Israeli military deploys hundreds of soldiers, backed by jets and drones, in largest such operation in two decades.
At least nine Palestinians have been killed after Israel launched a large-scale ground and air attack on the northern part of the occupied West Bank, according to health officials in the territory.
The incursion, which began early on Wednesday, involved hundreds of ground soldiers supported by fighter aircraft, drones and bulldozers, targeting three areas simultaneously – Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas – in the largest assault in two decades.
The director of the ambulance department at the Palestine Red Crescent Society told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces killed four people in the Far’a refugee camp in Tubas.
The Red Crescent said its teams were having trouble reaching the injured because Israeli forces were preventing ambulances from entering the area.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said two people were killed in Jenin, while three others were slain when an Israeli drone struck their vehicle in the nearby village of Seir.
Reporting from Nablus in the West Bank, Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim said that Israeli forces had described the operation in the north of the occupied territory as the biggest of its kind since 2002.
The number of raids on the West Bank has “more than tripled” since the outbreak of Israel’s war on Gaza in October, she said, adding that locals across cities and towns confirmed to Al Jazeera that three strikes took place in three different locations overnight.
“In the past few weeks, we’ve seen an intensification in the use of aerial strikes against Palestine fighters … the Israeli military claiming they are combatting the use of IEDs [improvised explosive devices],” Ibrahim said.
Omar Baddar, a Middle East political analyst, said that the incursion appeared to be part of a longer-term Israeli strategy to “ethnically cleanse” the Palestinian territory.
“I think the context of it is worth noting, which is the fact that Israel has been intending to annex and ethnically cleanse huge parts of the West Bank for a very, very long time,” Baddar told Al Jazeera.
Israel’s military described the nine people killed as “armed terrorists who posed a threat to security forces”. In a post on Telegram, it also claimed to have arrested more “wanted suspects” in Jenin and Tulkarem, while confiscating explosives “planted under roads” in the Far’a camp.
Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz called for the army to evacuate Palestinians from the West Bank, in a post on X.
“We must deal with the threat in the West Bank as we are doing in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever other steps are required. This is a war for everything and we must win it,” he wrote on Wednesday.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority (PA) presidency, said Israel’s escalating war in the West Bank in addition to the war in the Gaza Strip will lead to “dire and dangerous” results.
“Israel’s objective number one is not Gaza, it is the West Bank. This is the heart of what they say is the Biblical land,” Hassan Barari, a professor of international affairs at Qatar University, told Al Jazeera, adding that Israel aims to expel even more Palestinians.
But the Israeli military is likely to continue facing fierce resistance from a new generation of hardened fighters that are just as committed to protecting their homeland, without putting their hopes in the PA, Barari added.
Quoting Israeli military sources, Israeli media reported that the army was expected to continue the raids for several days.
Baddar said: “I think that they [Israeli forces] saw an opportunity given that the world is distracted by the horror that Israel is unleashing on Gaza to kind of escalate in the West Bank.”
In Jenin, the director of one of the city’s hospitals was told the Israeli army intended to raid the medical facility and ordered them to evacuate, Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim reported. The hospital has 200 employees and 150 patients.
Palestinian armed groups said they were fighting Israeli forces in the Nur Shams and Jenin refugee camps.
The al-Quds Brigades said its “fighters targeted an enemy infantry force with a highly explosive device in Nur Shams”.
The Qassam Brigades said it “detonated locally made and highly explosive devices in Jenin against the invading military vehicles” and that its fighters were “engaged in violent clashes with the occupation forces”.
‘Under threat’
Since Israel launched its war on Gaza, Israeli army raids have become a nightly occurrence in towns and villages in the West Bank, with Israeli soldiers and settlers killing at least 646 Palestinians, including 148 children, and injuring more than 5,400, Palestinian health officials have said.
During this time, Israeli soldiers have arrested at least 10,200 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society and the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs.
The same groups report that at least 3,432 Palestinians are being held in Israeli military prisons without charge under “administrative detention”.
At least 1,432 Palestinian homes, and other structures, have been demolished, displacing 3,270 Palestinians, according to the United Nations.
“We are talking about a situation in which Palestinians feel they are under the threat of the Israeli forces, but also they’ve been under fire by Israeli settlers, who have been going on rampages and attacking Palestinian cities and towns and making Palestinian lives more and more difficult,” said Ibrahim.
On Tuesday, settlers – Israeli citizens who live illegally on private Palestinian land in both the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem – shot dead one Palestinian man and wounded six others as they attacked Palestinian homes in the village of Wadi Rahal, near Bethlehem.
