( NBC )
Israeli forces launched a sweeping military operation Wednesday in the occupied West Bank, carrying out airstrikes and deadly raids and sealing off the city of Jenin, Palestinian officials said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the large-scale operation was part of a “full-fledged war” as he compared the situation to the Gaza Strip, saying Israeli forces must implement similar measures being carried out in the war-torn Palestinian enclave in the West Bank.
Israel has conducted near-daily raids in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967, in the months since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack and the Israeli offensive in Gaza that followed — but Wednesday's operation could be the largest in more than 20 years, when what Israeli officials called Operation Defensive Shield was executed during the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising.
The Israel Defense Forces, the Israel Security Agency (also known as the Shin Bet) and the Israel Police said in a joint statement that forces had launched a “counterterrorism operation” in Jenin, Tulkarem and Al-Faraa refugee camp overnight, “eliminating armed terrorists from the air and ground.”
They said three armed militants “who posed a threat” to security forces were killed in an airstrike in the area of Jenin, while two other armed militants were killed in Jenin and Tulkarem, which are about 30 miles apart. Israeli authorities said a number of “wanted suspects” were also apprehended, along with a number of weapons.
Israeli forces “exposed and dismantled explosives that were planted under the roads in the area and were intended to be detonated in attacks against the security forces operating in the area,” the statement said.
Images and videos shared on social media and verified by NBC News showed Israeli bulldozers appearing to destroy roads in Tulkarem and Jenin overnight.
Israeli authorities said their forces also launched air raids in the area of Al-Faraa refugee camp, just over 15 miles south of Jenin, in which Israeli authorities said four other armed militants were killed.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said in a post on Telegram on Wednesday at least nine people were killed overnight.
The governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu al-Rub, said on Palestinian radio that Israeli forces had surrounded the area and blocked off exit and entry points, as well as access to hospitals, The Associated Press reported.
Nihad Al-Shawish, an official from the Nour Shams camp in Tulkarem, said hours before the raids began the camp was warned that civilians should consider evacuating the area by the Palestinian Authority's liaison with Israel. The evacuations were not mandatory, he said.
Youssef Barahmi told NBC News he could see the camp being “surrounded by the IDF,” from his home less than 2 miles away in the town of the same name.
The Palestinian Authority employee said his mother-in-law, who lives in the camp, had told him that Israeli forces were surrounding her house. He added that he was no longer able to reach her over the phone.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa’s office said in a statement that any incursion into hospitals was “a direct threat to the lives of patients and medical staff.” Israeli forces had blocked entry roads and besieged multiple medical facilities across the West Bank, the statement added.
'Full-fledged war'
Katz made the connection between the raids in the West Bank and the war in Gaza, where more than 40,000 people have been killed, many of them civilians, according to health officials there, since Israel launched its offensive after the Oct. 7 terror attacks. Hamas’ assaults in southern Israel killed some 1,200 people and led to 250 others being taken hostage.
Katz said Israel must “address this threat in the same manner as we deal with terrorist infrastructures in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and any other necessary measures.”
This is a “full-fledged war and we must win it,” he added.
Katz also said that the IDF was “operating with intensity” in Jenin and Tulkarem to stamp out “Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructures.”
Katz said that Iran was trying to establish "an eastern terrorist front" against Israel in the West Bank, and accused it of funding and arming militants and smuggling weapons from Jordan.
Israel frequently blames Iran for violence in the region. Tehran does not officially recognize Israel's right to exist and has supported militant groups throughout the region, including Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah. The U.S. government has designated Iran one of the world's leading state sponsors of terrorism.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said that Israel, during it’s “endless occupation” of the occupied West Bank, should normally “apply law enforcement standards, which permit the use of lethal force only as a last resort to stop an imminent lethal threat.”
But “if the conflict with militants becomes intense and organized enough, Israel can apply war standards, which permits the killing of combatants (while taking all feasible precautions to spare civilians),” he said.
“The line between the two can be difficult to draw. It depends on the intensity and organization of the militants who are challenging Israeli forces,” he added.
The raids came amid growing tensions in the region amid Israel's monthslong military offensive in Gaza, with Iran having yet to act after vowing retaliation against Israel for the assassination last month of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Hostilities also flared at Israel’s northern border with Lebanon over the weekend as Israeli forces and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah traded fire following the assassination of commander Fuad Shukr, for which Hezbollah also vowed retaliation.
Efforts to negotiate a cease-fire deal that would end the fighting in Gaza and free the hostages who remain held there have so far failed to yield results, despite recent optimism from Washington on progress in the talks.
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