Minister says Israel is applying ‘lessons’ from Gaza in West Bank operation | News about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Israel’s defense minister says the military is applying a ‘method’ from the Gaza war in a major attack on Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces are applying methods learned during the Gaza war to their ongoing military operation “Iron Wall” in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s defense minister said, where troops have killed at least 10 people in Jenin and ordered residents to leave the area’s refugee camp.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that the Jenin operation, which is entering its third day, marks a change in Israel’s military plan in the occupied West Bank and is “the first lesson from the method of repeated attacks in Gaza”.
A spokesman for the Israeli military declined to provide details about Operation Jeninwhich began on Tuesday and is the third major incursion by the Israeli army into Jenin in less than two years, long stronghold of resistance to Israel’s decades-old military occupation of the Palestinian territory.
Residents of the Jenin refugee camp reported constant gunfire and explosions on Wednesday, while Palestinian health services reported at least four wounded in the camp.
The UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said on Wednesday that Israeli forces had used “advanced weapons and methods of warfare, including airstrikes” on the Jenin camp, which is now “almost uninhabitable” with an estimated 2,000 families displaced from the area since December.
Israel’s “massive operation” in Jenin also “threatens to undermine the fragile ceasefire reached a few days ago in Gaza,” said Roland Friedrich, UNRWA’s director of affairs for the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israeli media also reported that Israeli forces killed two Palestinians in the Wadi Burqin area near the city of Jenin on Wednesday.
Jenin resisted Israeli occupation for decades, earning a reputation as the “capital of the Palestinian resistance.” Here’s why it’s still important today. pic.twitter.com/Yu9nkRi12w
— AJ+ (@ajplus) January 22, 2025
The Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that Israeli forces surrounded a building in the town of Burqin and ordered the occupants out over a loudspeaker.
Airstrikes by Israeli drones hit the house while soldiers on the ground fired anti-tank grenades at the building, which was then razed by army bulldozers.
As the Israeli attack began on Tuesday, 10 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in the Jenin area, including children and medical personnel.
The governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu al-Rub, told the AFP news agency that the situation was “very difficult” because Israeli military bulldozers had torn up all the roads leading to the Jenin refugee camp and the state hospital in Jenin. Israeli forces have also taken about 20 people from villages around Jenin since the operation began on Tuesday, he said.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for “maximum restraint” by Israeli forces in Jenin and expressed deep concern, according to his deputy spokesman Farhan Haq.
Guterres voiced his fears at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday over the “existential threat to the integrity and continuity” of Gaza and the occupied West Bank from Israel and amid the “unabated” expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.
The UN chief said that “senior Israeli officials are openly talking about officially annexing all or part of the West Bank in the coming months.”
“Any such annexation would constitute the most serious violation of international law,” he said.
