The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) withdrew its troops from the city of Jenin and Tulkarm and their refugee camps on Friday, September 6, announcing the end of the 10-day military offensive which was the largest in the West Bank since 2002.
The expanded Israeli military operation, which started on August 28, encompassed different areas of the northern West Bank including Jenin, Tulkarm, Tubas, and Al-Fara camp. According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 36 Palestinians were killed and 150 others were injured during the offensive. The operation also resulted in significant devastation of the infrastructure in the affected areas.
In a statement on its official Facebook page, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry accused Israel on Friday of transferring the brutal destruction and devastation that it caused in the Gaza Strip to the occupied West Bank, providing the situation in Jenin and Tulkarm, and their refugee camps as evidence.
“In full view of the international community and countries that claim to uphold the principles of human rights, protection of civilians, and the two-state solution, the occupying state continues to reproduce its brutal crimes and scenes of destruction and devastation that it committed in the Gaza Strip, now transferring them to the occupied West Bank, as seen in Jenin and Tulkarm and their refugee camps. This is a clear targeting of Palestinian civilians and the foundations of their national and human existence on their homeland,” the Ministry stated.
Although the IOF announced the end of its operation in the north, Israeli military checkpoints are still set up in areas surrounding Jenin, which raised the concerns of Palestinian residents living there, that further incursions may be carried out in Jenin city and its refugee camp, that are considered strongholds for Palestinian armed resistance groups in the West Bank.
In addition, the IOF have continued carrying out raids in other areas of the West Bank after pulling out from Jenin and Tulkarm. According to Al Jazeera, a 20-year-old woman was injured by Israeli gunfire in the village of Husan, west of Bethlehem in the southern occupied West Bank. The woman sustained the injury while trying to close the window of a house during the raid. The village of Beit Tamar, east of Bethlehem, and the Balata refugee camp, east of Nablus have also been raided.
Friday marked another evidence that the Israeli military operation has not apparently ended in the West Bank, after the IOF shot dead a young Turkish-American activist, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, while she was taking part in a protest against an Israeli settlement near the village of Beita in Nablus in the northern West Bank. While the incident was condemned by the US administration, they have not announced any change in policy towards Israel or a response to the killing of its citizen.
Israeli aggression against Gaza has also continued unabated. On day 336 of Israel’s genocidal war in the besieged strip, at least 33 Palestinians were killed including children in Israeli airstrikes that targeted different areas across Gaza.
On Thursday, September 5, Amnesty International published a report on Israel’s war crimes represented in the destruction that it caused in Gaza. “The Israeli military’s relentless campaign of ruin in Gaza is one of wanton destruction. Our research has shown how Israeli forces have obliterated residential buildings, forced thousands of families from their homes and rendered their land uninhabitable,” Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns, Erika Guevara-Rosas said. On Friday, September 6, the organization stated in another report that Israel’s latest military assault in the Occupied West Bank marks a dangerous and unprecedented escalation of violence that risks all Palestinians to endure collective punishment.
