The Cradle / September 3, 2024
Palestinians in the occupied territories say the main goal of the Israeli operation is wanton destruction.
The Israeli army has internally classified the occupied West Bank as “the second most critical front, immediately after Gaza,” according to security officials who spoke with Israel Hayom.
“The Jenin operation is just the beginning,” security officials told the Israeli daily, adding that ongoing raids in the northern West Bank are “set to continue in the foreseeable future.”
“The IDF aims to reach October, the month of major Jewish holidays, with a calmer West Bank than the current mini-uprising unfolding on the ground. While a full-scale war across extensive areas is unlikely, Operation ’Summer Camps’ is expected to expand to other West Bank regions soon,” the report highlights.
For the past seven days, Israeli troops have been carrying out the largest assault on the occupied West Bank in two decades, killing dozens of Palestinians and laying waste to major cities. One security source described the operation to Israel Hayom as “not just mowing the lawn, but uprooting the problem at its source.”
According to the report, Palestinian Authority (PA) security services “have been cooperating substantially with Israeli forces, including during Sunday’s attack,” which saw armored vehicles and bulldozers set loose in Jenin to destroy vital infrastructure.
“Palestinians say the main goal of this military operation, the largest in more than two decades, is destruction … They say this is not a security-related necessity. It is to remind Palestinians of the cost they will incur if they choose to resist the Israeli military’s occupation,” Al-Jazeera correspondent Niba Ibrahim reported on Sunday.
Raids have also been ongoing in the city of Tulkarem, where a 14-year-old boy was killed on Tuesday morning while walking to a mosque with his father, as Israeli snipers continue to target civilians with impunity.
Despite the intensity of the Israeli assault, local resistance factions have fiercely confronted the invading army since the start of the so-called Operation “Camps of Summer.”
“Our fighters are fighting fierce battles with the enemy forces storming Tulkarem camp and are showering the infantry forces in the camp’s alleys with heavy barrages of bullets, achieving direct hits,” the Tulkarem Brigade, the local branch of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) Quds Brigades, announced on Tuesday morning.
Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades also announced on Tuesday the killing of an Israeli soldier during a “tight ambush” on the invading troops in cooperation with Hamas’ Qassam Brigades in the Al-Ghanem axis in Tulkarem refugee camp.
During this week’s Israeli government meeting, Israeli Minister of Environmental Protection Idit Silman placed the cities of Jenin and Nablus in the same category as the Gaza–Egypt border and reiterated Israel’s right to all of Palestine.
“In the Philadelphi Corridor, in Jenin and Nablus, we must attack in order to inherit the land. This is the term that must be used [inheritance], not the term ‘occupation’ of the land,” Silman said.
On the same day, Israeli Minister of Settlements and National Missions Orit Strook called on the Military Secretary and security cabinet to “declare a state of war in the West Bank.”
