Military shifts focus to Jenin, where troops rip up roads to find bombs, work to establish ‘operational control’; army says 14 gunmen killed, over 25 suspects detained
IDF troops are seen along a torn-up street in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, September 2, 2024. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)
JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — Troops have been operating in Jenin, considered by Israel to be one of the West Bank’s major terror hotspots, since early Wednesday, making it the longest operation in the territory in over 20 years.
The operation — internally dubbed “Summer Camps” by the army — began with simultaneous raids on Jenin, Tulkarem, and the Far’a camp near Tubas, with the goal of dismantling Iran-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror networks in the three areas of the northern West Bank.
But the scale of the ongoing raid, as well as its stated goals, are far from what the Israel Defense Forces carried out in 2002’s month-long Operation Defense Shield during the Second Intifada.
So far, according to the IDF, more than 30 gunmen have been killed in the operation, among them the head of Hamas in Jenin and the head of Islamic Jihad in the Tulkarem area.
One Israeli soldier was killed in Jenin, and several more troops have been wounded in the raids.
The raids in Tulkarem and Far’a have since concluded. However, troops are pressing on with operations in Jenin, where early Monday, a drone strike was carried out against a group of Palestinians who were hurling explosives at troops.
In Jenin alone, 14 terror operatives have been killed in clashes and four drone strikes; 25 wanted Palestinians have been detained; some 20 weapons have been seized; and more than 30 explosive devices have been neutralized, the military said Monday evening.
Just hours after Monday morning’s drone strike, reporters were given an escorted visit by the Israeli army to Jenin and the city’s refugee camp, where troops since Wednesday have been battling gunmen, locating weapon manufacturing labs, and ripping up roads to uncover explosive devices.
Senior IDF officials have said that the operations in Jenin are primarily aimed at giving the military “operational freedom” to be able to act there in the future to thwart terror attacks. This was also the stated goal of the last major operation in Jenin, more than a year ago.
The IDF has been working to kill the leaders and operatives of the terror networks, as well as demolishing their bomb labs, though with the knowledge that the commanders and gunmen will likely be replaced and new explosive manufacturing sites established, though not immediately.
Still, military officials said that a balance needs to be found between the intensity of the operations and the repercussions of such raids, as Israel cannot afford to turn the West Bank into its primary front amid the ongoing fighting against Hamas in Gaza and heightened tensions on the northern border.
Israel also lacks the international legitimacy to carry out anything more major in the West Bank, such as staying in Jenin for extended periods of time, IDF officials noted.
The military believes that it can continue to operate at this pace in Jenin and other parts of the West Bank, with near-nightly arrest raids and major operations every few weeks or months, to thwart the attempts by Hamas and Islamic Jihad to grow, thus preventing major terror attacks on Israeli targets.
Scanning for bombs, establishing control
In Jenin’s refugee camp on Monday, the usually bustling streets were almost completely empty, and heavily damaged.
Some civilians, including municipal workers fixing up damaged infrastructure and local journalists, were walking about amid the army’s operations.
According to the IDF’s estimates, some 85 percent of the population had moved out of the camp during the raid, largely heading into the city itself. The IDF has allowed Palestinian civilians to leave the area safely, although it has not issued any evacuation orders.
Many, but not all, of the roads in the camp were ripped up by IDF armored bulldozers, as combat engineers searched for and neutralized dozens of explosive devices planted under and on the side of the streets by local terror operatives.
Maj. Ron — whose last name was withheld due to security concerns — the chief combat engineer in the IDF’s Menashe Regional Brigade, told reporters that “the explosive device threat ramped up in the past year in the northern [West Bank] area, especially in Jenin.”
“The explosive device threat is developing, the enemy understands that this is its deadly weapon,” the officer said, referring to three deadly roadside bomb attacks in the northern West Bank in recent months.
“[The enemy] tries to attack our forces on the roads, and our response to that is using the engineering vehicles, the bulldozers, backhoes, which allow us to open up the roads for the forces to reach their objectives,” he said.
Chief Superintendent Zacky Tafesh, a senior Border Police officer who has been participating in the ongoing operation, said he had not seen this many explosive devices during a West Bank operation before.
“There are many explosive devices here. We haven’t encountered something like this in a long time. We are constantly encountering explosive devices. But with our experience we know how to deal with it very well,” he said.
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