At Least 10 Killed as Israel Launches Major Military Operation in the West Bank
Raids and airstrikes were carried out by Israeli military forces in several parts of occupied West Bank on Wednesday morning, an assault that, according to Israel, was one of the most extensive operations in years and had killed at least 11 Palestinians. The MOP said it conducted “an extended counter-terror operation” with the Israel Security Agency overnight in Jenin and Tulkarem areas in the north of the West Bank.
Preliminary reports said this was a multi-faceted major Israeli operation, involving unmanned drones and military bulldozers, military and security forces, four battalions of the Israel Border Police, undercover elite troops. Video supplied to CNN showed bulldozers demolishing a street in a built-up part of Tulkarem, and others entering Jenin in convoy. Israel’s military also released additional footage purporting to show a strike on a militant operations room in the Nur Shams refugee camp near the West Bank city of Tulkarem.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz of Israel said the operation had been staged to “thwart Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructure.” Katz claimed. “We must take up the challenge precisely like what we did with the terrorist structure in Gaza Strip, including the removal of Palestinians for a certain period and whatever else is needed,” he wrote on social media. “This is a war in all words and meanings, and we have to win it.”
The operation comes as Israel steps up military operations in the West Bank, where clashes have grown routine since Israel began its war in Gaza in response to an Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas. Lt.-Col. Nadav Shoshani, the IDF’s international spokesperson, said that Israel had exposed “a systematic strategy in Iran” to smuggle weapons and explosives into the West Bank in a briefing.
“Specifically, about Jenin and Tulkarm, we’ve seen more than 150 shooting and explosive attacks emanate from these areas alone in the past year,” Shoshani said on Wednesday. The foreign ministry of the Palestinian Authority, for its part, has condemned “all violations and crimes” committed by Israel, “particularly the war of genocide that continues to be committed in the Gaza Strip and the targeting of the northern West Bank.”
Preliminary reports by PRCS stipulated that the Palestinian deaths happened in the towns of Tubas and Jenin; then, the Ministry of Health came with a report that one Palestinian was killed by gunfire in the town of Kafr Dan, Jenin district. Now, at least 11 people are dead, per a new statement from the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Of those killed in Jenin, at least two were as a result of Israeli military fire, while another three others were killed in a drone strike on a vehicle on the outskirts of Jenin, the PRCS said. It added that one was critically injured in the strike.
On Wednesday, the United Nations chief urged Israel to immediately stop its military operation in the West Bank. It was “fuelling an already explosive situation in the occupied West Bank and further undermining the Palestinian Authority”, UN chief Antonio Guterres said in a statement via his spokesperson.
“Only an end to the occupation and a return to a meaningful political process that will establish a two-state solution will bring an end to the violence,” Guterres posted on X. On X, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said, “Israel’s operation must not constitute the premises of a war extension from Gaza, including full-scale destruction.”
The comparison by the Israeli foreign minister of the operation with Gaza-in particular, the evacuation of the Palestinians-“is threatening to further fuel instability,” he added.
