Israel launched a large-scale air and ground military operation early this morning in Jenin, a stronghold of Palestinian militias in the northern occupied West Bank. which has so far left eight dead and fifty wounded, after two weeks of speculation about a major military campaign, unprecedented in the area since the Second Intifada (2000-05).
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The operation, in which more than a thousand soldiers are involved, is an “extensive anti-terrorist effort” and will last “as long as necessary”, according to the spokesman for the Israeli Army, Richard Hecht, although experts predict that it could end tonight or tomorrow. .
After detaining more than twenty suspects, Israeli troops continue to operate inside the Jenin refugee camp -militarily controlled by the Jenin Brigade, which brings together all the militias in the area-, during more than fifteen hours of incursion since that it began early in the morning with aerial bombardments from drones on “terrorist targets”.
Lhe operation, baptized “House and Garden”, has so far claimed the lives of eight Palestinians, five militants and three minors, and has left fifty injured, ten of them in serious condition, confirmed the Palestinian Ministry of Health. A 21-year-old was killed by Israeli fire in a separate incident in Al Bireh.
“Focus of terrorism”
“The Jenin camp is the main focus of terrorism in the area,” Hecht said, explaining that in the past half year, when the Palestinian attacks intensified, more than 50 attempted shootings have been carried out. by militants based in Jenin, where some 19 “terrorists” are also hiding fled from other areas of the West Bank.
The Jenin camp was the scene of a well-known raid during the Second Intifada in 2002, which killed 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers after 10 days of fighting; a symbol for Palestinian resistance.
Today, first the Israeli Army has carried out selective assassinations and attacked military installations of the Palestinian groups with drones -used in the last twenty years only for surveillance in the West Bank-, and then, it has entered the Jenin camp, where armed clashes broke out with militants in the camp, where some 20,000 Palestinians live, and more than a thousand militants.
At the moment, the fighting is concentrated around the mosque of the refugee camp, where a group of militiamen was entrenched who were shooting at Israeli troops, who responded with a drone attack to “eliminate that threat”.
“In the last few hours we have dealt a heavy blow to the terrorist organizations in Jenin with impressive operational achievements,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said after a mid-day assessment of the situation in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participated. .
For its part, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) condemned the operation as “a war crime” and urged the international community to take action against Israel, while Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called an emergency meeting with the ” Palestinian leadership”.
militias threaten
Meanwhile, Palestinian militias in Gaza, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad (YIP), warned that the continuation of the military operation in Jenin will lead to a “broad escalation” and vowed to “respond to Israeli aggression.”
The large-scale operation comes after Netanyahu met his security cabinet last night to discuss the situation in the West Bank, and after weeks of pressure from the far-right and the settler movement to launch a major campaign on “hot spots”. terror”, identified as Jenin and Nablus.
In another incursion two weeks ago in Jenin – which lasted 9 hours and left 7 Palestinians dead – the Army used combat helicopters for the first time in almost two decades as a diversionary maneuver; and three days later it launched the first drone air strike on that territory since 2006, for the “targeted assassination” of three militiamen from the Jenin Brigade who were in a car.
Between the two episodes, two Hamas members carried out an attack on the Eli settlement, killing four settlers, which followed days of settler attacks on Palestinian villages that left extensive damage and one death; further raising the tension in the area.
The West Bank is experiencing its highest peak of violence since the Second Intifada and during 2023, 151 Palestinians have died in the framework of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, most of them militants in armed clashes with Israeli troops, but also civilians, including 26 minors. In parallel, the area has seen the proliferation of new Palestinian armed groups, which carry out more and more attacks and have left 25 dead on the Israeli side, most of them settlers and five of them minors.
EFE
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