Israel’s military pressed on Tuesday with an operation it says is aimed at targeting militants, but which drew international alarm over the fate of civilians in the Jenin refugee camp.
JENIN, West Bank — Israel has launched its largest military operation in the occupied West Bank in some 20 years, sending streams of civilians fleeing and raising fears of a significant escalation after months of rising violence.
Israel’s military pressed on Tuesday with an operation it says is aimed at targeting militants — a massive raid involving drones and troops that left at least 10 people dead and dozens more injured, according to Palestinian health officials.
Thousands of residents fled the Jenin refugee camp, which Israel says is a militant stronghold, as the deadly raid entered its second day and bulldozers reduced parts of the sprawling area to rubble.
The operation follows months of intensifying incursions by Israeli troops into the West Bank city, and as the country’s far-right government faces domestic pressure to crack down after a spate of attacks against Israeli settlers.
International organizations including the United Nations have voiced concern at the assault, including its strikes on populated areas and access for emergency services.
‘They wanted to terrify us’
Hundreds of Israeli troops, some traveling in armored vehicles and bulldozers, entered the area Monday backed by drone strikes. Streets usually home to bustling crowds were deserted, instead marked by burning tires and debris-strewn road blocks.
Israel says it’s allowing people to leave, and the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said as many as 3,000 people had fled by midnight. But some local residents complained that ambulances were not able to reach injured people because the military operation was blocking their path.
“There are no paved roads inside the camp, the streets are filled with water, and the number of injuries is increasing,” said Ahmad Jibril, the head of the Palestinian Red Crescent.
“The Israeli bulldozers destroyed everything in its sight,” said Abdel Nasser Abu Obeid, 50, who lives about 100 yards from the camp. “They wanted to terrify us,” the father of four told US.Mistertruth News.
“If someone gets shot in his leg or his arm, it takes the ambulance an hour to reach them because of the army,” said Ali Salahat, 24, who has relatives in the camp, which is home to some 14,000. “We couldn’t reach the camp. We can’t enter it or even get near it because the occupation jeeps are located all around the vicinity.”
The Palestinian Health Ministry said that 10 people were confirmed dead by Tuesday morning. The Israeli military has said all were militants, without providing details.
Israel says it is targeting the refugee camp because it is home to Palestinians responsible for a spate of attacks on Israeli citizens in recent months. Early Tuesday, Israeli forces said they had been able to find and seize weapons and explosives as well as destroy tunnels and command posts.
“In recent months, Jenin has turned into a safe haven for terrorism. We are putting an end to this,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, adding that the operation was being carried out with “minimum harm to civilians.”
Some Palestinians say this violence is a consequence of more than 50 years of occupation by Israeli forces. They observed a general strike across the West Bank in protest.
International alarm
The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank condemned the raid and said late Monday it would freeze its few remaining points of cooperation with Israel, as well as minimizing contact with Israel’s main benefactor, the United States.
A State Department spokesperson said it supported Israel’s “right to defend its people” against “terrorist groups.” Meanwhile they cautioned it was “imperative to take all possible precautions to prevent the loss of civilian lives” and urged “Israeli and Palestinian security forces to work together to improve the security situation in the West Bank.”
International bodies have also expressed concern.
U.N. Mideast envoy Tor Wennesland warned that the escalation in the West Bank was “very dangerous.”
Lynn Hastings, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in the Palestinian areas, tweeted that she was “alarmed” by the “scale of Israeli forces operation” and noted the airstrikes in a densely populated refugee camp. She said the U.N. was mobilizing humanitarian aid.
Some commentators inside Israel have also suggested that the move may be an attempt at pleasing members of the country’s far right-led government, which is dominated by West Bank settlers and their supporters.
“Proud of our heroes on all fronts and this morning especially of our soldiers operating in Jenin,” tweeted National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist who recently called for Israel to kill thousands of militants if necessary. “Praying for their success.”
Israeli forces routinely conduct raids in the occupied West Bank even though the Palestinian Authority has full control over administrative and security issues in the area.
More than 140 Palestinians have been killed this year in the West Bank, according to the Associated Press, part of more than a yearlong spike in violence that has seen some of the worst bloodshed in the area in nearly two decades. Palestinian attacks targeting Israelis have killed at least 26 people.
Israel says that most of those killed in recent raids have been militants but that others — including youths protesting the incursions and other people not involved in confrontations — have also died.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, territories the Palestinians seek for their hoped-for independent state, in the 1967 Mideast war.