Israeli forces started to withdraw Thursday from the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin and its refugee camp following a major military offensive that lasted more than 60 hours and killed at least 12 Palestinians, including four children.

This was one of the longest, single military raids in Jenin and its refugee camp since the second intifada, Israeli media reported.

Israel’s campaign of killing and destruction of the refugee camp’s infrastructure also involved the Israeli military firing drone missiles and Energa anti-tank rifle grenades into at least 10 homes in Jenin and its refugee camp, destroying them completely, Wafa news agency reported.

Army bulldozers caused extensive damage to Jenin and its refugee camp’s infrastructure, including streets, water, electricity and sewage networks. Israeli forces also bombed commercial shops and a barbershop, burned and destroyed fruit and vegetable stands as well as Palestinian vehicles in the area, and seized a number of them, Wafa news agency reported.

Israeli forces imposed a curfew on residents, raided people’s homes and used them as military bases, stationed snipers on the rooftops of buildings and conducted mass arrests.

“Hundreds of Palestinians were arrested, including some who were released outside of the city after having been interrogated; they were not allowed to return to Jenin and were forced to take shelter in nearby communities,” UN monitoring group OCHA reported.

Dozens of Palestinians were injured in the Israeli attack, including at least 10 with live ammunition, Wafa reported.

The Israeli army admitted that seven Israeli soldiers, as well as an officer, were injured during the raid, some of which it attributed to friendly fire by its own forces. Nearly 1,300 Israeli soldiers, reservists and other forces participated in the operation.

Drone missiles

Israel’s raid in Jenin and its camp was even larger in scale, destruction and lethality than a military offensive it carried out there in July, which was dubbed the “biggest military operation since the second intifada.”

Israeli forces fired drone missiles against groups of people it claimed “threw explosives and fired at the [Israeli] forces” – killing “seven terrorists,” the army said.

But three of those killed in the drone attacks were children.

A drone strike in al-Sibat neighborhood in the city of Jenin on Tuesday killed four Palestinians – two of them children.

They were named as 17-year-old Thaer Shadi Tabaji and 16-year-old Rafiq Muhammad Ezqaily.

Rafiq was “allegedly holding a firearm,” according to a field investigation by Defense for Children International-Palestine, as were the two adults killed in the attack.

An Israeli drone missile killed a 13-year-old boy at midnight on Thursday.

Bashar Haitham Abu Zeid had been standing with several other Palestinian youth who “were throwing bottles filled with motor oil toward passing Israeli military vehicles,” DCIP said.

An Israeli drone missile hit the group, killing Bashar and two others.

“Israeli forces are now routinely using weaponized aerial drones to carry out attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP.

“After years of Israeli forces increasingly unlawfully killing Palestinian children with impunity, we now see Israeli forces escalate tactics to carry out aerial attacks against children in a hyper-militarized environment where Palestinian children bear the brunt of Israeli aggression.”

A fourth Palestinian child was killed by live fire during the incursion.

An Israeli soldier stationed inside a heavily armored vehicle shot at Palestinians standing within 100 meters (328 feet) of an all-girls school, throwing stones.

Mousa Ahmad Khatib, 15, was shot by the soldier with a bullet to his chest that exited his back.

“Mousa ran into the hospital’s emergency department where he collapsed to the floor,” DCIP said.

“Eyewitness accounts by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the MoH in the West Bank, was [he was] shot by Israeli forces” while he was standing “within the Khalil Suliman hospital compound,” UN OCHA reported.

Hindering healthcare

Israeli forces fired on an ambulance and blocked others. Israeli forces also besieged a number of hospitals in the area.

Two Palestinians, including a 13-year-old boy, died due to their inability to arrive at hospital in time to be treated.

The Palestinian Authority health minister said hospitals in the area were subject to a “fierce attack” by Israeli occupation forces.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said on Thursday that it had not been able to respond to any calls from inside Jenin city and its refugee camp since the previous day.

Hundreds of kidney patients were stranded in Jenin, unable to reach hospital due to the Israeli army designating certain areas as “closed military zones,” Wafa news agency reported.

In addition to attacks on medical facilities and personnel, Israeli soldiers also desecrated a mosque in Jenin and vandalized its exterior walls.

Footage circulated online depicted soldiers singing Hanukkah and other songs through the mosque’s loudspeakers, audible across the area in the mosque’s vicinity.

Since 7 October, Israeli fire has killed at least 78 Palestinians in the city of Jenin and its refugee camp.

Israeli troops have killed at least 266 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, and an additional eight were killed by settlers, the UN monitoring group OCHA has reported.

This constitutes more than half of all Israeli killings in the area since the beginning of the year.

As 2023 concludes, this year stands as the deadliest for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the UN monitoring office began recording such data in 2005.

Israeli forces have injured over 3,500 Palestinians in the West Bank since 7 October, more than 540 of them children.

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Comments

Jenin, Jenin!

Permalink Peter Purich replied on Fri, 12/15/2023 - 20:31

"The Israeli army suggested it would discipline soldiers."

Ah, yes, the "Israeli" so called "army" it would "discipline" soldiers. Drone attacks killing children, destroying infrastructure, attacking hospitals, etc. etc. etc. Will they "discipline" these "soldiers"? No.

I say so called "army" and so called "soldiers" because they are a hoard of Godless, soulless, faithless, fascist, Satanists. The latest - and the most disgusting - USA spawn: "Israeli" Daesh, Nationalist-Zionist, with their deep, long, links to Nazism.

I look forward to watch the Canadian Prime Minister (muppet) Justin & the appalling "ambassador" Joli, well, saying whatever Mr. Blinken tells them to say.

Jenin, Jenin! Rise again!

https://electronicintifada.net...