Agencies
West Bank
At least ten Palestinians have been killed after Israel launched a large-scale ground and air attack on the northern part of the occupied West Bank, according to health officials in the territory.
The incursion, which began early on Wednesday, involved hundreds of ground soldiers supported by fighter aircraft, drones and bulldozers, targeting three areas simultaneously – Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas – in the largest assault in two decades. The director of the ambulance department at the Palestine Red Crescent Society told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces killed four people in the Far’a refugee camp in Tubas.
The Red Crescent said its teams were having trouble reaching the injured because Israeli forces were preventing ambulances from entering the area. The Palestinian Health Ministry said two people were killed in Jenin, while three others were slain when an Israeli drone struck their vehicle in the nearby village of Seir.
Reporting from Nablus in the West Bank, Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim said that Israeli forces had described the operation in the north of the occupied territory as the biggest of its kind since 2002.
There are an estimated 80,000 Palestinians in the areas where the military operations are continuing.
The number of raids on the West Bank has "more than tripled” since the outbreak of Israel’s war on Gaza in October, she said, adding that locals across cities and towns confirmed to Al Jazeera that three strikes took place in three different locations overnight.
"In the past few weeks, we’ve seen an intensification in the use of aerial strikes against Palestine fighters … the Israeli military claiming they are combatting the use of IEDs [improvised explosive devices],” Ibrahim said.
Omar Baddar, a Middle East political analyst, said that the incursion 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.
Israel’s military described the nine people killed as "armed terrorists who posed a threat to security forces”. In a post on Telegram, it also claimed to have arrested more "wanted suspects” in Jenin and Tulkarem, while confiscating explosives "planted under roads” in the Far’a camp.
Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz called for the army to evacuate Palestinians from the West Bank, in a post on X.
"We must deal with the threat in the West Bank as we are doing in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever other steps are required. This is a war for everything and we must win it,” he wrote on Wednesday. Israeli forces have been closing down roads leading to Jenin, Tulkarem and the Far’a camp.
According to residents at the Nur Shams camp, in Tulkarem, they were given three hours to leave if they wanted to. "There’s no direct evacuation order, but this suggests a potential escalation,” Ibrahim reported.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority (PA) presidency, said Israel’s escalating war in the West Bank in addition to the war in the Gaza Strip will lead to "dire and dangerous” results.
"Israel’s objective number one is not Gaza, it is the West Bank. This is the heart of what they say is the Biblical land,” Hassan Barari, a professor of international affairs at Qatar University, told Al Jazeera, adding that Israel aims to expel even more Palestinians.
Since Israel launched its war on Gaza, Israeli army raids have become a nightly occurrence in towns and villages in the West Bank, with Israeli soldiers and settlers killing at least 646 Palestinians, including 148 children, and injuring more than 5,400, Palestinian health officials have said.