Violence erupts in West Bank as settlers attack, Israel raids Jenin

Just days after a ceasefire took hold in Gaza, bringing relative calm to the Palestinian enclave, violence flared in the occupied West Bank: On Tuesday, Israeli forces launched a major military operation targeting militants in Jenin, killing 10 people and injuring more than three dozen, according to local health officials.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the campaign, named “Operation Iron Wall,” would be “extensive and significant.”

“We are acting methodically and with determination,” he said in a statement, linking the offensive to Israel’s wider battle against Iranian-backed groups in the region, including in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both of which are supported by Iran, vowed to fight back. In a statement, Islamic Jihad accused Israel of launching the attack “after its failure to achieve its goals in Gaza.”

Israeli military and security forces frequently target Jenin; its restive refugee camp is one of the poorest in the West Bank and has long served as a bastion of armed resistance in the occupied territory. The raids escalated after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel and often involve a combination of airstrikes and ground troops, leaving large-scale destruction in their wake.

Last year was the second-deadliest for Palestinians in the West Bank since the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs began collecting statistics in 2005, with Israeli forces killing 487 Palestinians. Palestinians killed 34 Israelis in the West Bank and Israel during that period, OCHA says. Attacks by Palestinian militants on Israeli troops using improvised explosive devices, as well as shootings and stabbings carried out by Palestinians inside Israel, have also increased.

The assault Tuesday came after Israel said it would beef up its military presence during the Gaza ceasefire, which began on Sunday and includes the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners to the West Bank. For the first time in decades, the military plans to deploy Eitan armored personnel carriers with a brigade that fought in Gaza, Israeli daily Israel Hayom reported this week.

It also appeared to end a weeks-long security operation by the Palestinian Authority, the body that governs the Palestinian-controlled parts of the West Bank, which launched its own campaign in Jenin in December.

The tactical goal of that operation was to arrest militants the Palestinian Authority viewed as threats, but it was also widely seen as a chance for Palestinian security forces to demonstrate their capabilities as Israel, the United States and others consider a postwar future for Gaza.

But after more than 45 days in which the Palestinian Authority besieged the refugee camp, residents said most of those who were arrested were civilians related to the wanted fighters, or simply young men caught in the dragnet. When Washington Post reporters visited the camp last week, security forces remained on its outskirts, unable to penetrate the warren of crowded buildings — and militants roamed freely.

Both militants and civilians said last week that they expected Israeli forces to use the Gaza ceasefire as an opportunity to double down on military action in the West Bank, particularly after what Israeli officials and Palestinian fighters alike saw as the failure of the authority’s operation there.

When the Palestinian Authority retreats, Nour Eddin al-Bitawi, head of Islamic Jihad in Jenin, said in an interview last month, Israeli forces will return “in a fiercer, more violent and uglier form than in previous raids.”

A Palestinian security vehicle was filmed leaving the area of the camp as Israeli military vehicles advanced Tuesday. In a statement, a spokesman for the Palestinian security forces, Brig. Gen. Anwar Rajab, sought to distance the authority from Israel’s operation, saying Israeli forces had opened fire on civilians and security forces, injuring several officers, one of whom was in critical condition.

As of 9 p.m. local time, 10 people had been killed and about 40 injured by Israeli airstrikes and gunfire in the Jenin area, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry. One of the dead was a 16-year-old boy, Moataz Imad Abu Tabikh. It was unclear whether the people were involved in militant activity.

“After Gaza and Lebanon, today, with God’s help, we began a shift in our security policy in Judea and Samaria and a campaign to eliminate terrorism in the region,” far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote Tuesday on X, using the biblical name for the West Bank.

Smotrich opposed the Gaza ceasefire deal but said his Religious Zionism party, which reflects the views of extremist settlers, requested that Israel’s cabinet include a West Bank counterterrorism campaign among its official war objectives.

The operation started just hours after a group of Israeli settlers rampaged through several Palestinian villages, torching homes and businesses and vandalizing vehicles, according to Palestinian and Israeli authorities, as well as human rights groups. Israeli forces also erected additional checkpoints and closed roads across the West Bank, snarling traffic and limiting the ability of Palestinian residents to move from town to town.

“This is not what a ceasefire looks like,” Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said in a statement. “Far from holding its fire against Palestinians, Israel’s actions demonstrate it has no intention of doing so. Instead, it is merely shifting its focus from Gaza to other areas it controls in the West Bank.”

Dozens of settlers attacked Palestinian communities overnight, injuring 21 people in two villages, according to the Palestinian prime minister’s office. The Israel Defense Forces said dozens of Israeli civilians, some masked, instigated riots around the village of Funduq and that settlers had also attacked Israeli security forces.

The attacks began Sunday in several West Bank villages, after Israeli officials warned Palestinians not to celebrate prisoner releases that are part of the Gaza ceasefire deal, and settlers called for attacks on places where Palestinian “detainees are returning.”

An initial group of 90 Palestinian prisoners — mostly women and minors — were freed early Monday, in exchange for three Israeli women held hostage by Hamas in Gaza.

The Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din accused the settlers of trying to sabotage the ceasefire, which their hard-right leaders staunchly oppose. The group also noted that President Donald Trump, shortly after assuming office Monday, had rescinded Biden-era sanctions against extremist Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of violence against Palestinians.

In the village of Jinsafut on Tuesday, residents took stock of the damage: a truck, tractor, cars and a forklift burned; a store and plant nursery damaged. The night before, Maher Galim, 56, watched as about 50 to 60 settlers descended on the agricultural community and set fire to whatever they could reach.

He didn’t know what the villagers had done to deserve this. “These are innocent people,” Galim said of the villagers. “Not a single person was arrested here for terror.”

Ali Beleh, whose truck was burned, said the attack was particularly perplexing because he regularly delivered goods to nearby settlements and had professional relationships with people there.

He said Israeli soldiers stood by and watched as the settlers burned his truck. “They didn’t let me come and put out the fire,” Beleh said.

The ultimate irony, he added: His truck had been full of building supplies destined for some of the most hard-line settlements.

The military and police opened a joint internal probe into the incidents Monday night, the army said in a statement.

“All violent riots harm security,” the commanding officer in the West Bank, Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, said during a visit to the site of the attacks. “And the IDF will not allow this.”

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