Israeli forces have besieged a Palestinian government hospital in Jenin and a nearby refugee camp in the heart of the city, as the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said the assault marked “a shift in … security strategy” in the West Bank.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Wednesday they had carried out airstrikes in Jenin as well as detonating roadside explosive devices. The Palestinian health ministry said at least 10 people had been killed in Jenin, and more than 40 wounded.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said its ambulances had been prevented from reaching many of the dead and wounded who lay in the streets of neighbourhoods around the Jenin refugee camp.
“No one can break the siege on the refugee camp and the surrounding area,” said Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent. Their medics had treated seven fatalities and 17 wounded people, all injured with live ammunition, she added.
The escalating Israeli raid on Jenin continued despite the recent ceasefire in Gaza, pausing an Israeli assault on the territory that had continued for 15 months after the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israeli towns and kibbutzim around Gaza.
With the ceasefire in Gaza coming into effect less than a week ago, Israeli forces indicated the start of a renewed military operation across the West Bank.
Wissam Bakr, the head of Khalil Suleiman governmental hospital in Jenin, said: “The current situation is awful. Israeli forces destroyed the roads in front of the hospital. They put the rubble from the destroyed streets in front of hospital exits to prevent ambulances from entering or leaving.”
He estimated that 600 medical staff and patients were sheltering inside the hospital, fearfully crammed on any beds, chairs or spaces they could find. Supplies of food and water in the hospital would only last a few days. An Israeli drone had been audible, he said, terrifying the people huddled in the hospital.
Two nurses and three doctors had been shot on the main road leading to the hospital on Tuesday, he added.
“Until now Israeli forces are outside,” Bakr said, sending an image of an Israeli military bulldozer appearing to clear some of the rubble at the entrance to the hospital complex. The sound of gunfire was intermittently audible over the phone as he spoke.
The escalation in Jenin came as Israeli forces choked off entrances and exits to Palestinian cities across the West Bank using checkpoints. In the early hours of Wednesday, Israeli soldiers also launched a raid on the Aida refugee camp located north of Bethlehem and in Tulkarm. The Palestinian news agency Wafa said at least 29 people were arrested across the West Bank on Wednesday morning, most of them young men.
A committee within the Palestinian Liberation Organisation tracking Israeli activity in the territory reported that the IDF had increased the number of military checkpoints and iron gates, reaching almost 900. The IDF did not comment on the precise number of new checkpoints.
Its international spokesperson, Lt Col Nadav Shoshani, told a press briefing on Wednesday: “Our method of combating terror, ensuring that terrorists cannot escape while still allowing civilians to move freely, relies heavily on checkpoints.
Checkpoints are a tool we use in the fight against terror, enabling civilian movement while providing a layer of screening to prevent terrorists from escaping and undermining the operation.
‘‘This approach is far better than either closing off an area entirely or allowing terrorists unrestricted movement. During operations, specific checkpoints are usually established to prevent terrorist escape. This method is essential for balancing freedom of movement with security.”
Aseel Baidoun from Medical Aid for Palestinians, speaking from Ramallah, said: “For two days we have been experiencing an extensive military lockdown. The Israeli army has placed hundreds of new checkpoints that are making the movement between towns and cities almost impossible. People have reported delays at checkpoints averaging between six and eight hours.
“People are stuck in their towns and cities, unable to go to work,” she said. “It’s an open-air prison; we feel we cannot move around. If you want to go from Ramallah to Jericho it’s impossible, and it’s almost impossible to even reach nearby villages. There’s not only restrictions on movement but insane attacks from settlers.”
Shoshani called the military operations across the West Bank “precise operations to target and fight terrorists while enabling the civilian population to go on with their lives”.
Despite Jenin’s mayor, Mohammad Jarar, telling Wafa that Israeli forces had called on people from some Jenin neighbourhoods to evacuate using a loudspeaker, Shoshani labelled any reports of forced evacuations “fake news”.
Shoshani said: “We have to learn from 7 October, and not let terror groups regroup and rearm, and plan attacks a few hundred metres from us.”
Wafa reported that the Israeli army had also stormed several towns around Ramallah and El-Bireh, but no arrests or clashes were mentioned.
On Tuesday Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said: “After Gaza and Lebanon, today, with God’s help, we have begun to change the security concept in Judea and Samaria and in the campaign to eradicate terrorism in the region,” using the biblical name by which Israelis refer to the West Bank.
But Prof Yagil Levy of the Open University of Israel said: “There is no operational justification for action in the West Bank.”
A recent operation by the Palestinian Authority targeting Hamas in Jenin, while controversial for its perceived support to Israeli aims in the territory, showed that the authority was capable of retaining control in Jenin and in Gaza, he said.
Israel’s decision to launch a military operation in Jenin, Levy said, was intended to undermine the Palestinian Authority and its potential return in Gaza, to destabilise the West Bank and continue to covertly annexe the territory, and “to appease Smotrich and his party”.
Smotrich, he said, “demanded that the fighting in the West Bank be added to Israel’s war objectives in Gaza. In return, he accepted the first phase of the hostage deal and refrained from toppling the government.”
The UN Human Rights Office in the occupied Palestinian Territories (OHCHR) said: “Public statements by Israeli military officials raise concern about Israel’s plans to expand and increase operations in the occupied West Bank.”
The Israeli assault on Jenin has also been accompanied by a rise in settler violence across the West Bank, amid indications that settlers are targeting villages where Palestinian prisoners were released as part of the ceasefire deal and hostage exchange.
Israeli settlers set vehicles and properties on fire in villages around Qalqilya in the northern West Bank as well as Turmus Aya near Ramallah.
More than 21 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank have been injured as a result of the Israeli settlers’ attacks, including three children.
Late on Wednesday, the Israeli military said that it had killed an Islamic Jihad militant in Gaza, the first such reported death since the start of a ceasefire in the territory.
The Gaza health ministry confirmed that one person was killed and said four other people were wounded.
As Palestinians in Gaza returned to their homes, medical staff in the territory said about 200 bodies had been recovered from under debris since the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel came into effect on Sunday.
Gaza’s head of civil defence, Mahmoud Basal, estimates that the bodies of about 10,000 Palestinians killed during the conflict are yet to be found and buried.
Israeli attacks have killed more than 46,700 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry. The war began after a cross-border attack by Hamas on Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 people and took 250 hostage.
