The war in the Middle East is taking on another face. Israel announced on Tuesday January 21 that it was carrying out a large-scale military operation in Jenin, a stronghold of armed groups in the occupied West Bank, killing ten Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Authority. The day after the inauguration of the new American president Donald Trump, from whom the Israeli government hopes for strong support, the army declared that it had “launched an anti-terrorist operation in Jenin”, a city in the northern West Bank, territory occupied by the state. Hebrew since 1967. According to the sources of Times of Israel, this operation called “Iron Wall” should last several days.
The “extensive and large-scale” military action aims to “eradicate terrorism in Jenin”, communicated the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He also added that the operation was “a new step in achieving the objective that we have set for ourselves, namely strengthening security in Judea and Samaria.” Note that Judea and Samaria is the biblical name for the West Bank. On Sunday January 19, Israeli military officials told the Times of Israel, that the central command was prepared to carry out offensive actions in the West Bank, to prevent the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas from establishing a presence there after the release of members of the terrorist group under the ceasefire agreement -fire.
Cut off “the octopus tentacles”
Jenin residents and witnesses reported Tuesday that a local private hospital, Al-Amal, was surrounded by Israeli forces and came under fire. This Wednesday morning, Jenin was caught under heavy fire and explosions. “The situation is very difficult,” the city’s governor, Kamal Abu Rub, told AFP, reporting a plane flying over the area and numerous arrests.
The Israeli army claimed to have “hit more than ten terrorists” during its operation. “Airstrikes on terrorist infrastructure were carried out and many explosives planted on the roads by terrorists were dismantled,” she said. “We will decisively strike the tentacles of the octopus until they are severed,” insisted Defense Minister Israel Katz, insisting on the need not to let the enemy reappear once the operation completed, “a key lesson learned from the repeated raid tactics used in Gaza.”
The Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited control over parts of the West Bank, also refuses to see its main rival – Hamas – proliferate in the region: “The PA carried out its own operation against armed militants in Jenin in recent recent weeks after having largely left the security of the region to Israel”, reports the American daily The New York Times.
UN Secretary General ‘very concerned’
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry’s report Tuesday evening, ten people have been killed and around 35 others injured since the start of Operation Iron Wall. The UN Secretary General said at the start of the evening that he was “very concerned” about the violence in the West Bank, “in particular the large-scale military operation underway in Jenin”, according to Farhan Haq, his deputy spokesperson. Antonio Guterres called on Israel “to exercise maximum restraint and use deadly force only when absolutely unavoidable to protect lives.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent, for its part, complains of not being able to provide the necessary assistance: “The occupying forces are preventing our teams from reaching the wounded inside the camp.” Jenin, and in particular its refugee camp, is regularly the target of Israeli military operations against members or leaders of armed groups.
“This is not what a ceasefire looks like”
In recent months, operations have followed one another, leaving entire neighborhoods cut off from each other, in particular because the asphalt of certain roads has been torn up by Israeli bulldozers. The army explains that it uses these devices to protect itself from explosive devices.
On January 14, six Palestinians were killed in Jenin by an Israeli air force strike. Violence in the West Bank has exploded since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip triggered on October 7, 2023 by the unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on southern Israel, and which is now the subject of a fragile truce. Since then, at least 848 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli army or by settlers, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. At the same time, at least 29 Israelis, including soldiers, died there in Palestinian attacks or in military operations, according to Israeli authorities.
“This is not what a ceasefire looks like,” denounced Tuesday evening B’Tselem, an Israeli NGO defending human rights in the occupied territories, ironically about the truce in Gaza in force since Sunday. “Far from holding fire against the Palestinians, Israel’s actions demonstrate that it has no intention of doing so. Instead, it is content to shift its attention from Gaza to other areas it control in the West Bank.”