
Israeli soldiers transfer Palestinian men detained during a violent military raid against Jenin, near the Muqeibila crossing on the border with the occupied-West Bank. Gunfire and explosions rocked the Jenin area, an AFP journalist reported, as the Israeli military kept up a large-scale raid for a second day. (Credit: AFP)
Israeli raids against two hospitals in Jenin continued on Wednesday alongside the Palestinian Authority's own attacks against a third hospital in the same city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. At least 10 Palestinians have been killed and around 40 injured since Israel launched its large-scale offensive against the city on Tuesday morning.
The main road leading to the Jenin Governmental Hospital has been bulldozed by the Israeli army and, according to a report from Middle East Eye (MEE), around 600 people who sought refuge there amid the attacks were completely shut off from receiving food throughout the day. Al Jazeera reports that around 2,000 families have been displaced by the surge in violence.
Israeli soldiers have actively prevented paramedics and rescue workers from tending to injured and collecting the dead, MEE reports, who lay strewn across the city's streets. At al-Amal Hospital, three doctors and two hospital workers were injured by gunfire from Israeli soldiers "firing indiscriminately" into the hospital's courtyard, the U.K.-based outlet said.
The Israeli army launched its offensive, which it says is part of a broader campaign against militants in the West Bank, just two days after the cease-fire in Gaza took effect. The Jenin refugee camp has a long history of resistance, both politically and militarily, against the Israeli occupation, playing a prominent role during the First Intifada (1987-1993). The Israeli army has killed nearly 900 people in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023, and arrested more than 9,700, Al Jazeera reports, citing local rights groups and health officials.
The Jenin battalion of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, loosely politically aligned with Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority, said in a statement on social media and cited by the New York Times, that its fighters were engaged in “fierce clashes” with Israeli forces in several areas of Jenin and had detonated explosive devices.
Condemnation locally and from abroad
Hamas and Islamic Jihad both issued statements Wednesday strongly condemning the Israeli military raid on Jenin and accusing the Palestinian Authority (PA) of complicity.
Hamas “condemned in the strongest terms the continued shedding of Palestinian blood at the hands of the Authority’s security forces in the West Bank.”
The group said in a statement that PA forces laid siege to the al-Razi Hospital and arrested wounded Palestinian fighters in a move that “crosses all red lines and national ethics.”
It called on “all factions and national and community figures in the West Bank to come out with all their strength in order to put an end to the serious violations of the Authority, and to confront the occupation’s aggression and targeting of the resistance fighters in Jenin, by escalating the clashes at all points of contact and at military checkpoints and settlements in the West Bank.”
In a separate statement, the Islamic Jihad condemned, "in the strongest terms, the displacement, destruction and systematic murders perpetrated by the [Israeli] army against the Jenin camp and its population.”
The statement also accuses the PA in Ramallah and its security services of complicity in the assault. “We hold the Ramallah authority and its security services responsible for their participation and complicity in this aggression after having provided [Israel] with services to impose a siege on the Jenin camp,” the group says.
A few days after an agreement was signed between Ramallah and the armed factions of the Jenin refugee camp, Israel launched a large-scale military operation dubbed "Iron Wall." Haaretz reported on Tuesday that senior PA officials consider Israel's military aggression against the West Bank to be "politically motivated."
Also on Wednesday, France expressed its own concerns over Israel's actions in Jenin, and called on Israel to show restraint. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot would raise the topic of settlers in the West Bank at a European Union meeting on Jan. 27, said a statement from the French Foreign Ministry.