Seven Palestinians killed by Israeli forces during raid on Jenin – health officials
The Palestinian health ministry, based in Ramallah, said the Israeli military’s raid on the West Bank city of Jenin has killed at least seven people (up from six). Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed earlier that the military operation in Jenin, seen as a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups, aims to “eradicate terrorism” in the area.
He described the operation conducted by police and the Shin Bet security service as “extensive and significant”.
Jenin has been a focus of Israeli raids into the occupied West Bank throughout Israel’s 15 month war on Gaza. The Palestinian health ministry says more than 800 people have been killed in Israeli raids since Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed.
The Jenin refugee camp is home to about 14,000 people, most of whom are descendants of the Palestinian people dispossessed of their land when Israel was created in 1948.
Key events
Here are some of the latest images being sent to us over the newswires from Jenin – a city in the occupied West Bank Israeli forces reportedly moved into earlier today following several drone strikes:
The Palestinian health ministry has raised the death toll from the Israeli military’s raid on Jenin to eight, from seven.
Lorenzo Tondo
Lorenzo Tondo is a Guardian correspondent currently reporting from Jerusalem
The Israeli government has accused Iran, which backs militant groups across the Middle East including Hamas in Gaza, of attempting to send weapons and money to militants in the West Bank.
Israeli settlers have set vehicles and properties on fire in the Palestinian villages where dozens of Palestinian prisoners released on Sunday exchange for three Israeli hostages handed over by Hamas to Israel were are returning. More than 21 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank have been inured as a result of the Israeli settlers’ attacks.
Jalal Bashir, the head of Jinasfut village council, was quoted as saying by Wafa news agency on Monday evening that the attacks took place in the villages of Jinasfut and Funduq, east of Qalqilya.
The Palestinian Authority has accused Trump of inciting Israeli settler violence after he on Monday rescinded sanctions imposed by the former Biden administration on far-right Israeli settler groups and individuals for allegedly committing violence against Palestinians.
The White House said Trump had rescinded an executive order issued on 1 February 2024, which authorised the imposition of certain sanctions “on persons undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank”.
You can read the full story – about the operation in Jenin and situation in the occupied West Bank more generally – here:
Seven Palestinians killed by Israeli forces during raid on Jenin – health officials
The Palestinian health ministry, based in Ramallah, said the Israeli military’s raid on the West Bank city of Jenin has killed at least seven people (up from six). Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed earlier that the military operation in Jenin, seen as a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups, aims to “eradicate terrorism” in the area.
He described the operation conducted by police and the Shin Bet security service as “extensive and significant”.
Jenin has been a focus of Israeli raids into the occupied West Bank throughout Israel’s 15 month war on Gaza. The Palestinian health ministry says more than 800 people have been killed in Israeli raids since Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed.
The Jenin refugee camp is home to about 14,000 people, most of whom are descendants of the Palestinian people dispossessed of their land when Israel was created in 1948.
Hebrew media outlet Ynet is carrying the resignation statement from the commander of the IDF’s southern command, Maj Gen Yaron Finkelman who is standing down, along with IDF chief of staff Lt Gen Herzi Halevi who resigned earlier.
Finkelman said:
On 7 October, I failed to defend the western Negev and its beloved and heroic residents. This failure is etched in my memory for the rest of my life
Out of responsibility to the State of Israel … the IDF and its people, I have since acted to lead the war on Hamas and the terrorist organizations in Gaza.
We must continue to strike the enemy, return all our hostages to their homes and the communities to their rightful place of security and prosperity.
Palestinian news agency Wafa is reporting, citing the director of Khalil Suleiman hospital in Jenin, Wissam Bakr, that three nurses and two doctors have been injured by Israeli fire during Israel’s military operation inside the Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
Al Jazeera reports that the death toll in Jenin has risen to seven, and that about 35 others have been wounded.
It has not been possible for journalists to independently verify the casualty figures being issued during the conflict.
Israel’s Army Radio reports that the commander of the IDF’s southern command, Maj Gen Yaron Finkelman is also resigning.
More details soon …
Israel’s chief of staff Lt Gen Herzi Halevi to resign over 7 October attack ‘failure of the IDF’
The IDF chief of staff Lt Gen Herzi Halevi has informed defense minister Israel Katz that he will resign on 6 March, saying in a statement that he is leaving the military after “recognizing my responsibility for the failure of the IDF on 7 October”
Israeli media reports in his statement he says he will “transfer command of the IDF in a high-quality and thorough manner to my replacement” and will spend the time up until his resignation overseeing investigations into the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack.
He is quoted as saying he leaves “at the point in time in which the IDF has recorded significant achievements, and is in the process of implementing an agreement to release hostages.”
More details soon …
Jenin governor Kamal Abu al-Rub told the Agence France-Presse news agency (AFP) “what is happening is an invasion of the camp”, referring to the refugee camp adjacent to the occupied West Bank city.
“It came quickly, Apache planes in the sky and Israeli military vehicles everywhere”, he added.
Hamas calls for escalation of fighting against Israel in response to military raid on Jenin
Hamas has called for an intensification of fighting against Israel in response to the Israeli military’s ongoing raid on the West Bank city of Jenin.
Six people have been killed by Israeli forces in Jenin refugee camp – Palestinian health ministry
Six people have now been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp, health officials have said. Dozens of Palestinians are reported to have been injured. We have not been able to independently verify this information yet.
Israeli far right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has said Israel’s raid in Jenin is designed to “change the security situation” in the occupied West Bank. It was launched a day after US President Donald Trump declared he was lifting sanctions on violent Israeli settlers who attacked Palestinian villages (see post at 11.03 for more details).
After Gaza and Lebanon, today, with God’s help, we have begun changing the security perception in Judea and Samaria (the occupied West Bank) and in the campaign to eradicate terrorism in the region.
This is part of the war goals that were added to the cabinet’s demand for religious Zionism on Friday. “Iron Wall” will be a strong and ongoing campaign against the elements of terrorism and its perpetrators, to protect the settlement and the settlers, and for the security of the entire State of Israel, of which the settlement is the security belt.
I congratulate the IDF commanders and fighters and the entire security establishment and pray for their success. “Let our enemies speak for them and crown them with a crown of salvation and a diadem of victory.”
Benjamin Netanyahu has been governing as part of a fragile coalition propped up by far-right ministers such as Smotrich. Unlike Israel’s hardline national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who quit the cabinet over the ceasefire deal with Hamas, Smotrich, who leads the Religious Zionism party, stayed in the government but said he would quit if the war ends without Hamas completely destroyed.
Smotrich has described in explicit terms his active effort to annex the West Bank to Israel. My colleague Peter Beaumont writes in this story that Smotrich and his allies have long seen control of the Civil Administration, or significant parts of it, as a means of extending Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. Their ultimate goal is direct control by central government and its ministries. The transfer reduces the likelihood of legal checks on settlement expansion and development.
Netanyahu says objective of Jenin operation is to ‘eradicate terrorism’
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that the military operation in Jenin aims to “eradicate terrorism” in the area.
Israeli security forces “launched today a large and significant military operation to eradicate terrorism in Jenin – ’Iron Wall’” he said in a statement.
A military source told the Times of Israel that the raid on Jenin is expected to last at least several days. The source said the military operation began with several drone strikes on infrastructure that was claimed to be being used by militant groups in the occupied West Bank city.
Israeli forces have arrested at least 20 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including a journalist from Hebron, since yesterday evening, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said in a joint statement.
The arrests were reported to have taken place across the areas of Hebron, Qalqilya, Ramallah and Nablus, and were, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa, accompanied by “acts of vandalism” and destruction of property.
It is estimated that over 12,100 Palestinians have been arrested in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since last October.
Human rights groups and international organisations have alleged widespread abuse of inmates detained by Israel in raids in the West Bank.
They have described alleged abusive and humiliating treatment, including holding blindfolded and handcuffed detainees in cramped cages as well as beatings, intimidation and harassment.
Two people killed by Israeli forces after military launches ‘operation’ in Jenin refugee camp
Health officials now say two Palestinian people have been killed and at least 25 others injured in the Israeli military “operation” in the Jenin refugee camp. We will give you more details as we get them.
Forces of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, moved into Jenin in early December and have since clashed with fighters from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Here is an extract from a report by my colleagues Bethan McKernan and Sufian Taha about the chaotic governance of Jenin. It was filed in the first week of January:
The new Palestinian Authority raid on the refugee camp adjacent to the occupied West Bank city of Jenin is the largest operation the western-backed governing body has undertaken in the 30 years since it was formed.
Israel hopes it can delegate stamping out militant activity to the Ramallah-based authority, and the PA is seeking to prove it will be able to handle governing the Gaza Strip when the war there ends.
Instead, growing anger at the lengthy, destructive raid, and what is considered by much of the Palestinian public as increasing PA complicity in the occupation, could fuel further unrest…
A new generation of fighters has now come of age in Jenin, as well as Nablus and the Nur Shams camp in Tulkarm. They have no memory of the Oslo peace agreements of the 1990s; any hope their parents had that the diplomatic process would lead to the creation of an independent Palestinian state faded long ago.
Most of these young men are part of small, ad hoc militias only loosely affiliated with the traditional Palestinian factions, such as Fatah and its rival Hamas. During visits to Jenin, the militants have repeatedly told the Guardian that they readily switch allegiance to whichever group can provide the funding and weapons they say are needed to combat Israeli incursions…
Currently, Hamas’s armed wing, and the smaller, more radical Islamic Jihad, both of which have ties to Iran, control the camp. The PA, which is dominated by the secular Fatah, has dubbed the armed youth of the camp “outlaws”, launching the campaign against them on 5 December.
Israeli military raids West Bank city of Jenin, killing at least one Palestinian person – officials
The Israeli army has announced the start of a so-called military “operation” in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
Palestinian health services said at least one Palestinian person was killed and four others injured as the Israeli raid began in Jenin, where an Israeli airstrike last week in the refugee camp killed at least three Palestinians and injured many others.
Israeli soldiers stormed the city from the Jalameh military checkpoint, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa, after a special Israeli force infiltrated the al-Jabariyat neighbourhood.
Jenin’s refugee camp, one of 19 across the West Bank built in the aftermath of Israel’s creation in 1948 to house displaced Palestinians, is a centre of armed Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation.
Since the start of the war in October 2023, which has sparked a wave of violence in the West Bank, Israel has raided or carried out airstrikes in Jenin multiple times, killing dozens and leaving a trial of heavy destruction there. Israel says Jenin is a hotbed of terrorist activity.
Donald Trump also said on Monday he was not confident the Gaza ceasefire deal would hold, despite claiming credit for it ahead of his inauguration.
Asked by a reporter as he returned to the White House whether Israel and Hamas would maintain the truce and move on in the truce, Trump replied: “I’m not confident.”
“That’s not our war, it’s their war. But I’m not confident,” the Republican said.
