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Israel’s military carried out raids and airstrikes in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday in a wide-scale operation that appeared to cover a large part of the territory. The Palestinian Health Ministry said at least nine people had been killed in the attacks, and Israel’s foreign minister suggested that some residents of the West Bank would need to evacuate their homes.
The foreign minister, Israel Katz, said Israel’s military had started an operation in Jenin and Tulkarm to thwart terrorist groups. “We must deal with the threat just as we deal with the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever steps are required,” he posted on social media.
The comments suggested the start of a significant escalation in Israel’s military campaign in the West Bank, which has ramped up since the war in Gaza began. While 90 percent of Gaza’s population of more than two million people have been forced to leave their homes, residents of the West Bank have not endured the scale of bombardments, raids and evacuation orders that Gazans have in the past 10 months of war.
The Israeli military said it was carrying out counterterrorism operations in Tulkarm and in Jenin, without providing details. The operations appeared to be occurring elsewhere in the West Bank as well. The Palestinian Health Ministry said that seven of the people had been killed in Tubas, in addition to two in Jenin, and that 11 others had been injured.
Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, said that Israeli troops had moved in on hospitals, hindering ambulances at one medical facility, and were bulldozing infrastructure in Jenin and Tulkarm.
Israeli forces blocked access in and out of Jenin and Tulkarm early Wednesday, and large numbers of military vehicles entered Jenin, Wafa reported.
On Monday, the Israeli military carried out an airstrike on the densely populated Nur Shams area in the West Bank, killing at least five people whom it described in a statement on Wednesday as terrorists. The military said that one of those killed in that strike was a man who had been released in November as part of a prisoner exchange.
Since the war in Gaza began last Oct. 7, more than 600 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, according to the United Nations. The U.N. humanitarian coordinator also said Israeli forces had demolished, confiscated or forced the demolition of more than 1,400 structures across the West Bank since then.
Kamal Abu al-Rub, the Palestinian governor of Jenin, said Israeli officials had informed their Palestinian counterparts that they were imposing a formal curfew on parts of the city. Israeli forces were surrounding the city’s hospitals, entrances, and exits, he said. “People are living in a state of terror and anxiety,” Abu al-Rub said.
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The Israeli military said on Wednesday that an unusually wide-scale operation in the northern part of the occupied West Bank had only just begun as Israeli troops raided two major Palestinian cities there in an effort to crush militant groups.
“We are in the first stages of this operation,” Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, told a news briefing.
Israeli forces launched the unusually large military raids, focusing on the cities, Jenin and Tulkarm, after months during which Palestinian militants resisted Israeli efforts to subdue them in the territory.
Both cities have seen deadly battles between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants. Colonel Shoshani said that more than 150 “shooting and explosive attacks” against Israelis had originated in the two cities over the past year, including an attempted bombing in mid-August in the coastal metropolis of Tel Aviv.
Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks prompted full-blown war in Gaza, Israeli forces have stepped up raids in the West Bank, targeting what it says are Hamas and allied groups. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed, including both militants and civilians; at least 4,500 have been arrested, according to the Israeli military.
In the operation announced on Wednesday, nine militants were killed, the Israeli military said; Colonel Shoshani said that at least seven had been killed in aerial attacks. The West Bank once rarely saw bombardments by Israeli drones, but they, too, have become commonplace since Oct. 7.
Another Israeli security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that roughly hundreds of soldiers were participating in the operation. In Jenin, Israeli forces deployed near a major hospital, stoking fears that they might raid it. Colonel Shoshani argued that the military was trying to prevent the hospital from becoming a haven for militants.
Israeli officials have long said that militants have planted improvised explosive devices in an attempt to blow up Israeli soldiers as they drive along roads in Palestinian towns. Colonel Shoshani said that Israeli troops had worked overnight to disarm the explosives, deploying combat engineers specialized in dismantling them.
During another major raid in Jenin last year, scores of Palestinians fled their homes temporarily as Israeli troops pursued people suspected of being militants. Colonel Shoshani said there were currently no plans to order the evacuation of residents. Earlier, Israel’s foreign minister had raised the prospect of temporarily ordering residents to evacuate as the military operation goes on.
“If people wish to leave, they can leave,” Colonel Shoshani told reporters. “But I am not aware of a plan of evacuation or something like that.”
Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting.
Surveillance video shared on social media shows military vehicles driving down a street in Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, just before 1 a.m. local time on Wednesday.
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The Israeli military’s West Bank raid comes as U.S., Israeli and Iranian officials have said that Tehran is operating a clandestine smuggling route across the Middle East to deliver weapons to Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territory.
The goal, as described by three Iranian officials, has been to foment unrest against Israel by flooding the enclave with as many weapons as it can, The New York Times reported in April.
The covert operation, employing intelligence operatives, militants and criminal gangs, has heightened concerns that Iran is seeking to turn the West Bank into another flashpoint in its longstanding conflict with Israel.
Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said on Wednesday that its military was operating in the West Bank “to thwart Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructures,” adding: “Iran is working to establish an eastern terrorist front against Israel in the West Bank, according to the Gaza and Lebanon model.”
Many weapons smuggled to the West Bank largely travel along two paths from Iran through Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel, the officials said. As the arms cross borders, the officials added, they change hands among a multinational cast that can include members of organized criminal gangs, extremist militants, soldiers and intelligence operatives. A key group in the operation, the Iranian officials and analysts said, are Bedouin smugglers who carry the weapons across the border from Jordan into Israel.
“The Iranians wanted to flood the West Bank with weapons, and they were using criminal networks in Jordan, in the West Bank and in Israel, primarily Bedouin, to move and sell the products,” said Matthew Levitt, director of the counterterrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research organization, and the author of a study on the smuggling route.
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said at a news briefing that there were currently no plans to order the evacuation of residents from Jenin or Tulkarm in the West Bank. “If people wish to leave, they can leave,” he said. “But I am not aware of a plan of evacuation or something like that.” Earlier, Israel’s foreign minister had raised the prospect of temporarily relocating residents as the military operation goes on.
Israeli forces have begun an unusually broad operation in the West Bank, focusing on Jenin and Tulkarm, the military announced. The Israeli military said in a statement that its troops had killed nine Palestinian militants in clashes across the West Bank. Israeli troops have escalated their raids of Palestinian cities and towns across the occupied territory since Oct. 7, arresting thousands.
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