Israel says it killed three Hamas members in an airstrike in the West Bank on Friday, the third day of a major operation launched on the sidelines of the war in Gaza, where the suffering of residents goes “beyond what any human being should endure”, according to the UN.
At least 19 Palestinians have been killed since Wednesday by the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calling on the social network X for an “immediate end” to this operation, strongly condemning “the loss of human life, particularly of minors”.
In the United States, a major ally of Israel, US Vice President Kamala Harris has promised that she would continue to supply weapons to Israel if elected president in November, while affirming that it was time to “end the war” in the besieged Gaza Strip, separated from the West Bank occupied by Israel, which has left more than 40,600 dead in nearly eleven months.
As part of an operation it called “anti-terrorist,” the Israeli army sent columns of armored vehicles on Wednesday to Jenin, Tulkarem, Tubas and their refugee camps, in the north of the West Bank, where armed groups are particularly active against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
The UN humanitarian office, OCHA, has warned of the continuation of “military operations near hospitals” and the “serious damage” inflicted on infrastructure, cutting off electricity and telecommunications in places.
The Israeli army said it killed 19 militants on Wednesday and Thursday. The Palestinian Health Ministry also reported 19 deaths, including two teenagers aged 13 and 17, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad have announced that at least 13 of them were fighters from their armed wings.
“Second Gaza”
As of Friday, Israeli forces were operating only in Jenin, after withdrawing from Tubas and Tulkarem over the past two days, residents told AFP.
Witnesses reported an Israeli strike on a car in Zababdeh, southeast of Jenin. An AFP journalist at the scene saw human remains being removed from the car by paramedics.
The Israeli army said for its part that a plane had struck a “terrorist cell” in the Jenin region and said it had killed three “Hamas terrorists”.
In Jenin, an AFP photographer reports that the road leading to the hospital remains blocked by an armored jeep of the Israeli army. Only ambulances can access it under the control of the army. Everything is closed, there are no cars or pedestrians in the streets.
In the Nour Shams camp in Tulkarem, residents observed the damage on Friday after the Israeli withdrawal, with destroyed buildings and impassable roads.
“What is the difference between Gaza and us?” laments Nayef Alaajmeh, who looks at the damage in disbelief: “We are a second Gaza.”
London said it was “deeply concerned by the methods used by Israel and by reports of civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure” in the West Bank, and called for an “urgent de-escalation”.
For France, these operations “worsen an unprecedented climate of instability and violence”, while Spain denounces “an outbreak of violence which is clearly unacceptable”.
Israeli incursions into the occupied West Bank are a daily occurrence, but rarely on this scale.
“What happened to our humanity?”
Deadly violence in the West Bank has flared up since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip on October 7, where aid workers reported new Israeli strikes on Friday, recording at least three deaths in eastern Khan Younis, and two others, including a child, in the Jabaliya refugee camp.
The army said it had killed “dozens” of fighters in the southern and central Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours.
The war was triggered by a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, which left 1,199 people dead on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.
Of the 251 people abducted that day, 103 are still being held in Gaza, including 33 declared dead by the army.
Israeli retaliation in Gaza has left at least 40,602 dead, according to the Hamas government’s health ministry, and caused a humanitarian and health disaster in the Palestinian territory.
Most of the Palestinian territory’s 2.4 million people have been displaced in nearly 11 months of war.
The only glimmer of hope: the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the planned start of a campaign to vaccinate children against polio on Sunday, thanks to “humanitarian pauses” of three days each accepted by Israel, following the first confirmed case after a 25-year absence.
Deputy US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood called on Israel to “refrain from military operations” during these periods, and to “avoid further evacuation orders.”
Evacuation orders that the acting head of OCHA, Joyce Msuya, denounced before the Security Council – 16 since the beginning of August – forcing the population to move constantly, living “in uncertainty, not knowing when the next order will arrive”.
“Civilians are hungry. They are thirsty. They are sick. They are homeless. They have been pushed beyond the limits of their resistance, beyond what any human being should endure.”
“What we have witnessed over the past 11 months […] “calls into question the world’s commitment to international law created to prevent these tragedies,” she lamented.
“This forces us to ask: What has happened to our basic humanity?”