Israeli forces killed at least 10 Palestinians in the West Bank in overnight raids and airstrikes that they said were intended to contain attacks on Israelis using Iranian-supplied arms.
Palestinian health authorities said 10 people were killed in the Jenin and Tubas areas of the West Bank, and gun battles were reported to be continuing on Wednesday morning. Hamas said 10 of its fighters had been killed in the West Bank.
The main spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said the escalation of Israeli military operations on the West Bank, at the same time as the war in Gaza, would “lead to dire and dangerous results”.
“The world must take immediate and urgent action to curb this extremist government that poses a threat to the stability of the region and the world as a whole,” Abu Rudeineh said, according to the Palestinian news agency, Wafa.
Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said the operations were intended to “thwart Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructures”. Israel claimed that all those killed were militants.
“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,” Katz said in a post on X.
He suggested that evacuation orders for civilians should be issued for the West Bank, of the sort used to empty districts before IDF operations in Gaza.
Lt Col Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesperson, said he was aware of no such plans, but the Wafa agency reported on Wednesday afternoon that the Israeli army had ordered residents of the Nur Shams refugee camp, east of Tulkarm, to leave the camp within four hours, and that Israeli soldiers had set up checkpoints to search Palestinians as they left. The agency also reported that the IDF had imposed a curfew in east Jenin.
An Israeli military spokesperson denied that a formal order to leave Nur Shams had been issued, but said residents were being advised to leave because of the increasing danger of the situation as soldiers went searching for militants.
Tariq Shahada, a 35-year-old resident of Nur Shams, said by phone from the camp: “A huge amount of soldiers, equipment and gear and more than 50 armoured personnel carriers are in Tulkarm city, preparing to invade Nur Shams camp.”
A few hours later, early on Wednesday afternoon, Shahada added: “The Israeli soldiers are searching house by house. The situation is really dangerous. They wanted us to leave voluntarily, but no one would dare to leave the camp now without the Red Cross with them. It is too dangerous.”
In the first three weeks of August, according to UN figures, 128 Palestinians, including 26 children, were killed by airstrikes in the West Bank. The Israeli army and police have stepped up security operations significantly this week. The UN said there were 183 search-and-arrest operations across the West Bank including East Jerusalem in the last week, resulting in 113 Palestinians being detained.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they had carried out operations in three areas of the West Bank: Jenin, Tulkarm and al-Far’a refugee camp, near Tubas.
In Tulkarm, Shoshani said “three armed terrorists who posed a threat to the security forces were eliminated in a precise aerial attack”.
“In areas of Jenin, the forces eliminated two additional armed terrorists, apprehended five wanted suspects and located and confiscated weapons, including M16s [assault rifles] rifle parts, ammunition and additional military equipment,” Shoshani said.
At al-Far’a camp, the spokesperson said “an aircraft struck and eliminated four armed terrorists that posed a threat to the forces”.
He said there had been no Israeli casualties by mid-morning on Wednesday but added that “real-time exchange of fire with terror groups” was under way in the Jenin and Tulkarm areas.
Shoshani portrayed the raids and airstrikes as pre-emptive operations designed to stop planned attacks against Israelis, comparing them to Sunday’s airstrikes in Lebanon just ahead of a Hezbollah rocket and drone launch against Israel.
The Palestinian governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu al-Roub, said in a radio interview that the IDF had informed him it planned to raid the government hospital in the city, and called for international intervention to prevent it.
Shoshani said Israeli forces were seeking to prevent the hospital from being used as a terrorist stronghold but had no plans to seize it and take it over. He said there had been a rising level of attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians in recent months, coming in particular from Jenin and Tulkarm, which have long been militant strongholds.
“In the past year, over 150 shooting and explosive attacks have originated from these areas alone,” Shoshani said. He pointed to a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on 18 August, the first one in the city for eight years, which he said had been planned in Jenin, and also noted a rise in roadside bombs used in ambushes. Two IDF soldiers were killed by such bombs in recent weeks.
Shoshani said the attacks had been carried out by an array of groups, including local militants with only vague connections to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who both condemned the Israeli raid as an attempt to spread the Gaza war to the West Bank.
The Israeli spokesperson linked the surge in attacks to the smuggling of arms into the West Bank, which the IDF says is being orchestrated by Iran.
“We’ve seen Iranian attempts to actively smuggle weapons and explosives into Judea and Samaria [the official Israeli name for the West Bank] to be used against Israeli civilians for terror purposes – a systematic strategy of Iran to fund, arm and support terrorist groups across the Middle East,” Shoshani said.
Most reports of recent Palestinian bomb attacks have suggested the explosives involved were locally made.
Since the Gaza war began on 7 October last year, 19 Israelis – soldiers and civilians – have been killed in attacks on the West Bank. Over the same period, more than 650 Palestinians – the numbers of militant fighters and civilians within this figure are not clear, but it includes 143 children, according to the UN – have been killed by Israeli security forces as well as by extremist Israeli settlers, whom the Israeli Shin Bet security agency says are using terror to seize Palestinian land.