Nine Palestinians were killed Thursday in Jenin during an Israeli raid presented by the army as an operation against Islamist activists in the refugee camp of this city in the north of the occupied West Bank.
It is the deadliest day in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the outbreak of violence between the Israeli army and the Islamic Jihad in Gaza during which at least 49 Palestinians, including combatants but also civilians including children, had perished in three days of August 2022.
The Palestinian Authority has denounced “a massacre” and announced that it will end security cooperation with Israel, a first since 2020.
The US State Department said it regretted this decision, judging it “very important that the parties maintain or even deepen their security coordination”.
The head of American diplomacy, Anthony Blinken, is due to visit Israel and the West Bank on Monday and Tuesday to insist, according to Washington, on “the urgent need to take de-escalation measures”.
A total of nine people were killed in the Jenin camp and dozens injured, four of them seriously, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The United Nations has not recorded such a high toll in a single Israeli operation in the West Bank since it began counting the victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Israel and the Palestinian Territories in 2005.
“Negative Trends”
A tenth Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli forces on Thursday in Al-Ram near Jerusalem in unspecified conditions, and several others were injured in other incidents.
“Since the beginning of the year, we continue to observe the high levels of violence and the negative trends that have characterized 2022”, regretted in a statement the UN envoy for the Middle East, Tor Wennesland, judging it “essential to immediately reduce tensions”.
According to the Israeli army, the raid carried out in the morning in the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin was a “counter-terrorism operation” targeting members of the Islamic Jihad organization which, according to the Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant , were planning an attack in Israel.
Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila accused Israeli soldiers of firing tear gas inside the pediatric ward of the local government hospital, which the army denied.
The director of the hospital, Wissam Bakr, indicated that tear gas had been fired “in the perimeter” of his establishment. “The gas reached the pediatric ward, posing a danger to the children, who were transferred to a safe place away from the clashes,” he told AFP.
“No one fired tear gas voluntarily in a hospital […] but the operation was taking place not far from the hospital and it is possible that tear gas entered through an open window,” an Israeli military spokesman told AFP.
The Israeli army had previously reported shooting at several “terrorists” as gunfire was exchanged in the camp. No soldiers were injured, she added.
Israel “is not looking for escalation”, but is preparing “for all scenarios”, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a statement from his office.
Saudi diplomacy “strongly” denounced the Israeli “incursion”, which Qatar described as “a continuation of the heinous crimes” against “the defenseless Palestinian people”.
” Resistance “
Majeda Obeid, 61, was killed as she watched the clashes through her window in Jenin camp, her daughter Kefiyat told AFP.
“She was shot in the neck and collapsed against the wall and then on the floor,” she said, in the family living room where blood covers the edge of a rug.
“The resistance is everywhere and is ready for the next clash,” Tariq Salmi, spokesman for Islamic Jihad, said in a statement.
In the Jenin camp, which dates from 1953 and is home to more than 23,000 refugees according to UNRWA – the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees – the walls of some buildings were blackened by fires, noted a photographer from AFP.
In May 2022, Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, star of Al Jazeera, was killed there while covering an Israeli raid.
The Israeli army, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, carries out almost daily operations through this Palestinian territory, particularly in the areas of Jenin and Nablus, strongholds of armed Palestinian factions.
Thursday’s deaths bring to 30 the number of Palestinians, civilians or members of armed groups, killed since the beginning of the year in violence with Israeli forces or civilians.