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Israel's defense minister says the military is applying a “method” from the Gaza war in a large-scale assault on Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces are applying methods learned during the Gaza war to their ongoing military operation Iron Wall in the occupied West Bank, Israel's defense minister said, where troops have killed the least 10 people in Jenin and ordered residents to leave the refugee camp in the area.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that the Jenin operation, now in its third day, marked a change in Israel's military plan in the occupied West Bank and was “the first lesson from the method of repeated attacks in Gaza”.
An Israeli military spokesman declined to elaborate on the Genin operationwhich began on Tuesday and is the third major incursion by the Israeli army in less than two years into Jenin, a long stronghold of the resistance about Israel's decade-long military occupation of Palestinian territory.
Residents of the Jenin refugee camp reported constant gunfire and explosions on Wednesday, while Palestinian health services reported at least four wounded in the camp.
The United Nations Palestine Refugee Agency (UNRWA) said on Wednesday that Israeli forces had used “advanced weapons and methods of warfare, including airstrikes” against the Jenin camp, which is now “virtually uninhabitable” with an estimated 2,000 families displaced from the area since December.
Israel's “large-scale operation” in Jenin also “threatens to undermine the fragile truce reached just days ago in Gaza,” said Roland Friedrich, UNRWA's director of affairs for the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israeli media also reported that two Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces on Wednesday in the Wadi Burkin area near the city of Jenin.
Jenin has resisted Israeli occupation for decades, earning its reputation as the “capital of the Palestinian resistance.” That's why it still matters today. pic.twitter.com/Yu9nkRi12w
— AJ+ (@ajplus) January 22, 2025
The Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that Israeli forces surrounded a building in the city of Burkina and ordered the occupants out using a loudspeaker.
Airstrikes from Israeli drones hit the house while soldiers on the ground fired anti-tank grenades at the building, which was then leveled by military bulldozers.
As the Israeli attack began on Tuesday, 10 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in the Jenin area, including children and medical workers.
The governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu al-Rub, told AFP that the situation was “very difficult” as Israeli military bulldozers had torn up all roads leading to the Jenin refugee camp and the Jenin government hospital. Israeli forces have also detained about 20 people from villages around Jenin since the operation began on Tuesday, he said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for “maximum restraint” by Israeli forces in Jenin and expressed deep concern, according to his deputy spokesman Farhan Haq.
On Monday, Guterres told a UN Security Council meeting of his fears of an “existential threat to the integrity and neighborhood” of Gaza and the occupied West Bank from Israel, and amid the “unrelenting” expansion of illegal Israeli settlements.
The UN chief said “senior Israeli officials are openly talking about formally annexing all or part of the West Bank in the coming months.”
“Any such annexation would constitute the most serious violation of international law,” he said.
