Chief of Israeli forces in West Bank says campaign – the largest there in 20 years — aims to ‘change the situation’ in Palestinian city; gunmen targeted in drone strike
By EMANUEL FABIAN Today, 2:13 pm
Palestinians run amid clashes during an Israeli military operation in Jenin in the West Bank, on July 3, 2023 (Jaafar ASHTIYEH / AFP)
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday afternoon said the Israeli army’s major operation in the West Bank city of Jenin was “progressing as planned,” according to remarks issued by his office.
“In the past few hours, we dealt a heavy blow to the terror organizations in Jenin and managed to record impressive operational achievements,” Gallant said following an assessment he held with military chief Lt. Gen Herzi Halevi and other senior officers.
He said the troops would “receive full support to do whatever is necessary and to operate on the ground and in the air, in order to protect the citizens of Israel and preserve full freedom of action throughout [the West Bank].”
Over 1,000 Israel Defense Forces troops were involved in the campaign, which appeared to be the largest in the West Bank in some 20 years, with tensions already sky-high following a series of deadly terror attacks carried out by Palestinians from the Jenin area.
The IDF said the operation began shortly after 1 a.m. with a series of airstrikes against multiple “terror infrastructure” targets in the city, including a joint war room shared by various armed groups in the city.
Palestinian health officials said eight people were killed and at least 27 others were wounded, including seven listed in serious condition, during the strikes and in clashes with Israeli forces.
One Israeli soldier was lightly hurt during the operation. The IDF said the serviceman was hit by shrapnel from a grenade hurled by other Israeli forces. He was taken to a hospital for further treatment, the IDF added.
Several of the slain Palestinians were identified by media reports as members of armed groups in the city, although there was no immediate official statement issued by Islamic Jihad or other local terror organizations.
After the initial attack, at least ten more drone strikes were carried out on terror operatives and sites used to store and manufacture weapons, the IDF said.
In one such strike on Monday afternoon, the IDF said a drone targeted Palestinian gunmen who were shooting at troops near a mosque in the Jenin refugee camp.
The IDF said it would provide further details on the strike later.
During the morning, IDF said forces located a makeshift rocket and a number of explosive devices among other weapons and military equipment. At least 20 suspects were detained, a military spokesperson said.
Palestinian gunmen take up position during a confrontation with Israeli army in the West Bank city of Jenin on July 3, 2023. (Jaafar ASHTIYEH / AFP)
In a missive to troops before the launch of the open-ended campaign, the chief of the military’s West Bank division said the goal was to “change the situation” in the West Bank city.
“The city of Jenin, and in particular the refugee camp, is a stronghold of terror that exports terrorism to the entire [West Bank] and the home front,” said Brig. Gen. Avi Blot.
“In the eyes of the enemy, the refugee camp has become a ‘refuge city’ and the IDF’s freedom of action in the area is challenged,” he said.
“We are heading into this operation to change the situation and expand our freedom of action. Our mission: to create operational control, thwart and arrest terrorists, destroy enemy infrastructure, and confiscate weapons,” Blot said.
Blot referred to the operation by name, calling it “Bayit Vegan,” literally Home and Garden. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit insisted that the operation had no official name, despite Blot’s internal letter.
Brig. Gen. Avi Blot, commander of the IDF’s West Bank division is seen at the unit’s operational headquarters during a major operation in the city of Jenin, early July 3, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)
Sporadic clashes and Israeli airstrikes continued throughout the morning and afternoon in Jenin.
Members of the Jenin Battalion, a local Islamic Jihad wing, claimed its members had opened fire on Israeli troops in the city and had targeted military vehicles, including a D9 bulldozer, with explosive devices.
D9 bulldozers were seen ripping up roads in the city, apparently to ensure no roadside bombs were hidden in the area. During a raid in Jenin last month, a large bomb detonated under an IDF vehicle, injuring seven soldiers.
Palestinian media outlets also claimed gunmen managed to down an IDF drone over the city.
Security forces were also preparing for possible rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. Over the past year, the Islamic Jihad terror group has launched rockets at Israel from Gaza in response to members being killed or arrested in the West Bank.
An Israeli army bulldozer drives through Jenin in the West Bank during a military operation on July 3, 2023. (Jaafar ASHTIYEH / AFP)
For weeks there had been speculation about a major Israeli military operation in the West Bank, following a string of shooting attacks and intense resistance to IDF raids in Palestinian cities.
Last month, an Israeli military drone struck a car carrying three Palestinian gunmen who had just opened fire at a checkpoint in the northern West Bank near Jenin, marking the first targeted killings in the West Bank since 2006.
That incident came days after attack helicopters were used in a military raid in Jenin in which seven Palestinians were killed, including two teens, and eight soldiers were injured by a large roadside bomb and in clashes with Palestinian gunmen.
Last week, Palestinians in the Jenin area attempted to launch two homemade rockets at Israeli towns, footage showed. The rockets landed in Palestinian-controlled territory in the northern West Bank and did not reach Israel.
Israeli army jeeps as the military begins an operation in the West Bank city of Jenin, July 3, 2023 (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)
The northern West Bank, and especially the city of Jenin and its environs, has long been considered by the IDF as a hotbed of terrorism, highlighted by a string of attacks in early 2022 of which many were carried out by residents of the area.
According to the IDF, since last year, some 50 shooting attacks were carried out by residents of the area, and 19 wanted Palestinians escaped to Jenin to seek refuge there from Israeli forces.
Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have been high across the West Bank for the past year and a half, with the military carrying out near-nightly raids, amid a series of deadly Palestinian terror attacks.
Since the beginning of this year, Palestinian attacks in Israel and the West Bank have killed 24 people.
According to a tally by The Times of Israel, 143 West Bank Palestinians have been killed during that time — most of them during clashes with security forces or while carrying out attacks, but some were uninvolved civilians and others were killed under unclear circumstances.
Michael S an apple is on its way to Sebastien Your “Thank you” to the IDF earns you an A+
Disregard last post. I thought I was texting somebody about some chairs. 😀
Doubt it. Two trips.
Hi, Honeybee
I concur. Give that man a shiny apple!
BTW. I don’t think anyone bothered to say this, but “Thank you, IDF, for doing an excellent job in Jenin!” 🙂
Sebastien You are still and always the teacher’s favorite. xoxoxoxox
Sebastien, Did I say it was funny? The weak response to the death of Israelis by terrorists had gone unpunished leading only to the death of more.
Why focus only on Jenin?
@Sebastien
Forgive me if you thought I implied anything like this in my comment. I had read your previous comments in total and well understood the greater context of your commentary. In fact, the only purpose in my post was so that those who only read short posts might not lose the greater value shared in your previous but longer comments. I did not mean to correct you, but to support your well made statements, which are made even more substantive by your latest addition below. Well done.
et al In the 90’s, I came into work one morning, and one of my bosses, an Italian-American gentleman, Greeted me by snarling that he was sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust. What about Rwanda? That’s more recent. Isn’t that worse?
The same day, another of my bosses, an African-American gentleman, suddenly came up to me where I was working and said: What about the Middle Passage? That happened here. Isn’t that worse?
I had never mentioned I was Jewish, much less that my father was a survivor but my father had called me and left a message once at work. He had written a memoir and been on the radio so I guess that’s how they found out.
In high school in the ’70s, there was a substitute English teacher who told us categorically that one always gets one’s family name from one’s father.
I raised my hand and told her and the class that I bore my maternal grandmother’s maiden name as my last name, because my father had changed his name legally before escaping Communist Hungary after the war because he couldn’t stand having a German name after finding out that the Germans had murdered his parents.
After class, this teacher, who was Armenian-American, scolded me for daring to mention the Holocaust instead of the Armenian genocide, which was more important because less publicised.
There’s always a reason to pass over the Jews. Peloni thought I sort of did it myself, when, though I correctly made the distinction between genocide/terror and homicide, I left it at that in that last anguished exclamation but I had made that point explicitly in the earlier comments which Michael had complained were too wordy.
The main form of Holocaust denial today consists of lumping it together with and minimizing it compared to other genocides or even just ordinary atrocities.
The New York Times hid it in plain site as it was unfolding in, at first, slow motion, by putting news of it in the back pages and surrounding them with news items about
unrelated atrocities. JTA covered it from the beginning. I found the articles in the archive. There never was a time when nobody knew.
There’s no shortage of these false equivalences. Hey, Stalin murdered 30 million people, or whatever the number is, Mao killed 80!
Chicago has more murders every day. That’s a frequent Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson Republican talking point about Dems and gun control.
The left drew a false equivalence between the accidental death in a traffic accident of Gavin Cato, a little African-American boy and the lynching of a Jew who just happened to be passing by by a mob who stabbed him to death. They blamed the death of Yankel Rosenbaum on the hospital for not finding all the wounds. The ring leader who the dying victim pointed to in front of many witnesses and police was acquitted of murder by an all black jury in the same venue, and again on violating Yankel Rosenbaum’s civil right, ten years later. (This would be a good reason for American Jews to make aliya, if the Israeli authorities weren’t just as bad or worse in defending Jewish civil rights.)
The list is endless.
Holocaust education. Yeah right.
The results have not been encouraging even when it’s not generalized and subverted.
—
Many Jews often forget the first leg of Rabbi Hilliel’s oft and over-and out of context-quoted dictum:
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
If not now, when?
____
Jewish Lives Matter.
@Sebastien
Forgive me a slight amendment to your comment:
‘Jews are dying simply because they are Jews and nobody cares. Again.’
@Michael
Terrorism is not criminal activity, it is political violence, waged to effect a political outcome. When we compare terrorism to simple crimes, no matter the scope or degree of the crimes, we effectively mediate on behalf of the terrorist and mask his assault upon society as being just another random criminal act, when it is in fact a far greater threat than any crime listed in the law books. As this latest terror war is expanding rather than reducing in scope and tragedy, making such false comparison of terrorist attacks to merely criminal actions all the more inappropriate, IMO of course.
@Michael @Honeybee It’s not funny. Jews are dying and nobody cares. Again.
Sebastien As I learned, as a teacher, bad behavior that goes unpunished only increases
Sebastien Do not forget Amalek . Good advice
Michael S don’t even try Sebastien is an AI robot
Hi, Sebastien. I wrote 3 lines, and you responded with 68. I guess you won 😮
@Michael In 2021, homicide rate for Israel was 1.9 cases per 100,000 population.
Genocide/terror is a different category though there have also been terror attacks in Chicago recently, mostly against Jews, though on Juneteenth this year, as yet unidentified gunmen opened fire on a crowd killing 27 people including women, children, the disabled, and the elderly.
Which brings to mind:
“18how they met you on your journey when you were tired and weary, and they attacked all your stragglers; they had no fear of God. 19 When the LORD your God gives you rest from the enemies around you in the land that He is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you are to blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!”
Deuteronomy 25:18-19
@Michael Would you similarly draw a false equivalence between the number of 9/11 victims – 2,296 with the number of homicides in America in 2011, 14,612?
How about traffic accidents?
“In 2011, there were an estimated 5,338,000 police-reported traffic crashes, in which 32,367 people were killed and 2,217,000 people were injured; 3,778,000 crashes resulted in property damage only. An average of 89 people died each day in motor vehicle crashes in 2011—an average of one every 16 minutes.
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov › …PDF
Traffic Safety Facts, 2011 Data – CrashStats – NHTSA – DOT”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/365488
In Chicago, more than that are killed every fortnight.
Except for all the stabbings, rock throwings, and car rammings by Arabs of all ages with no previous security history like this latest ramming attack in Tel Aviv which stands out from the daily norm going back many years only in that the rest of the Israeli media are reporting it. The Defence/Security section of Arutz Sheva is the only important Israeli news site. The rest are just opinion and fluff, political tabloids.