Israeli forces are applying methods learned during the war on Gaza to their ongoing “Iron Wall” military operation in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s defence minister said, where troops have killed at least 10 people in Jenin and ordered residents to flee the area’s refugee camp.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that the Jenin operation, which is entering its third day, marks a shift in Israel’s military plan in the occupied West Bank and was “the first lesson from the method of repeated raids in Gaza”.
An Israeli military spokesperson declined to give details of the Jenin operation, which began on Tuesday and is the third major incursion by the Israeli army in less than two years into Jenin, a longtime stronghold of resistance to Israel’s decades-old military occupation of Palestinian territory.
Residents inside the Jenin refugee camp reported constant gunfire and explosions on Wednesday while the Palestinian health services reported at least four wounded in the camp.
The UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Wednesday that Israeli forces have used “advanced weaponry and warfare methods, including air strikes” on the Jenin camp, which is now “nearly uninhabitable” with an estimated 2,000 families displaced from the area since December.
Israel’s “massive operation” in Jenin also “threatens to undermine the fragile ceasefire reached just days ago in Gaza”, said Roland Friedrich, UNRWA’s director of affairs for the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israeli media also reported that two Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces on Wednesday in the Wadi Burqin area near the city of Jenin.
Jenin has resisted Israeli occupation for decades, earning its reputation as the “capital of Palestinian resistance.” Here’s why it still matters today. pic.twitter.com/Yu9nkRi12w
— AJ+ (@ajplus) January 22, 2025
Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli forces had surrounded a building in the town of Burqin and ordered the occupants to exit using a loudspeaker.
Air strikes from Israeli drones hit the house while soldiers on the ground fired antitank grenades at the building, which was then flattened by military bulldozers.
As the Israeli raid got under way on Tuesday, 10 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in the Jenin area, including children and medical workers.
Jenin’s governor, Kamal Abu al-Rub, told the AFP news agency that the situation was “very difficult” as Israeli military bulldozers had torn up all roads leading to the Jenin refugee camp and Jenin’s government hospital. Israeli forces had also detained about 20 people from villages around Jenin since the operation began on Tuesday, he said.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for “maximum restraint” from Israeli forces in Jenin and expressed deep concern, according to his deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq.
On Monday, Guterres told a UN Security Council meeting of his fears over “an existential threat to the integrity and contiguity” of Gaza and the occupied West Bank from Israel and amid the “unabated” expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.
The UN chief said that “senior Israeli officials openly speak of formally annexing all or part of the West Bank in the coming months”.
“Any such annexation would constitute a most serious violation of international law,” he said.
