Israeli army says it has withdrawn from West Bank city after deadly raid
The Israeli army said on Wednesday it had withdrawn from the West Bank town of Jenin after a large-scale raid that killed at least 12 Palestinians, killed one Israeli soldier and forced thousands to flee their homes.
Even as Palestinian militant groups celebrated the withdrawal of Israeli troops – initially confirmed by Israeli and Palestinian officials – sirens blared in Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip after five rockets were fired from the Palestinian enclave, the Israeli army said. No injuries were immediately reported, and the military said Israel’s air defense system had intercepts all five.
In response to the rocket fire, Israeli fighter jets struck what the military described as an underground Hamas facility used for weapons production and another location used by Hamas for weapons production. raw rocket materialsaccording to messages on Twitter. Hamas is the Palestinian militant faction that controls Gaza.
Israel’s chief military spokesman said Wednesday morning that the operation in Jenin targeting the refugee camp in the city was over. “All our troops are out of the camp,” Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari told Kan News, Israel’s public radio.
But he added that he expected the Israeli army to return to operate in the area in the future.
The Jenin operation, which began Monday with a rare use of airstrikes, was the largest Israel had conducted in the area in years. According to Israeli military records, the area has been the source of dozens of shooting attacks against Israelis. Jenin is a bastion for the Islamic Jihad and Hamas militant groups, but also home to newer armed militias that have sprung up and do not correspond to established organizations.
Four of the Palestinians killed were under the age of 18, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, and at least five were claimed as combatants by Palestinian militant groups, including a 16-year-old boy. At least 120 other people were injured, including 20 seriously, it said. the Ministry. said.
Amid the military operation, eight people were injured by a Palestinian driver in a car-ramming and stabbing attack in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, Israeli officials said. The attacker was shot and killed by a civilian, Israeli security officials said.
The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, identified the attacker as Abd al-Wahab Khalaila, a 20-year-old Palestinian from Samua, a small town in the south of the West Bank. Mr Khalaila had no previous security credentials, the agency said.
“We determined that because of our activities in Judea and Samaria, the motivation and potential for attacks would increase,” Israel’s police chief, Yaakov Shabtai, told reporters, using the Biblical name for the West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that the attack would not deter Israel “in our fight against terrorism”.
The military operation in Jenin and the attack in Tel Aviv added to tensions in the region after the most right-wing government in Israeli history came to power six months ago. Coalition government leaders pledged to expand Jewish settlements in occupied territory and to respond more harshly to violence as the Palestinian Authority has increasingly lost control of hotbeds of militancy in the occupied West Bank.
The military incursion had displaced people, with as many as 3,000 of the camp’s approximately 17,000 residents seeking shelter in schools and other public buildings, or with families elsewhere. The sun rose Tuesday in deserted alleys in the Jenin refugee camp, a usually busy neighborhood bordering the West Bank city that was the center of the raid.
“We were huddled together in the middle of our house, terrified that a missile could hit us at any moment,” said Omar Obeid, 60, a camp resident who fled the fighting late Monday night with his children.
About 1,000 Israeli troops searched the camp on Tuesday after previously finding and seizing weapons, explosives and other military equipment, the Israeli army said, adding that its troops had also destroyed explosives production laboratories.
Clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants intensified Tuesday night after a relatively quiet period of scattered gunfights. The Israeli army said its air force hit Palestinian militants on the outskirts of the city, while Palestinian officials accused Israeli soldiers of firing tear gas at a hospital. The Israelis denied any attacks near hospitals.
Mr. Netanyahu said late Tuesday afternoon, while visiting an army base near Jenin, that the operation was in its final stages. “Right now we are completing the mission,” he said.
Analysts and former Israeli army generals said it was in Israel’s interest to complete the operation as soon as possible to prevent escalation in Jenin and to prevent tensions from spilling over into other areas, such as the Hamas-led area of Gaza. which could lead to a bigger conflict.
The UN Security Council will meet on Friday to discuss the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories at the request of the United Arab Emirates. according to a UN message on Twitter.
Long a militant stronghold, Jenin was at the center of escalating tensions and violence in the year leading up to Monday morning’s raid. As the army continued its operation there, Israeli television reported that the attack on civilians in Tel Aviv injured a pregnant woman, who lost her baby,
Security camera footage broadcast on Israeli television shows a car crashing into a curb in a residential area in the north of the city. The driver then exits his car and chases and stabs at passersby, brandishing a heavy object. Three people are in serious condition, police said.
Hamas claimed Mr. Khalaila as a member and praised the attack as a response to “the aggression of the Zionist occupation in Jenin”. But Palestinian groups have been known to claim membership or publicly pay tribute to all those killed by Israel, and Hamas has stopped taking direct responsibility for the attack.
Leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad issued statements later on Tuesday declaring victory as signs of an Israeli withdrawal emerged.
Israeli officials said the latest military incursion was not intended to capture or hold territory in Jenin. Chief military spokesman Admiral Hagari said on Tuesday that 120 wanted men have been arrested and are being questioned by security forces.
“There is no point in the camp that we have not reached, including the core,” Admiral Hagari said wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning. He said each of the military units operating in the camp was given a set of defined targets to search for during the day, adding: “If we get into friction with terrorists, we will fight them.”
Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior Palestinian Authority official, had called on the international community, including the United States, to “intervene immediately” to “stop Israeli aggression and force Israel to immediately withdraw from Jenin and his camp”, warned of the displacement of large numbers of residents.
The Palestinian Authority announced it was cutting off all contact with Israel over the Jenin raid.
The Israeli operation began shortly after 1 a.m. Monday with drone strikes, a new tactic employed by Israel in the West Bank. The attacks were the most intense use of air power in the occupied territory for about two decades.
Israel said all Palestinians killed so far were fighters. The Palestinian authorities have not specified whether the dead were all combatants or also civilians.
An Israeli army spokesman also said on Twitter that a soldier had been there killed “by gunfire” during the military operation on Tuesday evening.
Some Palestinian officials said Israel had threatened the camp residents and forced them to leave their homes.
“Houses have been demolished, people have been broken into and people have been driven from their own homes,” Jenin Mayor Nidal Obeidi told the Voice of Palestine radio station on Tuesday.
Israeli officials denied carrying out forced evacuations, but confirmed that some residents had received text messages from Israeli numbers advising them to temporarily evacuate their homes.
Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting from Rehovot, Israel; Myra Noveck from Jerusalem; And Iyad Abuheweila from Gaza City.