The Palestinian health ministry has reported that at least 11 people have been wounded, including two with serious injuries, during a raid by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. The Palestinian Authority’s health ministry has said that Israeli forces have killed at least six Palestinians and wounded 11 others. Witnesses have told AFP news agency that a house was besieged by Israeli forces and hit with rockets. Footage circulating on social media showed helicopters over a column of military vehicles entering the city. Israeli authorities have said that one of the Palestinian men they killed was behind the shooting of two brothers from an illegal settlement near the Palestinian village of Huwara last week.
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has said that troops had “eliminated” the gunman who last month killed two Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Al Jazeera’s Sara Khairat, reporting from Ramallah, has said that another raid by Israeli forces was also carried out on Tuesday evening in another refugee camp south of Nablus. The army entered a building in the Askar refugee camp and arrested three men, including two who are the sons of a 49-year-old man killed in Jenin.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, has called the use of rockets in Jenin on Tuesday an act of “all-out war”, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. Abu Rudeineh has accused the Israeli government of being “responsible for this dangerous escalation which threatens to inflame the situation and destroy all efforts aimed at restoring stability”. Overnight on Monday, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians in the village of Huwara, the scene of a violent rampage last week by dozens of settlers seeking revenge for the shooting of the two Israelis as they sat in their car.
Israeli army and border police forces dispersed crowds of what the military described as “a number of violent rioters” in Huwara. Videos shared on social media showed a group of black-clad youths attacking a Palestinian car before its driver managed to pull away. Other footage appeared to show Israeli soldiers dancing together with Jewish settlers in the town on what was the Jewish festival of Purim. “Huwara has been conquered, gentlemen!” a voice is heard saying in Hebrew.
Last week, settlers torched dozens of cars and houses in Huwara after two brothers were shot by a Palestinian gunman as they sat in their car at a checkpoint nearby. The rampage, described as a “pogrom” by a senior Israeli commander, triggered worldwide outrage and condemnation, which was increased when ultra-nationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has responsibility for aspects of the West Bank administration, said Huwara should be “erased”. Smotrich later offered a partial retraction.
Settlers have killed at least five Palestinians in 2023 so far, while Israeli forces have killed at least 68 Palestinians this year. Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, has said that Israel’s violent repression will do little to quash Palestinian resistance. “The idea that you can simply contain Jenin by more violence has proven to be wrong over the years and decades. The refugee camps and the cities that the Israeli attack the most, where it killed the most, have turned to be the most important symbols of Palestinian resistance,” Bishara said.
“Hebron or Gaza or Jenin and others have proven to be the most resistant, the most steadfast, and we’re going to continue to see more Israeli raids, more Palestinian resistance, the cycle will continue.”