Israeli forces carried out a large-scale operation in the West Bank to combat the killing of several Hamas militants overnight into Wednesday.
The operations in Jenin and Tulkarm are the latest in what Israeli officials describe as their efforts to prevent attacks against Israel originating from the West Bank.
“The IDF is working intensively from tonight in the Jenin and Tulkarm refugee camps to thwart Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructures that have been established there,” said Israel Foreign Minister Israel Katz.
Hamas said 10 of its fighters were killed, according to the Associated Press.
The Israel Defense Forces said some terrorists were killed in an airstrike while others were apprehended. It also noted that it exposed and dismantled landmines planted under the roads in the West Bank.
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said 150 terrorist attacks against Israelis have been carried out over the past year by terrorists from those two areas in the West Bank.
Israeli forces frequently carry out raids in the West Bank, especially since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack and the beginning of the subsequent war in Gaza. Israeli leaders argue that Iran, which funds and supports several proxy terrorist groups and regimes in the Middle East, is hoping to use the West Bank as a place to plan and carry out attacks against Israel.
“Iran is working to establish an eastern terrorist front against Israel in the West Bank, according to the Gaza and Lebanon model, by financing and arming terrorists and smuggling advanced weapons from Jordan. We must deal with the threat just as we deal with the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever steps are required,” Katz added. “This is a war for everything, and we must win it.”
Katz’s willingness to use the same steps Israel has in Gaza is notable given the destruction 10 months of war has caused in Gaza and to the population.
An overwhelming majority of Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced, some of whom several times, while most of the enclave is also facing food and water insecurity, and Israel’s bombardment and ground operations have caused significant infrastructure damage. The Hamas-controlled Palestinian Ministry of Health-Gaza has reported that more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began, but it does not specify civilian versus combatant casualties.
Israel captured the West Bank during the 1967 Six Day War, and it has built settlements across the area while the three million Palestinians who reside there live under Israeli military rule and the Palestinian Authority, which has limited control of the area.
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More extreme members of Israel’s government, such as Bezalel Smotrich, seek to completely assume the West Bank into Israel.
“At these moments, we are completing the mission, and I can say that our extensive operation in Jenin is not a one-off,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month during a visit to a military post on the outskirts of Jenin. “We will eradicate terrorism wherever we see it, and we will strike at it.”