At least 18 Palestinians were killed and several others injured on Thursday night, in an airstrike launched by an Israeli F-16 fighter jet that targeted a coffee shop in the Tulkarm Refugee camp, in the northern occupied West Bank. A family of four, including two children, was killed in the aggression.
The aerial aggression marked Israel’s first employment of an Israeli warplane in the occupied West Bank in two decades, which analysts perceived as a dangerous escalation. The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and Israel’s internal security service, also known as Shin Bet, issued a statement on early Friday, claiming that their joint airstrike targeted Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, who is a top commander of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas in Tulkarm, along with other fighters.
The aerial attack is part of “Operation Summer Camps”, which Israel launched last August to crush on armed resistance groups and brigades in the occupied West Bank. The operation is considered the largest Israeli military action in the West Bank since 2002. Meanwhile, the IOF also continued to kill Palestinians in a wholesale manner in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military committed three massacres across Gaza on Thursday and Friday, killing at least 14 people and injuring scores of others.
The massacre in Tulkarm was strongly condemned by the Palestinian Presidency, which also held the United States responsible for providing Israel with military and political support encouraging it to continue its genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank for nearly one year. Nabil Abu Rudeinah, the spokesperson of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, described the airstrike on the Tulkarm refugee camp in a statement on Friday as “a heinous crime committed against innocent civilians”.
Moreover, the Palestinian government issued a statement on Friday, calling on the international community, humanitarian and human rights organizations to intervene and stop the daily atrocities committed by the IOF against the Palestinian people. “At a time when the majority of the world voted in favor of the UN General Assembly resolution adopting the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice calling for an end to the occupation within 12 months, this massacre highlights Israel’s disregard for international resolutions and its operation as an entity above the law,” the Palestinian government’s statement reads.
On September 18, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to adopt a resolution which demands Israel to “bring to an end without delay its unlawful presence” in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The resolution calls on Israel to comply with international law and withdraw its military forces, immediately cease all new settlement activity, and evacuate all settlers from the occupied territories, in addition to dismantling parts of the separation wall it constructed inside the occupied West Bank within 12 months. However, Israel’s Foreign Ministry denounced the resolution then describing it as “a distorted decision that is disconnected from reality, encourages terrorism, and harms the chances for peace”.
