Jerusalem: At least nine Palestinians have been killed by Israeli Defense Forces, including at least seven militants and a 61-year-old woman, in the deadliest single incident in the occupied West Bank in two decades, Palestinian officials said. Two rockets were fired from Gaza early Friday and Israel responded with airstrikes on the territory, further escalating tensions. The Israeli military said both rockets were intercepted by its Iron Dome missile defense system. It was the first such attack from the militant Hamas-ruled territory since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power, who has promised a hard line against Palestinian insurgency.
The raid and rocket fire on the Jenin refugee camp raises the risk of a major flare-up in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and casts a shadow over an expected visit to the region next week by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Raising the stakes, the Palestinian Authority said it would sever ties that its security forces maintain with Israel in a shared effort to contain Islamic militants. Previous threats have been short-lived, partly because of the benefits the authorities have received from the relationship and also because of pressure from the US and Israel to maintain it.
The PA already has limited control over enclaves scattered across the West Bank and almost no control over militant strongholds such as the Jenin camp. But the declaration could pave the way for Israel to step up the operations it says it needs to prevent attacks.
Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, previously threatened revenge for the attack. The violence escalation in the West Bank has previously drawn retaliatory rockets from the Gaza Strip, which in turn has drawn Israeli airstrikes into the isolated and impoverished region.
The army said Israel targeted training sites of Palestinian militant groups in the early hours of Friday. Witnesses and local media reported that Israeli drones fired two missiles at a terrorist base in the central Gaza Strip. Drone strikes usually serve as a warning of larger airstrikes by fighter jets.
On Thursday, Israeli forces went on alert as Palestinians filled the streets in the West Bank, chanting in solidarity with Jenin. President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of mourning, and residents in the refugee camp dug a mass grave for the dead.
PA spokesman Nabil Abu Rudineh said Abbas called for cutting security coordination “in light of repeated aggression against our people and undermining of signed agreements”, referring to commitments from the Oslo peace process in the 1990s. had decided. He also said that the Palestinians planned to file complaints with the United Nations Security Council, the International Criminal Court and other international bodies.
The PA last cut security coordination with Israel in 2020, over Netanyahu’s campaign to annex the occupied West Bank, which would make a future Palestinian state impossible. But six months later, the PA resumed cooperation, signaling the financial importance of the relationship and the Palestinians’ relief at the election of President Joe Biden.
Barbara Leaf, the top US diplomat for the Middle East, said the administration was deeply concerned about the situation and that the reported civilian casualties in Jenin were “deeply regrettable”. But he also said the Palestinian announcement to suspend security ties was a mistake.
Nine people were killed and 20 wounded in Thursday’s gun battle after the Israeli army carried out a rare daytime operation at the Jenin camp which it said was to prevent an imminent attack on Israelis. The camp, where the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group has a large foothold, has been the center of almost nightly Israeli arrest raids.
Hamas’s armed wing claimed four of the dead as members, while Islamic Jihad said three others belonged to the group. An earlier statement by the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a militia affiliated with Abbas’s secular Fatah party, claimed that one of the dead was a fighter named Izz al-Din Salahat, but it was unclear if he was one of the seven terrorists. Was it from or not.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health identified the 61-year-old woman killed as Magda Obaid, and the Israeli military said it was looking into reports of her death. The Israeli army broadcast an aerial video that it said was taken during the battle, showing Palestinians throwing stones and firebombs at Israeli forces below on rooftops. At least one Palestinian can be seen firing from a rooftop.
Later in the day, Israeli forces fatally shot a 22-year-old man and wounded two others, the Palestinian health ministry said, as Palestinians marched against Israeli troops north of Jerusalem to protest Thursday’s raids. faced. Israel’s paramilitary border police said they opened fire on Palestinians who fired firecrackers at them from close range. Tensions have risen since Israel raided the West Bank last spring, following a series of Palestinian attacks.