JENIN (Palestinian Territories): Israel’s army on Wednesday declared the end of a large-scale military operation in the occupied West Bank that killed 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier over the previous two days.
The raid, involving hundreds of forces, drone strikes and armoured bulldozers, targeted the northern West Bank city of Jenin, a centre for multiple armed Palestinian groups.
Thousands of Palestinian mourners joined a Jenin funeral procession for those killed, where militants fired gunshots into the air and the crowd chanted “With our souls and blood, we will sacrifice for you, martyr!”
Amid the days of violence, a Palestinian attacker in Tel Aviv on Tuesday wounded seven Israelis in a car ramming and stabbing attack before an armed civilian shot him dead.
And overnight, Israel carried out air strikes on targets inside the blockaded Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian coastal enclave, with no deaths reported.
As the army pulled out of Jenin, much of the city’s crowded refugee camp was left charred and in rubble from the incursion which displaced at least 3,000 residents.
The camp, a small urban area home to about 18,000 people, has long been a stronghold of militant groups including Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
Among the dead Palestinians was 16-year-old Abdulrahman Hassan Ahmed Hardan, who was shot in the head by Israeli forces while unarmed on Tuesday, according to the non-government group Defence for Children International.
The army has not yet commented on the group’s claim.
Islamic Jihad praised its fighters Wednesday for what it labelled a “heroic” victory and vowed that, for Israel, “Jenin and its camp will remain a terror that haunts you”.
Jenin residents inspected the widespread destruction in the camp, where gaping holes were torn into buildings, cars were crushed and the ground was littered with bullet casings and broken glass.
Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has labelled Jenin’s refugee camp a “terrorist nest”, and the army said it had seized arms and explosives depots and militant logistic sites.
The Palestinians labelled the escalation an act of “open war against the people of Jenin”.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967 and built many settlements, considered illegal under international law, in the area Palestinians regard as the core on the independent state they are seeking.
Excluding annexed east Jerusalem, the territory is home to about 490,000 Israelis living in settlements — a number that hard-right nationalist groups within Netanyahu’s coalition government are working to increase.
The Palestinians want Israel to withdraw from all land seized in 1967 and to dismantle all Jewish settlements. Netanyahu, however, has pledged to “strengthen settlements” and expressed no interest in reviving peace talks, which have been moribund since 2014.
The army, after a number of deadly attacks early last year inside Israel, started to launch almost daily raids into the West Bank.
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