Israeli raid on the West Bank in largest operation in months
Israel said it was conducting “intelligence-led counter-terror operations” in the West Bank.
A large-scale Israeli military operation swept through the occupied West Bank for the second day in a row on Thursday, killing a suspected terrorist and prompting senior international officials to call for an end to the offensive, fearing the area could become an “extension of the Gaza war.”
The Israeli raids and drone attacks on Palestinian territory are directed against “terrorist groups and terrorist cells,” Israel says.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres described the Israeli military operation, which began in the early hours of Wednesday in several crisis-hit cities in the West Bank, as “dangerous developments” that “further fuel an already explosive situation”.
Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top foreign policy diplomat, said he was asking EU member states whether they wanted to put on the sanctions list some Israeli ministers who had spread “unacceptable messages of hatred against the Palestinians” and proposed measures that violated international law.
“The large-scale Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank must not be a precondition for an expansion of the war from Gaza, including total destruction,” Borrell said in a social media post.
Janez Lenarcic, EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, said Israel’s “indiscriminate use of military and settler violence against civilians, as well as the widespread destruction of homes and infrastructure” was “a violation of international law and human rights”.
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Developments:
∎ Senior Hamas official Izzat El-Reshiq reiterated the group’s support for the UN initiative for an urgent humanitarian ceasefire.
∎ Israeli, American, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators met in Doha on Wednesday to discuss a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Mohammed Jaber, also known as Abu Shujaa, was killed after exchanges of fire during counterterrorism operations in the West Bank Nur Shams refugee camp outside the city of Tulkarm, the Israeli military said in a statement. Jaber was described as the head of a terror network in Nur Shams and was involved in carrying out numerous terror attacks, including a gun attack that killed an Israeli civilian, Amnon Mukhtar, in June, the statement said.
“He was eliminated along with four other terrorists who were hiding in a mosque,” the statement said. An Israeli Border Police soldier was slightly injured and taken to a hospital for medical treatment.
Palestinians in Gaza had hoped for a lull in fighting in the enclave so a polio vaccination campaign could begin on Sunday. The UN is preparing to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza, where the World Health Organization confirmed on August 23 that at least one baby has been paralyzed by the poliovirus type 2, the first such case in the territory in 25 years. The World Health Organization identified the child as Abdul-Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan, who turns one on Sunday.
His mother, Nivin Abu Al-Jidyan, said she feared for her son after health authorities told her there was little they could do to help him.
“He is my only little boy. He has the right to travel and be treated; he has the right to walk, run and move like before,” she told Reuters on Thursday from a tent in central Gaza. “It is unfair that he remains in this tent without care or attention.”
At least nine Palestinians were killed when hundreds of Israeli soldiers, backed by helicopters, drones and armored vehicles, carried out raids in Tulkarm, Jenin, Nablus, Tubas and other areas of the Jordan Valley. Hamas said six of its fighters died in Jenin. Mustafa Barghouti, a former Palestinian presidential candidate and current head of the Palestinian National Initiative political group, said the raids could be Israel’s largest in the Palestinian territories since 2002. Barghouti accused Israel of seeking to expand its operations in Gaza to the West Bank. According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7.
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Unlike Gaza, which was administered by Hamas before the war, the West Bank is partially administered by the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli military has occupied parts of the West Bank since it captured the territory from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War. Since then, Israel has expanded settlements in the Palestinian territory, which is now home to nearly 500,000 Israelis and about 3 million Palestinians.
The United Nations’ highest court ruled last month that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories were illegal and that all states should work together to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
