Bel Trew & Alex Croft
The Independent / January 22, 2025
Dozens have also been wounded in the offensive, which Israel says is aimed at protecting Israeli citizens
Jerusalem – At least 10 Palestinians have been killed and dozens injured in an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank, with neighbouring Jordan’s foreign minister warning that the offensive could lead the West Bank to “explode”.
The raid, in the northern city of Jenin, wounded at least 40 people, Palestinian health officials said, in an operation which Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said would be “extensive and significant”. The Israeli military said the aim of such a large-scale operation was to ensure militant groups “are not rearming a few hundred metres from Israeli communities”.
The raid comes days after the start of a ceasefire in the war in Gaza, triggered by an attack by Hamas on 7 October that killed around 1,200 people and saw another 250 taken hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive inside Gaza has killed 47,000 Palestinians, according to health ministry officials in the enclave.
“We have to learn from 7 October and not let terror groups regroup, rearm and plan terror attacks a few hundred metres from us,” international spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said, calling Jenin “one of the main points of terror”.
Palestinian media reported that on Tuesday, there were several airstrikes as a large number of troops entered the city and its refugee camp, backed by drones, helicopters and armoured bulldozers. On Wednesday, Jenin’s governor said Israeli forces had “bulldozed all the roads leading to Jenin camp, and leading to Jenin Government Hospital”.
Dr Mahmoud Saadi, the head of the ambulance and emergency centre in Jenin, said that there were nearly 200 people, including the injured and the sick, trapped in Jenin’s main government hospital, which had been surrounded by military vehicles and soldiers.
Speaking to The Independent by phone from inside the complex, he said that the Israeli military was also “obstructing ambulances from getting in”.
Video footage taken by Palestinian residents and shared with The Independent shows mounds of earth surrounding the hospital, which residents said had been dug up by Israeli military bulldozers.
Lt Col Shoshani confirmed the military presence around the hospital, saying it had enforced a “temporary notice for safety to the people to not get out of the hospital because there was activity outside the hospital in proximity to the hospital with explosives”.
“What is going on at the moment is hard to describe,” Dr Saadi told The Independent.
“There are a lot of military vehicles and soldiers all around the hospital, and since the morning, we have dealt with four injuries. One of them was in critical condition. Snipers are hiding on the top of many buildings.”
He said the Israeli military appeared to be digging up parts of the roads with armoured bulldozers that were filmed driving into the area. This was making it hard to evacuate the patients who were in the hospital before the raid started.
“One of my medical colleagues was arrested at the checkpoint near the hospital. He was taken from the ambulance during the job.”
Dr Wissam Bakr, the head of the hospital, reiterated what Dr Saad said, adding that Israeli soldiers and bulldozers were outside the hospital digging up the streets in the area. He added that 88 patients inside the hospital were stuck, as well as 80 members of staff, and they were coordinating with the Red Cross to try to get them out.
Asked about recent events in the occupied West Bank, Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that “maintaining the security of the West Bank” is of “top priority”, warning that otherwise it could “destabilise the whole region”.
“I think maintaining the security of the West Bank, making sure the West Bank does not explode is something of top priority and it is dangerous what is happening there,” he added. “And I think the whole world needs to take a deep look at what is happening, and again with the same vigour that we’re looking at the ceasefire, we should also be working to prevent an explosion on the West Bank.”
Lt Col Shoshani said the operation was in response to “over 2000 attempted attacks in the region” since October 2023. He declined to give a timeframe for the length of the operation but said the military would likely be operating in different areas of the West Bank, suggesting that the offensive could expand.
An unnamed security source told Israel’s Channel 14 on Wednesday that the Israeli military operation in the northern occupied West Bank “could take months”.
“What we did in Gaza, we will do to them as well; we will leave them in ruins,” the source added.
Harrowing footage shared on Palestinian social media appeared to show a family, including several children, coming under gunfire as they drove through Jenin.
In the short clip, terrified women and children in the back of the car can be heard screaming and shouting, “Go, go, go!” as the crack of bullet fire sounds in the background.
The footage ends abruptly after what appears to be a direct hit to the driver of the vehicle.
Later, Palestinian medics said the driver was 43-year-old father Ahmed Nimer Al-Shayeb, and said he was killed by Israeli sniper fire. Palestinian journalist Raya Orouq, who attended his funeral, said that she could hear random shooting and see more military vehicles entering the area.
The Independent has asked the Israeli military for comment on the killing of Ahmed and the footage of the family under fire in the car. The military did not confirm or deny it was involved but claimed the military “follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate harm to uninvolved individuals.”
“The case mentioned is under review,” it said in a statement to the Independent.
Elsewhere in the West Bank, dozens of masked men rampaged through two Palestinian villages in the northern West Bank late Monday, hurling stones and setting cars and property ablaze, according to local Palestinian officials. The Red Crescent emergency service said 12 people were beaten and wounded. The Israeli military said the men threw rocks at soldiers who arrived to disperse them and that an investigation had been launched.
Israeli forces, meanwhile, carried out a raid elsewhere in the West Bank that the military said was in response to the hurling of firebombs at Israeli vehicles. It said several suspects were detained for questioning, and a video circulating online appeared to show dozens being marched through the streets.
Jalal Bashir, the head of Jinsafut’s village council, said three houses, a nursery and a carpentry shop had been attacked. “The settlers were masked and had incendiary materials,” said Bashir. “Their numbers were large and unprecedented.”
Louay Tayem, head of the local council in Al-Funduq, said dozens of men had fired shots, thrown stones, burned cars, and attacked homes and shops, the Associated Press reported.
Charred shells of cars littered the side of the road in Jinsafut on Tuesday, and residents were seen surveying the damage to a burnt storage space.
Smith Sunghay, head of the United Nations Human Rights Office for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said Israeli operations in the West Bank are “done in a manner that uses military methods and means of warfare when Israel should be using … a law enforcement framework”.
“What we are seeing, witnessing, and recording is a breach of this; there is massive destruction of infrastructure in camps like Jenin camp: people being cut off from electricity, water, and other necessities. And then, of course, displacement of people from camps. That has continued even today.”
He said there was an escalation in the restrictions on movement in the West Bank, with new checkpoints being set up in the aftermath of the ceasefire in Gaza this week.
The Israeli military said the checkpoints were part of a tool in “fighting terror”.
Speaking in Davos, UN secretary general António Guterres said that the ceasefire in Gaza had so far been successful in allowing in aid to the enclave, but had a warning over any further future action.
“There is a possibility of Israel feeling emboldened by the military successes to think that this is the moment to do the annexation of the West Bank and to keep Gaza in a kind of a limbo situation,” he said.
“That would be a total violation of international law … and would mean there will never be peace in the Middle East.”
Bel Trew is The Independent’s Chief International Correspondent
Alex Croft is a London-based news reporter for The Independent
