Israel Raids West Bank, Killing at Least Eight

The Israeli military launched what appeared to be its largest operation in the occupied West Bank in more than two decades, targeting what it said were armed Palestinian militants with a deadly aerial and ground assault.

At least eight Palestinians were killed and 50 more injured in the city of Jenin and a nearby refugee camp, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Monday, with the number expected to rise.

The Israeli military said it was conducting “an extensive counterterrorism effort” targeting gunmen and a facility for producing weapons and storing explosive devices. It said in a statement it had confiscated an improvised rocket launcher, among other weapons.

Deadly Israeli raids into Palestinian cities have become frequent over the past year, but the use of airstrikes and drones has been rare. Last month, Israeli military helicopters fired in the direction of Palestinian militants during a gunbattle with Israeli ground troops in Jenin—the first helicopter fire in the West Bank in years.

Tensions across the West Bank have risen since a series of attacks by Palestinians and Arab Israelis—including several from the Jenin area—left 19 dead inside Israel between March and May 2022. The Israeli army responded by launching Operation Wave Breaker, in which the army stepped up its raids into Palestinian areas to break up suspected militant cells and foil imminent attacks.

Jenin has re-emerged as a stronghold of Palestinian militancy in the West Bank, two decades after Israeli invaded the sprawling refugee camp there with tanks and helicopters and flattened homes in response to the second Intifada. In May of last year, a prominent Palestinian-American journalist was shot and killed during an Israeli incursion in Jenin.

Since the start of 2023, more than 150 Palestinians, mostly militants but also children and elderly civilians, have been killed by Israeli forces and civilians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials. More than 20 Israelis and foreigners, nearly all civilians, have been killed by Palestinian attackers, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal.

The latest assault began with airstrikes soon after midnight, the Palestinian Authority’s official WAFA news agency said, citing local sources. Dozens of Israeli military vehicles and several hundred troops then entered the area, it said, using bulldozers that prevented the movement of cars and ambulances.

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority is struggling to control the city, having failed to confiscate weapons and facing pressure from a variety of militant groups.

“This continuous aggression against our people…will drag the region into a spiral of violence and instability,” tweeted Hussein al-Sheikh, one of the most senior Palestinian officials in the West Bank.

Sheikh said he had spoken with Jordan’s foreign minister about gathering international pressure to stop the assault.

A mosque in the Gaza Strip, which is run by Palestinian militant group Hamas, on Monday mourned fighters killed in Jenin. Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, said on Telegram that its fighters were battling alongside other Palestinian factions and claimed to have destroyed at least one Israeli vehicle.

—Fatima AbdulKarim contributed to this article.

Write to Stephen Kalin at [email protected]