A major Israeli raid on the West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp resulted in the killings of at least 14 Palestinians. 

The raid, which was carried out last week, included drones and an armored bulldozer. The IDF said Israeli forces came under fire, the BBC reported. The report, citing The Jerusalem Post, noted that the Israeli Air Force dropped leaflets on residents in the camp stating that the IDF “remains here and will return again and again until terrorism is completely eradicated. Stay away from terrorism, live in peace.”

Palestinians living in the West Bank, who are not under Hamas control, have seen a major increase in violence after the 7 October attack by Hamas. (See “JEWISH SETTLER (ILLEGAL OCCUPIERS) VIOLENCE SKYROCKETS IN WEST BANK AND NOBODY CARES” 7 Nov 2023, “BIDEN SAYS ISRAELI SETTLER ATTACKS IN OCCUPIED WEST BANK HAVE TO STOP, BUT DOES NOTHING TO STOP THEM” 31 Oct 2023, “HUNGER STRIKER DEATH SPARKS ROCKET EXCHANGE BETWEEN PALESTINE AND ISRAEL” 9 May 2023, “ISRAEL KILLS 3 MORE PALESTINIANS DURING ANOTHER DEADLY WEEK” 14 Mar 2023, and “DOES ISRAEL SEEK A ‘FINAL SOLUTION FOR PALESTINIANS?’” 14 Feb 2023.)

Israeli raids, even before the war, were near nightly occurrences in Jenin. The Associated Press reported that since the start of 2023 to 6 October, 197 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces. Since the war started, another 100 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed and 1,500 arrested. 

“Since the start of the war, I’ve seen on the ground myself that the Israeli army has changed the rules of engagement in the West Bank,” Mohammed Daraghmeh, the bureau chief of Asharq News, an Arabic language television network, wrote in Haaretz. “Soldiers have begun firing live bullets in situations that in the past they would have refrained, apparently aiming to kill any target they see as a threat, among them a 70-year-old man in Tubas, near Nablus, and a handicapped 65-year-old man in Tulkarem.”

TRENDPOST: It is worth noting that the Western media justifies Israeli attacks on some of the poorest refugee camps by labeling those who fight back as “militants.”  

Earlier this year, Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, called on the IDF to stop arrest raids and carry out a broad military operation on these camps. Smotrich has denied the existence of a Palestinian people and has called for an entire Palestinian town to be “erased.”

Daniel Kurtzer, who served in Tel Aviv as the U.S. ambassador to Israel during the George W. Bush administration, accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government of breaking a 2004 deal with Washington by legalizing a group of nationalist and religious settlements in the West Bank, The Guardian reported in February. He urged the Biden administration to take further steps in preventing Israel’s “creeping annexation.”

He told the paper that it is a “significant violation” of a commitment that the Israeli government made with the U.S. to dismantle illegal outposts and illegal settlements.