8 dead as IDF launches extensive West Bank raid
(Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
(JTA) — The Israel Defense Forces launched a large-scale raid on suspected terrorists in the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Monday, killing at least eight people and wounding dozens.
The raid is the most extensive in Jenin since the second intifada, which also saw intense fighting in the city, according to the Jerusalem Post. Jenin has been the site of multiple deadly raids this year by the Israeli military, which says the city is a locus of Palestinian terror groups that have killed dozens of Israelis in 2023. An Israeli soldier was wounded in the operation but has returned to the fighting.
The raid is an effort to stem that violence, which has escalated in recent months in the West Bank. In addition to the Israelis killed, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank this year, and the territory has been the site of several riots by Israeli settlers who have burned buildings, crops and cars.
“The Jenin Camp is a terrorist stronghold,” the IDF said in a statement early Monday morning, referencing the city’s refugee camp. “We will not standby idle while terrorists continue to harm civilians using Jenin Camp as a hideout.”
A Palestinian Authority spokesperson has decried the raid as “a new war crime against our defenseless people,” according to Haaretz.
The operation has included a drone strike on Jenin in addition to a ground incursion of hundreds of combat soldiers. The operation comes two weeks after clashes during an Israeli raid in Jenin saw an Israeli helicopter evacuate wounded soldiers from the city.
The Jenin fighting is taking place as civil strife threatens to erupt domestically in Israel. The country’s parliament, the Knesset, is poised to advance the government’s controversial effort to weaken the judiciary, and opponents of the overhaul have planned protests at Ben-Gurion International Airport and other locations in response.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
