West Bank, the Israeli army has restricted access to governorates across the occupied territory, tightening “security measures” at checkpoints and other entry points around Ramallah and al-Bireh.
Vehicles are experiencing mass traffic jams, lining up in their hundreds to enter or leave certain locations, while Palestinian workers are struggling to reach their place of work on time due to the tightened restrictions.
The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, a Palestinian government body, has reported that the number of Israeli military checkpoints and gates in the West Bank has risen to 898.
One Palestinian woman, Iman Mohammad Jaradat, died after the Israeli army prevented the ambulance transporting her from reaching the hospital at the Beit Einun checkpoint, northeast of Hebron, according to the Wafa agency.
The ministry of health said the 45-year-old had suffered heart attack symptoms, before dying due to Israeli forces’ obstruction.
