Israel targets West Bank with new wave of strikes and assassinations

The IDF has launched a significant “counterterrorism operation” in response to a failed suicide bombing attempt in Tel Aviv

Israel has killed around a dozen suspected militants in a series of airstrikes and raids in the occupied West Bank, as well as an assassination near the Syrian-Lebanese border, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Wednesday. The strikes allegedly targeted members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group.

Israeli forces launched what they called a “counterterrorism operation” in the West Bank settlements of Jenin and Tulkarm in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Three “armed terrorists” were killed in an airstrike in Jenin, while two others were killed by Israeli ground troops in Tulkarm and an unknown number were arrested, the IDF said in a statement. 

Another four alleged “terrorists” were killed in an airstrike on Far’a, a sprawling refugee camp located around 30 kilometers east of Tulkarm, the IDF said. The Palestinian Authority, which governs some West Bank territory autonomously, confirmed the Israeli casualty figures.

The raid was launched in response to an attempted suicide bombing in Tel Aviv last week. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a smaller militant group active in both Gaza and the West Bank, claimed responsibility for the blast, in which only the bomber died when his explosive device apparently detonated prematurely.

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Israel’s war on Hamas has largely remained confined to Gaza, as the militant group does not have a significant presence in the West Bank. However, the IDF has carried out more than 60 airstrikes in the West Bank since last October, and Israeli security forces have arrested nearly 5,000 people in the territory. 

More than 650 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank in the same time, according to the Palestinian Authority. By contrast, the Palestinian death toll in Gaza now stands above 40,000, according to the health ministry in the enclave. Palestinian-provided casualty figures are considered accurate by the UN, but make no distinction between civilians and combatants.

An Israeli drone strike on Monday in Tulkarm in the West Bank also reportedly killed five people on Monday.

In a separate announcement on Wednesday afternoon, the IDF said that Faris Qasim, a “significant terrorist” in the PIJ, had been killed in an Israeli airstrike along the Lebanese-Syrian border. An unknown number of “additional Islamic Jihad terrorists” were also killed in the strike, the IDF stated.

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Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz has called on his government to step up its campaign in the West Bank even further. In a social media post on Wednesday, he described Israel’s operation in the territory as “a war in every sense,” and urged West Jerusalem to “deal with the threat exactly as we deal with terror infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian civilians and any other step needed.”

Gaza’s civilian population has received multiple evacuation orders since Israel began striking the enclave last October. In many cases, however, Israeli forces have struck areas previously declared safe. The UN has described the evacuation policy as fueling “mass suffering for Palestinian families, many of whom have been displaced again and again.”