At least nine people have been killed, according to Palestinian health officials and media, after Israel launched a large-scale ground and air attack on the northern part of the occupied West Bank.
The director of the ambulance department at the Palestine Red Crescent Society told Al Jazeera that four people were killed in an Israeli attack early on Wednesday on the Far’a refugee camp in Tubas. Several other people were injured, but the Red Crescent said their teams were having trouble reaching them because Israeli forces were preventing ambulances from entering the area.
Two people were also killed in an Israeli attack on Jenin, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, while three others were killed when an Israeli drone struck their vehicle in the nearby village of Seir.
Official Israeli radio said the military attack involved hundreds of soldiers as well as the air force in the biggest operation in the occupied West Bank since 2002, while Channel 14 said it had been planned for weeks.
Omar Baddar, a Middle East political analyst, said that it appeared to be part of a longer-term Israeli strategy to “ethnically cleanse” the Palestinian territory.
“I think the context of it is worth noting, which is the fact that Israel has been intending to annex and ethnically cleanse huge parts of the West Bank for a very, very long time,” Baddar told Al Jazeera.
“I think that they [Israeli forces] saw an opportunity given that the world is distracted by the horror that Israel is unleashing on Gaza to kind of escalate in the West Bank. So what we’ve seen over the past several months is more than 650 Palestinians being killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers throughout the West Bank,” he said.
Palestinian armed groups said they were fighting Israeli forces in the Nur Shams and Jenin refugee camps.
The al-Quds Brigades said its “fighters targeted an enemy infantry force with a highly explosive device in Nur Shams Camp”. The Qassam Brigades said it “detonated locally-made and highly explosive devices in Jenin against the invading military vehicles” and that its fighters were “engaged in violent clashes with the occupation forces”.