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Israel’s large-scale military operations in the occupied West Bank entered a second day on Thursday, with the Israeli military saying it had killed five militants inside a mosque in the city of Tulkarm in an exchange of gunfire.
Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, said 17 people had been killed in all in raids across the territory that began before dawn on Wednesday. On Thursday, the Israeli military was raiding dozens of homes in Tulkarm and had closed entrances to the nearby Nur Shams neighborhood, according to the news agency.
Israel’s military said the five killed in the mosque on Thursday were militants, including a top commander, Muhammad Jaber, who was known as Abu Shujaa. Mr. Jaber led the local branch of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which confirmed his death, and he led a collective of militant factions in the Tulkarm area.
Explosions were heard in Jenin, where Israeli troops were operating in the eastern part of the city, Wafa reported. A spokesman for the Israeli military said Jenin and Tulkarm had become militant strongholds.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said that it had lost contact with the emergency medical services in Jenin because communications were down.
Riyad Awad, the head of the city council in Tulkarm, said the Israeli military was raiding his city, along with two neighborhoods known as Tulkarm camp and Nur Shams camp, for a second day, and many residents were unable to leave their homes. Using bulldozers, he said, Israeli forces “are ripping up the streets and they cut water mains, so we had to turn off the water.” Parts of the city and the entirety of Nur Shams were without water and sewage service, he said.
The Israeli military often uses bulldozers in the West Bank to counter what it says is the threat of improvised explosives placed under the streets.
Faisal Salameh, head of the services committee of Tulkarm camp, confirmed that five people there had been killed in a strike around 5 a.m. Thursday, including Mr. Jaber. The Israeli forces took Mr. Jabr’s body, along with the bodies of two others killed, and detained a man whose leg had been broken, he said. Mr. Salameh said the group had been hiding inside a home, next to a mosque, when they were attacked.
On Wednesday, in one of the broadest Israeli campaigns in the West Bank in more than a year, hundreds of troops accompanied by drones began pushing into parts of Jenin and Tulkarm as part of what the Israeli military described as the first stages of an operation to root out militants. Israeli raids had been increasing in recent months in the West Bank, where three million Palestinians live under Israeli occupation.
Residents said Israeli forces were putting up roadblocks made of dirt mounds Wednesday afternoon, appearing to set up for a longer operation than past incursions during which they would make arrests and withdraw within hours. The Palestinian governor of Jenin said on Wednesday that the unusually fierce Israeli operations this week had left residents terrorized and anxious.
The activity in the West Bank is an escalation along a third front for Israel, in addition to its war in Gaza and the increased air attacks across its northern border with Lebanon against the militant group Hezbollah.
More than 600 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, both in military strikes and at the hands of extremist Jewish settlers, according to the United Nations.
Raja Abdulrahim contributed reporting.
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Steven Erlanger, the chief diplomatic correspondent for The New York Times, traveled to the West Bank earlier this year. While there, he interviewed Muhammad Jaber, known as Abu Shujaa, a militant commander who was killed by Israeli forces on Thursday morning. Here are excerpts from his article, published in July.
The alleys are cast in permanent semidarkness, covered by black nylon tarpaulins to hide the Palestinian fighters there from Israeli drones overhead. Green Hamas flags and banners commemorating “martyrs” hang from the buildings, many badly damaged during Israeli raids and airstrikes to try to tamp down a growing militancy in the territory.
This is not Gaza or a traditional Hamas stronghold. It is a refugee camp in Tulkarm, a town in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the relatively moderate Palestinian faction of Fatah had long held sway.
I recently met a local commander of these young militants, Muhammad Jaber, 25, in one of those dusty, shattered alleyways. One of Israel’s most wanted men, he and other fighters like him say they have switched allegiances from the relatively moderate Fatah faction, which dominates the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to more radical groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
Asked what lesson he had taken from the war in Gaza, Mr. Jaber paused for a moment to think.
“Patience,” he said. “And strength. And courage.”
Mr. Jaber, widely known by his nom de guerre, Abu Shujaa, meaning Father of the Brave, commands the local branch of Islamic Jihad, which dominates the Tulkarm camp. He also leads a collective of all the militant factions in that area, including the Aqsa Martyrs Brigade there, which is known as the Khatiba. He switched from Fatah, he said, because it was Islamic Jihad and Hamas who were taking the fight to Israel to end the occupation and create Palestine by force of arms.
Mr. Jaber gained a kind of cult status in the spring when the Israeli military announced that it had killed him during a raid on the Tulkarm camp. Three days later, he emerged alive at the funeral of other Palestinians killed during that same raid, to joyous shouts from camp residents.
We met in an alley with streets stripped to sand by Israeli bulldozers, before ducking into a storefront to avoid being sighted by drones. Thin and bearded, wearing a black Hugo Boss T-shirt and a Sig Sauer pistol on his hip, Mr. Jaber was watched by six bodyguards. Some were armed with M16 and M4 rifles with full magazines and optical sights.
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The World Food Program said it is suspending deliveries of aid in Gaza after one of its humanitarian teams was hit by gunfire this week as it approached an Israeli military checkpoint.
In a statement, the United Nations agency said none of its employees were injured during the shooting on Tuesday night, which occurred after a convoy of its trucks had delivered assistance to central Gaza. The agency said one of its vehicles had been hit by 10 bullets — five on the driver’s side — a few yards from the Israeli security post at the Wadi Gaza bridge.
The statement did not assign responsibility for the shooting, but it said Tuesday’s attack was not the first time a W.F.P. team had come under attack while nearing an Israeli checkpoint in Gaza — even after receiving permission to approach. As a result, it said it was “pausing the movement of its employees in Gaza until further notice.”
“This is totally unacceptable and the latest in a series of unnecessary security incidents that have endangered the lives of W.F.P.’s team in Gaza,” Cindy McCain, the agency’s executive director, said in the statement, which was released Wednesday.
She demanded that Israeli officials take immediate action to ensure the safety of humanitarian workers delivering aid in Gaza and to improve the system by which aid agencies coordinate their movements with Israeli forces. “The current de-confliction system is failing, and this cannot go on any longer,” Ms. McCain said.
Earlier this week, the agency’s main operating hub in Deir al Balah, in the central part of the territory, had to relocate after the Israeli military issued an evacuation order for the area. Last week, amid ongoing Israeli military operations, five W.F.P. community kitchens were evacuated and the agency lost access to the only aid warehouse that it was still operating in central Gaza, the statement said.
The pause in aid deliveries comes at a perilous time for humanitarian efforts and the Palestinians in Gaza who depend on them. As Israel’s military offensive nears its 11th month, nearly half a million people in Gaza face starvation, experts have warned.
In April, an Israeli drone strike killed seven workers with the World Central Kitchen aid group. The organization resumed its work after a brief pause and said in June it had delivered more than 50 million meals in Gaza since the war began.
Israeli military officials have said the attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy was a “grave mistake” and cited a series of failures, including a breakdown in communication and violations of the military’s operating procedures.
Adding to the humanitarian concerns, a 10-month old child was diagnosed with polio this month, the first confirmed case of the disease in Gaza in a quarter-century. UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, is hoping to start a campaign to vaccinate children in Gaza as early as this weekend, and has asked Israel to pause military operations to allow it to take place.
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The wide-scale Israeli raids in the West Bank overnight from Tuesday into Wednesday stand in stark contrast to Israel’s response to Jewish settler violence in the area, which has surged during the nearly 11-month-long war in Gaza.
Israel’s military used hundreds of troops to mount the overnight raids in the occupied West Bank in an operation it described as targeting Palestinian militants after months of increasing attacks. At least 10 people have been killed in what an Israeli military official said was a continuing campaign.
By contrast, the military has made a much more muted response to Jewish settler violence against Palestinians, which Israeli officials and the United Nations have also said is on the rise — and some military leaders have said similarly represents a threat to Israel’s national security.
The Israeli military on Wednesday acknowledged that it should have acted more quickly to address settler violence during an attack on a Palestinian village earlier this month that stood out for drawing rapid and unusual rebukes from Israeli officials and the international community.
In that attack, on Aug. 15, settlers raided the village of Jit. Palestinians living there described dozens of Israeli settlers storming the village, wearing masks, dressed in dark clothes and armed with rocks, Kalashnikovs and M-16s.
The rioters were eventually dispelled, but not fast enough to prevent damage, injuries and one Palestinian death. “This is a very serious terror incident in which Israelis set out to deliberately harm the residents of the town of Jit, and we failed by not succeeding to arrive earlier to protect them,” Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, who leads the Israeli military units responsible for the West Bank, said in a report published on Wednesday.
The military’s investigation into the attack on Jit found that some soldiers first dispatched to clear out rioters had not acted “decisively” enough, but it noted that additional troops and Israeli Border Police arrived soon after and “rescued and assisted Palestinian families, including women and children, to escape from burning buildings and provided them with first aid.”
The investigation also found that two off-duty members of a nearby rapid response team donned their uniforms and used their authority improperly, noting that they had since been dismissed and their weapons confiscated.
“There is still lots of work ahead of us, and we will be judged by our actions, not our words,” General Bluth concluded, adding that the investigation “will not be closed until we bring the perpetrators to justice.”
Many other violent incidents perpetrated by settlers have received less attention.
The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which tracks West Bank violence on a weekly basis, on Wednesday said that in the previous week, Israeli settlers perpetrated more than 30 attacks against Palestinians, resulting in a death, 11 injuries and damage to property, while Palestinians perpetrated one attack against settlers in this period, with no injuries reported. Since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel that set off the war in Gaza, the agency has recorded about 1,270 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians.
The head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, Ronen Bar, wrote last week to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about settler violence as a national security threat. Similarly, in July, Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuks, in a speech marking his departure as chief of Israel’s Central Command, condemned “nationalist crime” by Israelis in the West Bank, saying that the settler violence imperiled Israel’s security.
More than 2.7 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, alongside about 500,000 Jewish settlers. Israel seized control of the territory from Jordan in 1967 during a war with three Arab states. Israeli Jews have moved in since in increasing numbers, residing there with both tacit and explicit government approval, even though the settlements are considered illegal under international law, and outposts erected without government approval also violate Israeli law.
Palestinians and the international community consider the settlements illegal encroachments on land meant for an eventual Palestinian state. But far-right ministers in Israel’s government — most notably the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and the national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, both settlers themselves — have been vocal about wanting to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state and have advanced policies to support the goals of expansionist settlers.
The international community has repeatedly condemned the growth of Israeli settlements and the recent rise in settler violence. The European Union and the United States have in recent months sanctioned individuals and settler groups that they said had violated human rights by acting violently or inciting violence against Palestinians.
On Wednesday, the United States imposed new sanctions on one individual and a group in the West Bank it said was responsible for such violations. “The U.S. continues to take action to promote accountability for those who commit and support extremist violence in the West Bank,” Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said in a post on social media.
Despite condemning settler violence in response to the riot in Jit, Israel’s prime minister criticized the new sanctions. “Israel views with great severity the sanctioning of Israeli citizens,” Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Wednesday. “The matter is under vigorous discussion with the U.S.”
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Amid the sobs of relatives rushing to hug Farhan al-Qadi and the ululations of neighbors celebrating his return home to a Bedouin village in southern Israel on Wednesday, the first thing the rescued hostage wanted to do was find his mother.
When he did, he dropped to his knees and kissed her feet.
Mr. al-Qadi, 52, the first Israeli Arab to be rescued alive since the deadly Hamas-led attack and abductions on Oct. 7, later spoke of his gratitude for the Israeli forces and medics who had rescued and cared for him.
Then, with the Israeli bombardment of neighboring Gaza echoing in the background, he made a plea to both sides: Stop the killing.
“To Palestinians and Israelis, I wish an end to this war,” he told those gathered. “Palestinians and Israelis feel the same pain.”
Joy was palpable in the ramshackle village of Karkur, a place of squat homes made of tarpaulin and metal sheeting not far from the town of Rahat. The celebration uplifted members of Mr. al-Qadi’s family, who have been grappling with two kinds of heartbreak since October, straddling both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.
The Bedouin minority were victims of the Hamas-led kidnappings, and are also aching for their Palestinian relatives in Gaza.
To Hamas, Mr. al-Qadi, though a Muslim and an Arab, was an Israeli hostage. Back in Israel, he remains a Bedouin, a group marginalized in Israel.
Once seminomadic herders, the Bedouin have long been corralled by Israel into impoverished towns in the Negev desert, but many actually live in unrecognized villages like Karkur. Some Bedouins serve in the Israeli military or work on kibbutzim or for other Israeli Jews, and the group is sometimes seen as traitors by fellow Arabs.
As Israel ramped up the war in Gaza, Mr. al-Qadi’s wife, Sumiya al-Sana, said she had been appalled to find that her husband, who had worked as a unarmed guard on a kibbutz in southern Israel, was seen on Arab social media as an enemy.
“They’d call him a collaborator, a traitor,” she said. “They’d say he’s useless; Hamas should just kill him. And they don’t know him — they don’t know he used to donate part of his salary to orphans in Gaza.”
Every day, she said, she listened to news from Gaza, hoping for a clue about her husband’s fate. And even now that he is home safe, she is still awaiting signals of life from her uncles, who are among more than a million Gazans forced to flee their homes to escape Israeli bombardments.
“Shame on both sides,” she said.
The family was stunned to receive news of Mr. al-Qadi’s rescue on Tuesday, having thought that the only chance of seeing him alive was through a cease-fire deal. But none has materialized as negotiations have repeatedly stalled.
Waiting for him at home on Wednesday, Ms. al-Sana wore bright lipstick and a new dress. She said that when she heard he had been rescued, unharmed, she could not feel her legs.
“Farhan and I, we are not just a couple,” she said. “To me, he is like a brother, a father — he is everything to me.”
Her husband, dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, appeared frailer and paler than she had ever seen him.
In an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, Mr. al-Qadi said he had lost around 28 pounds — not because he had no food, but because he was distraught during his 10 months of captivity, which he spent entirely in Hamas tunnels underground.
“I came out to an entire battalion waiting for me with smiles and hugs — 40 to 50 people,” he said. “When I came out, it was hard for me to see the sun because of its intensity, so I put on sunglasses.” He has to keep wearing sunglasses, he said, whenever he is in daylight.
As Israelis across the country celebrated Mr. al-Qadi’s release, his story put the spotlight on the plight of Israel’s Bedouin community. At least 17 Bedouins have died in the war, officials say, and three living and one dead Bedouin remain hostage in Gaza.
Few Bedouins have access to medical centers or bomb shelters to escape Hamas rocket fire on southern Israel because so many live in villages unacknowledged by the government. Karkur does not have electricity, relying instead on solar panels, and only recently got connected to running water.
Ms. al-Sana said she had been touched by the warm welcome Israeli officials offered Mr. al-Qadi, who received a call from the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, and the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
But she said she did not have much hope for change.
“No,” she said. “The racism is there.”
Her ordeal over the past months has left her longing to bridge the divide between Israeli Jews and Arabs, she said, and to reach out to the families of Jewish hostages she has seen on television.
“My face would darken,” she said. “I was crying with them. I felt their pain.”
She was held back, however, by conservative Bedouin custom surrounding women’s interactions with strangers. One relative who attended some of the gatherings of other hostage families — quietly, so as not to draw more accusations of being traitors — was his brother Maddah al-Qadi.
The family is still praying for a cease-fire to bring relief to others.
“Hopefully, everyone will be released — Arabs and Jews — and this war will end,” Maddah al-Qadi said.
— Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Erika Solomon Reporting from Karkur, Israel, and Berlin.
