Attention is focused on the Gaza Strip, where Tel Aviv says it will expand military operations beyond the north – and where it has allowed the entry of two tanker trucks a day carrying fuel – but in the West Bank the conflict is the same, with different contours . The latest military operation in that area ended with five Palestinians dead, the latest episode in the biggest spiral of violence in the past two decades.
In an operation that started at 10:30 PM local time on Thursday and lasted several hours, Israeli soldiers in more than 80 vehicles entered the Jenin refugee camp to attack members of Islamist groups. As in Gaza, they surrounded hospitals to achieve their objectives.
According to the Israeli army, the operation, carried out by the Kfir Brigade, aimed to seize explosives in that camp, where fighters are known to live among the population: the Jenin Brigades were founded two years ago. Also according to Tel Aviv, the Israeli army was met with fire, with a drone hitting a group of armed men who were firing at the Israeli forces.
Other Palestinians who threw explosives were shot during the clashes. A total of five men were killed and fourteen were injured. There is no news of the seizure of explosives, but there is news of six assault rifles in Jenin.
In just over a month, Tel Aviv has imprisoned more than 1,750 West Bank Palestinians, and its forces and settlers have killed nearly 200 people.
The Palestinian Red Crescent denounced the Israeli army’s invasion of Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin, which prevented medical staff from carrying out their duties. “The occupation forces stopped and searched several ambulances at Ibn Sina Hospital and prevented them from helping the wounded and transporting the sick,” the organization wrote.
In another incident, two Palestinians traveling in a car opened fire on troops at an intersection near the southern West Bank city of Hebron on Friday morning, killing the two attackers. The day before, a checkpoint in Jerusalem had also been the target of an attack in which three men fired from a vehicle: one soldier was killed and five were injured, killing the attackers (two from Hamas, according to Shin Bet, Israel’s security service) .
Israeli attacks in the West Bank have occurred almost daily since last year and have further intensified since the start of the Gaza war on October 7, following the Hamas attack on Israeli territory.
Since then, 194 Palestinians have been killed — 51 of them minors and eight by settlers — and more than 2,700 have been injured in incidents involving Israeli security forces or settlers, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Israelites. In fact, the UN body counts 248 settler attacks on Palestinians since October 7.
According to Israeli forces, more than 1,750 Palestinians have been detained in the West Bank, more than a thousand of whom are said to have ties to Hamas.
It was in Ramallah, West Bank, that the head of EU diplomacy met with the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, Mohammad Shtayyeh. Josep Borrell said it should be the Palestinian Authority, controlled by Fatah, the largest party in the Palestine Liberation Organization, founded by Yasser Arafat. “They may need help from the international community, and we will help them, but they must return to Gaza,” Borrell said of an organization with increasingly less political weight.
2005 was the year of the last presidential elections in Palestine. The only time Mahmud Abbas voted, he received 62.5% of the votes.
Shtayyeh said the international community should pressure Israel to open more border crossings so that humanitarian aid can reach Gaza. He also thanked the EU for humanitarian aid, but said the priority was a ceasefire. “If they feed me today but kill me tomorrow, the food is useless,” he said.
The only concession made by Israel’s National Unity Government was the authorization for the daily access of two fuel trucks to “enable the minimum necessary maintenance of water, sewerage and sanitation facilities, to prevent pandemics from spreading to the could spread throughout the area. “.
A measure that was criticized by the extreme right present in the governing coalition, but also by other Israeli parties. This measure “conveys weakness, gives oxygen to the enemy and enables Sinwar [líder do Hamas em Gaza]“Sit comfortably in your air-conditioned bunker, watch the news and continue manipulating Israeli society and the families of the kidnapped,” criticized Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
Source: DN
