Comment on this storyComment
TEL AVIV – A Palestinian rammed a car into a crowd at a bus stop in northern Tel Aviv on Tuesday, injuring seven, as Israel’s largest military operation in the occupied West Bank in two decades entered its second day.
The attacker, described by the militant Islamist group Hamas as one of its members, According to a statement by the Israeli police, before getting out of the car, he struck passers-by and stabbed two people. He was then shot dead in the area by an armed civilian.
The attacker, Abdel Wahhab Issa Hussein Khalayleh, was from a village near Hebron in the southern West Bank, according to a Hamas statement. The group had previously misidentified his brother Hussein as the attacker.
The attack coincided with an ongoing operation in Jenin that has killed at least 10 Palestinians and injured about 100 others, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, and forced thousands to flee their homes.
“The Tel Aviv operation is the resistance’s first response to what is happening in Jenin,” said Khaled al-Batsh, an official with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a militant group in Gaza and the West Bank.
Eitan Dangot, a former Israeli military coordinator for Palestinian civil affairs in Gaza and the West Bank, said the military operation that began Monday was aimed at “encircling the Jenin refugee camp as the capital of terrorism” and that it was only a partial solution to future attacks not deter enough.
Israel’s far-right government needs to develop ties with the Palestinian Authority, which is technically responsible for Jenin, he said, but has left Jenin and other areas of the northern West Bank in the grip of lawlessness.
“I don’t think Israel will take responsibility for the three million West Bank citizens…including a new generation of militants” who have been abandoned by the Palestinian Authority for nearly two decades, Dangot said when news of the car attack broke was in Tel Aviv.
In a sign that the operation may soon be complete, the Israeli military announced it had ten targets left in Jenin. Far-right members of the government have called for a long-term occupation of the city, which has become a hotbed of Palestinian militancy over the past year.
“There is no point in the camp where we have not been, including the center,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, tweeted, adding that soldiers are expected to be in contact with armed militants throughout the day Tuesday would kick.
The Israeli army said it dismantled an “underground shaft used to store explosive devices at the heart of camp Jenin” overnight. The statement went on to say that soldiers “destroyed two terrorist organization location rooms in the area … a grenade launcher in the Jenin area and confiscated weapons and military equipment.”
Hagari said all 10 Palestinians killed and 120 arrested were combatants since the operation began Monday.
Another Israeli military official, who wished to remain anonymous due to the delicate security situation, said there were another 300 armed fighters in Jenin, most of them in hiding.
According to Jenin Mayor Nidal Al-Obeidi, an estimated 4,000 Palestinians fled the camp overnight and sought shelter with family members outside the camp. The Israeli military also suspected that some combatants fled overnight, according to Israeli media.
The ongoing ground attack follows more than a year of almost nightly Israeli military attacks focused on Jenin camp and the surrounding area, where many of the 50 Palestinians who attacked Israelis came from.
As violence has increased in the West Bank, Israel has repeatedly reiterated that it is making great efforts to avoid civilian casualties in the crossfire. But military attacks, which have lengthened in recent months and become more frequent during the day, have killed many civilians. The nature of the battles and the use of arms on the streets of Jenin are reminiscent of the Palestinian uprising of 2000-2005, the so-called second intifada.
So far, 2023 is on track to be one of the deadliest years for Palestinians, with more than 150 deaths.
Mahmoud Balas, 47, a resident of Jenin camp, said that since the operation began on Monday, he, his wife and five children have been too scared to flee their homes, even though their doors and power and water lines are blocked Explosions and gunfire came were disrupted by the fighting.
“It’s worse than 2002,” he said, referring to the so-called Battle of Jenin, which lasted more than a week and killed at least 50 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers.
“They are trying to bring the camp and its people to their knees because it is harming them,” added Balas. “But they won’t succeed, God willing.”
Many also expected the operation to further fuel the cycle of violence.
“Buildings could collapse, cars could be reduced to rubble and countless people could be imprisoned, wounded and even tortured,” said a statement from Mostafa Sheta, director of the Freedom Theater in Jenin refugee camp, which will be a center of cultural events throughout the year Palestinian resistance was second Intifada. “These actions will only serve to bring forth a new generation that will carry on the torch of resistance passed down by those who came before them, as we do today and as our children will do in the future.”
Israeli forces launch major operation in West Bank city, killing at least eight people
The Israeli army has said it must conduct counter-terrorism operations because the Palestinian Authority, which technically controls Jenin, is absent and militant groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other smaller organizations are in control.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said Tuesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was responsible for the escalation and that Jenin “was and will remain unbreakable.”
Balousha reported from Gaza City. Sufian Taha in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Give this item as a gift