Thousands forced to flee as Israel continues West Bank raid

Jenin, Palestinian Territories (AFP):

Israel pushed on for a second day Tuesday with its biggest military operation in years in the occupied West Bank, which left 10 Palestinians dead and forced thousands to flee their homes.

The raid that began early on Monday targeted Jenin and employed armoured vehicles, army bulldozers and drone strikes.

On Tuesday morning, shops were shuttered in Jenin, with very few people on the streets littered with debris and burned roadblocks from the previous day’s attack.

Drones hummed overhead, an AFP correspondent reported.

In the city’s refugee camp — an urban community that was home to 18,000 Palestinians — multiple streets were ripped up leaving broken electricity cables, oil, and pools of water apparently after an Israeli anti-bomb bulldozer passed.

A doctor at Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin said patients died because of delay in bringing them to the facility.

“Some of them either died or deteriorated from moderate cases to severe cases,” Tawfeek al-Shobaki told AFP, adding the Israeli forces had destroyed infrastructure around the camp making it difficult for vehicles to move.

A total of 10 people were killed and 100 others wounded, 20 of them seriously, since the start of the assault, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Around 3,000 people have so far fled their homes in the Jenin refugee camp, deputy governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu al-Roub told AFP, adding arrangements were being made to house them in schools and other shelters in Jenin city.

In the Monday night darkness, women carried their youngest children while older ones lugged belongings through the streets.

Jenin resident Badr Shagoul told AFP: “I saw them taking bulldozers into the camp, they were destroying buildings… These were people’s homes.”

Israeli forces had “apprehended 120 Palestinian suspects” since the assault began, the army said.

“In the last five years, this is the worst raid,” Qasem Benighader, a nurse at a hospital morgue said, noting “many” patients with bullet wounds and injuries from explosives.

Impoverished

The United Nations says Jenin camp has “one of the highest rates of unemployment and poverty” among West Bank camps, and the military operation disrupted water and electricity to “large areas” of it.

The Palestinian foreign ministry called the escalation “an open war against the people of Jenin”.

The Jenin area is nominally controlled by president Mahmud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative control in the West Bank.

The ruling Fatah party declared a general strike on Tuesday affecting private businesses and other sectors, and which saw all Palestinian Authority employees remaining home.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is “deeply concerned” about the violence, and called for the respect of international humanitarian law, a spokesman said in a statement.

The United States said ally Israel had a right to “defend its people against… terrorist groups” but called for protection of civilians.

Settlements

In the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, protesters burned tyres near the border fence with Israel.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967.

Excluding annexed east Jerusalem, the territory is now home to around 490,000 Israelis in settlements considered illegal under international law.

The Palestinians, who seek their own independent state, want Israel to withdraw from all land it seized in 1967 and to dismantle all Jewish settlements.

Netanyahu, however, has pledged to “strengthen settlements” and expressed no interest in reviving peace talks, moribund since 2014.

At least 187 Palestinians, 25 Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian have been killed this year, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources from both sides.