Residents of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, are taking stock after nine days of what they say has been the most intense and sustained Israeli military operation in their city since October 7. <\/p>\n
Witnesses describe it as a Gaza-style campaign, with widespread destruction of infrastructure, severed water and electricity supplies, and people rationing food for fear of going outside. It has been the deadliest period in the West Bank since November, according to the UN. <\/p>\n
The military withdrew from Jenin and Tulkarem on Friday, according to residents. But an Israeli security source said that \u201cthe overall operation in Jenin is not over, it is only a pause.\u201d <\/p>\n
Though the war in Gaza has attracted most attention, Israel\u2019s military has persistently and increasingly brought unsparing military tactics to the West Bank. <\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s security forces on August 28 launched what they dubbed a \u201ccounterterrorism operation\u201d in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas, in the northern West Bank. It has come to be known as Operation Summer Camps. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will not let terrorism in Judea and Samaria raise its head,\u201d the head of the Israel Defense Forces, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, said during a visit to Jenin over the weekend, using the biblical names for the West Bank commonly used in Israel. <\/p>\n
Residents say Jenin has been left transformed and scarred. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt like Gaza,\u201d 36-year-old Lina Al Amouri said by telephone from Jenin. She and her husband fled several days into the IDF incursion, but went back when they heard rumors that the operation had quieted. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we returned yesterday, we saw that all the streets were destroyed,\u201d she said. \u201cSoldiers were everywhere, continuing to bulldoze everything around them, not just the streets.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe heard many gunshots, and then we received news that my mother-in-law\u2019s nephew had been shot seven times near the camp. They let him bleed until he died and prevented ambulances from reaching him.\u201d <\/p>\n
The IDF has previously said that it often must impede ambulances to check for militants. <\/p>\n
Nearly 700 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah and the UN, whose figures do not distinguish between militants and civilians. <\/p>\n
Since the Israeli operation began last Wednesday, 39 Palestinians have been killed, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah reported. Among them were at least nine militants, according to public statements from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Eight children have also been killed according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. <\/p>\n
He left home on Friday to get food and attend Friday prayers. On his way back, Arafat said, he was gunned down in the street, where he lay for hours as he bled out. <\/p>\n
The Israeli military has severely restricted access to the city since its operation began, so international media have had to rely on residents, local journalists, and social media video for independent information about the operation. <\/p>\n
Journalists this week said that they were\u202ffired on\u202fby the Israeli military during a raid in Kafr Dan, near Jenin. Mohammed Mansour, a journalist for WAFA, was injured when the car he was driving was struck by gunfire, according to video of the aftermath and his employer. <\/p>\n
Armored bulldozers also daily used heavy duty plows to tear up roads. The military says this is necessary to unearth improvised explosive devices planted under the tarmac. But the tactic has caused significant infrastructure damage, leaving many roads impassable. <\/p>\n
The UN says that since October, Israeli authorities have \u201cdestroyed, demolished, confiscated, or forced the demolition\u201d of 1,478 structures in the West Bank. Jenin\u2019s mayor said that more than 70% of his city\u2019s critical infrastructure has been destroyed. <\/p>\n
While deadly ground raids in the West Bank were a regular occurrence before Hamas\u2019 brutal October 7 attack, air strikes \u2013 though not entirely unheard of \u2013 were extremely rare. When in July 2023 Israel used a drone to launch airstrikes as part of a large operation in Jenin, it made headlines around the world. Not a single Palestinian in the West bank was killed by an air strike in the preceding three years, according to the UN. <\/p>\n
Since October, such strikes have become a near-daily occurrence. And their use has dramatically ramped up in recent weeks. The UN says that of all deaths by Israeli air strikes since October, nearly a third came in August alone. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo place in Palestine is safe, not just Gaza,\u201d Health Minister Majed Abu Ramadan said during a visit to Jenin on Thursday \u2013 the first time a Palestinian official visited the city since Israel\u2019s operation began. \u201cWe witness the occupying enemy repeating the systematic destruction I saw before, targeting both human life and infrastructure.\u201d <\/p>\n
Brigadier General Nitzan Nuriel, who ran the counter-terrorism bureau of the Israeli Prime Minister\u2019s Office until 2012, and now serves in the reserves, said that Operation Summer Camps was launched to send a message to Israel\u2019s adversaries. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe message to the other side is, \u2018Don\u2019t play with us. Don\u2019t think that if we are very much down in the south and probably we are going to be busy up in the north, we will not be able to take care of what\u2019s going in Judea and Samaria.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
The Israeli military, Halevi said during his visit to Jenin, will go \u201ccity to city, camp to camp, with excellent intelligence, very good operational capabilities, very strong aerial intelligence support, and above all, with very moral and determined soldiers and commanders.\u201d <\/p>\n
Duha Turkman, 18 years old, sheltered with her sister at an aunt\u2019s house for a week when the operation began, too scared to go outside because of the Israeli snipers they saw on surrounding rooftops. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe tried to conserve food as much as we could,\u201d she said. \u201cWe were eating very little, had no water, and no electricity.\u201d <\/p>\n
Suddenly, on the seventh day, Israeli soldiers burst through their door, she said. A video taken by Turkman shows shrapnel pockmarking the stairwell of the house. They soon fled to an uncle\u2019s house elsewhere in the city. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we look at Gaza, we realize that we have been going through this for nine days, and it is already incredibly difficult for us,\u201d she said. \u201cWe can only imagine what the people in Gaza are enduring. The situation here mirrors Gaza with airstrikes, bulldozing, and it doesn\u2019t seem like the situation will change anytime soon.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Residents of Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, are taking stock after nine days of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7614,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}