Military Eye: Israel, West Bank and Karamah’s Deadly Operation

Military and strategic expert Dr. Nidal Abu Zeid said the Karamah Crossing operation is casting its shadow over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as the occupation army from now may step up its security measures.

He pointing out to the repeated statements and warnings issued by the occupation army to its so-called home front point to the fact.

Abu Zeid added to the Jordan24 news website that the West Bank may witness martyrdom operations in the coming period in response to the increase security violations committed by the Israeli occupation.

Abu Zeid pointed out that the current calm and the decrease in the intensity of operations suggest that the occupation army is presently involved in intelligence gatherings to search for what he termed as “high-value targets.”

Regarding to what is happening in the West Bank, Abu Zeid pointed out that the Israeli occupation have already headed to the Balata camp in Nablus. He pointed out this indicates that occupation forces maybe now  heading towards the center of the West Bank, then towards the southern camps and finally target Hebron.

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Jenin: ‘We Will Only Raise The Palestinian Flag Here’

The Israeli occupation forces have continued their onslaught on Jenin and its camp for the eighth consecutive day.

The onslaught resulted in the killing of 19 people, the injury and arrest of dozens with widespread destruction of citizens’ properties and infrastructure, including water and electricity networks, according to Wafa.

On Tuesday, 16-year-od Lujain Abdul Raouf was killed, and four journalists injured, including WAFA photojournalists Muhammad Mansour and Ayman Noubani, in an Israeli army siege of a house in the village of Kafr Dan, west of Jenin.

The occupation forces also raided several houses in the Al-Hadaf neighborhood on the outskirts of Jenin camp, tampered with their contents and destroyed their furniture.

The occupation forces stormed the Al-Zahraa neighborhood in the city and bulldozed the infrastructure and streets, while water continues to be cut off from most of the city’s neighborhoods and the camp.

Destroying streets

The occupation forces continue to destroy the center of Jenin city, as the occupation bulldozers razed Cinema Street and large parts of Hospitals Street to the vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital, and destroyed shops in the Cinema Roundabout area and re-razed the Post Street.

The occupation bulldozers attacked a group of journalists while they were covering the destruction of the Cinema Roundabout and the surrounding shops, and opened fire directly at them, which resulted in their injury.

In Al-Jabariyat neighborhood, the occupation forces stormed the house of the detainee Zakaria Al-Zubaidi and detained his brother Yahya after vandalizing and destroying the contents of the house.

The occupation forces also continued their large-scale detention campaigns of young men in the Jenin camp and the villages of Al-Silah Al-Harithiya, Al-Yamoun and Kafr Dan west of Jenin.

They stormed the town of Qabatiya fired at citizens’ houses, Tuesday night, and resulted in the shooting of a young man in the chest while he was inside his home.

The Israeli army also detained an ambulance crew while transporting an emergency medical case to the Khalil Suleiman Governmental Hospital in Jenin and assaulted a number of them.

The Israeli occupation forces stormed the village of Muthalath Al-Shuhada, south of Jenin, deployed snipers on the roofs of several houses, raided six houses, detained a number of citizens before withdrawing from the town according to the Palestinian news agency.

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Palestinians: Down But By No Means Beaten!

Palestinian analysts confirm the military operation launched by the Israeli occupation on the camps in the northern occupied West Bank – “Summer Camps” – aim to eradicate the resistance through excess force and the destruction of their popular base and is considered more dangerous than the “Defensive Shield” operation it carried out in the occupied West Bank in 2002.

Palestinian political analyst Ismat Mansour stressed the most dangerous thing about the last Israeli military operation emanates from what Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said about evacuating the residents of the camps to humanitarian places to carry out cleansing operations,” a sentence also made by the army spokesman when the operation was launched.

“The goal of these military operations are clear, and represented in destroying the Palestinian infrastructure and turning the camps into uninhabitable places with creeping and gradual ethnic cleansing,” Mansour told Quds Press.

Mansour attributed these plans to the declared programs of the Israeli occupation government and “its structure, ideology, and agenda – highlighted by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to resolve the conflict,” in reference to the aim to annex the West Bank to the occupation state.

Therefore Mansour called for “the necessity of working to find a unified collective plan that mobilizes all [Palestinian] energies to confront this criminal mentality.”

Expert Azzam Abu Al-Adas considers the current Israeli military operation in the West Bank is far “more dangerous than that of the Operation Defensive Shield carried by the Jewish army in 2002.”

He pointed out “when Operation Defensive Shield was executed, the Palestinian factions were present in the West Bank and existed in terms of infrastructure, finance, and military, and had the ability to rebuild their forces and compensate for losses. Now, the factions have been dismantled financially, militarily, and socially.”

“Operation Defensive Shield was carried out at a time when the number of settlers in the West Bank was barely 70,000, and now it is 800,000, which means that eliminating the resistance will increase the encroachment of the army and settlers,” according to his thinking.

Abu Al-Adas pointed out head of the Israeli government of occupation Benjamin Netanyahu, “is in dire need of a victory, and since he failed to achieve it in Gaza, he will claim this such an image in the West Bank raise his popularity, especially among the settlers and will increase his chances in the upcoming elections, which he intends to run for.”

“In 2002, the occupation was still living under the shock of the then prime minister Ariel Sharon who entered Al-Aqsa Mosque in 2000, and Al-Aqsa Mosque was out of the game, but now if Israel succeeds in eliminating the resistance act it means the building of the synagogue which Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir talked about and displacing the people of Jerusalem” becomes more real.

The occupation forces began a large-scale military operation targeting resistance fighters in Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas in the northern West Bank at dawn Wednesday, where large Israeli forces invaded all areas, cities and camps in the northern West Bank from several axes, calling it operation “Summer Camps”.

The Israeli media reported the military operation is the largest since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, and carried out with the Israeli warplanes, army, Israeli Internal Security Service (Shabak) and other undercover forces with the use of helicopters and fighter jets extensively.

Operation Defensive Shield was a military operation carried out by Israel to occupy and attack areas of the Palestinian Authority, after the Palestinian soldier Abdul Basit Odeh carried out the Park Hotel operation, which is considered one of the largest suicide operations in the history of the Palestinian resistance.

For Israel the main goal of the operation was to eliminate the second Palestinian Intifada which began in 2000 after Sharon, as prime minister, stormed the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

“Operation Defensive Shield” was launched on 29 March, 2002 and ended on 10 May.

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Amnesty Decries Israel Attacks on West Bank Cities

Responding to the launch of a major Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank targeting several Palestinian cities and towns including Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus and Tubas, and deploying hundreds of soldiers to carry out raids supported by fighter jets, drones and bulldozers Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns. Erika Guevara Rosas said:

“Israel’s launch of a major coordinated military assault on cities and towns across the occupied West Bank follows an escalation in unlawful killings by Israeli forces in recent months and will put more Palestinians at risk. Since October, last year, there has been a horrifying spike in lethal force by Israeli forces and violent state-back settler attacks in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, with Israeli forces and settlers killing at least 622 Palestinians, including at least 142 children.

“Ongoing military operations on this scale will undoubtedly lead to an escalation in deadly violence, resulting in further loss of Palestinian lives. It is likely that these operations will result in an increase in forced displacement, destruction of critical infrastructure and measures of collective punishment, which have been key pillars of Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians and of its unlawful occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“Amid alarming reports that Israeli forces have encircled and blocked off access to hospitals, Amnesty International urges the Israeli authorities to take action to safeguard health facilities and personnel. Furthermore, they must guarantee that individuals in need of medical attention are able to access the care they require. As the occupying power, Israel has a clear obligation to protect Palestinians, their homes and the infrastructure throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

Amnesty International previously documented how Israeli forces unleashed a brutal wave of violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank following the deadly 7 October attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in southern Israel. This research highlighted how Israeli forces carried out unlawful killings, including by using lethal force without necessity or disproportionately during protests and arrest raids, and denying medical assistance to those injured.

Amnesty International has also documented the shocking increase in state-backed settler violence against Palestinians. These patterns, continue unabated as Israeli forces have also escalated their use of arrests, including arbitrary detention, to crush any form of Palestinian dissent.

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West Bank on Fire Against Israeli Occupation

What was a premonition yesterday, today it has become a reality. What did not exceed the level of fear has now become part of daily circumstance.

In Jenin, Tulkarm, Nablus, Hebron, Tubas, Qalqilya – all cities of the West Bank – it has become necessary for the Israeli occupation army to be no less vigilant than in its battle in Gaza and/or southern Lebanon according to the Palestine Information Center.

Today, the battle is taking place on the sides of Israeli army barracks, checkpoints, and headquarters. The West Bank is today not just a support front for Gaza, but has become part of the front lines against Israeli occupation.

The resistance escalation in the West Bank has been the most feared by Israel since the outbreak of the Al Aqsa Flood Battle in Gaza; it is the closest front to it and therefore the most dangerous to the occupation.

Traditional military measures of searches, raids, arrests, and setting up checkpoints are no longer of any use. The resistance has prepared itself to confront all of this and diversified its method of resistance to the occupation including detonating explosive devices in Israeli vehicles which has never happened before.

The resistance in the West bank has begun to intensify its attacks on the enemy and present its heroism and sacrifices to relieve the pressure on the Gaza Strip, suffering from the scourge of genocide and brutal massacres now for the 327th consecutive day. The number of martyrs and missing persons in Gaza has now exceeded 50,000, together with the destruction of all aspects of life in the Strip.

This is what prompted the West Bank resistance to act supporter to Gaza, with sacrifices of more than 640 martyrs and about 5,400 wounded, in addition to the thousands of detainees, since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Flood.

At the same time, the Israeli government sought to exploit the war in the Gaza Strip to implement its plans for settlement expansion and the establishment of new outposts in the West Bank with the absence of any accountability for these crimes. The extreme rightwing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu sought to impose a new reality in Jerusalem increasing the settlers’ incursions incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque, to the point were National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir announced his intention to build a synagogue on the grounds of the holly mosque.

The Israeli policy of Palestinian assassinations increased in intensity with the escalation of the resistance against the occupation forces. Hardly a day goes by without the West Bank burying one or more of its fighters in a cowardly Israeli targeting, the latest of which was the assassination of 10 martyrs in Jenin and Tubas as part of the extensive aggression announced by the occupation army in the northern West Bank.

In a new criminal move, the occupation army announced, Tuesday, the start of what it called a “large-scale operation” in the cities of the northern West Bank of Jenin, Tulkarm, Tubas, the camps, and several neighborhoods of Nablus. According to Israeli media, the occupation army intends to destroy the infrastructure of the resistance in the northern West Bank through such aggression, describing it as the most violent and extensive since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.

In conjunction with this announcement, the Mujahideen of Qassam Brigades, along with other resistance factions, engaged in an armed clash with the occupation forces in Tulkarm as Qassam Brigades detonated explosive devices in Israeli military vehicles as they stormed the Jenin camp, while targeting a military tower at the entrance to the Al-Arroub camp north of Hebron.

Saraya Al Quds of Islamic Jihad shot down an Israeli drone in the Nour Shams camp in Tulkarm while wounding a number of occupation soldiers at sniper positions fortified inside a house. It was also announced the detonation of an explosive device in a military bulldozer in Nablus, achieving direct injuries among its crew.

The occupation is trying to silence the voice of the resistance by committing more crimes in the West Bank but it is not succeeding as the latest military operations  of Al-Qassam Brigades fighters believe the Israeli army is drowning in a quagmire  in Nablus as fierce clashes with enemy forces in Balata camp are heightened.

The occupation’s announcement of the start of a new aggression in the West Bank, after months of escalation, is an official admission that the resistance in the West Bank is very strong, and that the Israelis know as stated by Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz on Wednesday morning:

“The threat in the West Bank must be dealt with like Gaza and a temporary evacuation of people must be implemented, as this is a war on everything.”

With this escalation, it can be said that the occupation has begun a difficult confrontation that may cost it a lot as the West Bank is causing the enemy great pain that has never been witnessed in the history of the conflict with it, and the military escalation with the Palestinian resistance groups may contribute greatly to the changing the scene taking place in Palestine, and on all axes of support.

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