Another Palestinian was shot near the city of Ramallah by soldiers while protesting the Jenin attack.
“We’ll do it as long as it is needed; there is no timeline on this right now,” IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told reporters.
Gunfire, drones and explosions were reported by Jenin residents and in videos posted on social media. Residents reported receiving text messages from Israeli phone numbers that warned them to stay inside for their protection. Separate messages directed at militants advised them to “surrender yourself for your safety and the safety of those around you.”
The camp, an urban warren in the city center, has been the site of frequent IDF raids targeting alleged militants. The clashes have grown more intense in recent months, including a firefight on June 19 that killed five Palestinians.
The use of aircraft in the assault represents a significant military escalation in the northern West Bank, where commando-style raids were once the norm. Drones were deployed in the June battle, and then a U.S.-built Apache gunship was used to aid in the evacuation of Israeli soldiers caught inside the camp, the first time Israel had turned to air power in the West Bank since the 2006 uprising known as the second intifada.
Israeli officials said Monday’s offensive was meant to decisively confront the city’s longtime role as base of militant operations. The crowded and impoverished Jenin Camp, which is largely unpoliced by Palestinian Authority security forces, is known as a center of activity for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other armed factions.
“Most of the terror attacks against Israelis originated from Jenin,” the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, wrote on Twitter after the strike.
At least 15 attacks carried out against Israeli citizens in recent months were launched from Jenin, according to the IDF, and 19 individuals participating in those assault had fled to the camp afterward.
“Our main focus is basically breaking that safe haven mentality,” said Hecht. “We are not trying hold ground; we are acting against very specific targets.”
The Israeli attacks Monday — which included armed drones — began shortly after 1 a.m. and destroyed what the IDF said was a militant command and control center, a hub of planning, weapons storage and communications. The building was surrounded by residential blocks and several facilities used by the United Nations agency charged with aiding Palestinian refugees.
“A massacre is taking place now in Jenin camp,” Salim Awad, 34-year-old restaurant worker, said in a phone interview Monday from a house where 19 Jenin residents were taking refuge. “The children are crying and screaming, terrified of what is happening.”
Awad said “a thousand Israeli soldiers” entered the camp just after 1 a.m., with bulldozers rolling on Seka Street, partially demolishing several buildings. An airstrike destroyed the Freedom Theater, he said, and saw one boy with a severed leg.
“His brother was next to him, crying out for him,” he said.
Palestinian officials condemned the attacks, which a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called “a new war crime against our defenseless people.”
Rival militant groups throughout the Occupied Territories expressed defiance. “The resistance in all arenas will not allow the enemy to invade our people in Jenin or to single them out,” a coalition of factions in Gaza said in a statement.
The IDF also said it was boosting air defense readiness in the southern West Bank in the event of rocket fire from Gaza.
Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed militant group that Western nations regard as a terrorist organization, said in a statement that it would not be deterred by the strikes. “Jenin will not surrender,” said the organization, which has a following in the city.
The escalating violence has raised fears about a return to the bloody guerrilla warfare of two decades ago that killed thousands in the region.
The decades-old Jenin camp has one of the highest rates of unemployment and poverty among refugee camps in the West Bank, according to the United Nations. Thousands of residents of the camp are on Israeli watch lists, making them ineligible for work permits.
So far 2023 has seen violence surge in Israel and the occupied territories. Nearly half of the roughly 140 Palestinians killed by Israel in the West Bank between Jan. 1 and late June were affiliated with militant groups, the Associated Press reported. But in several instances, children have been killed as Israeli security forces adopt increasingly aggressive tactics. In March, a 14-year-old boy was killed during a raid in central Jenin, according to a Washington Post investigation. In June, a 15-year-old girl was killed in another raid.
At least 23 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians as of June, according to a Washington Post tally of media reports and Israeli government figures. Last week, four Israelis were gunned down by Hamas gunmen at a gas station outside of the Eli, a small hilltop Israeli settlement. In response, groups of masked settlers rampaged through Palestinian villages over several days, burning cars and houses. One resident, a Palestinian American, was killed.
Masih reported from Seoul. Sufian Taha in Jerusalem and Hazem Balousha in Gaza contributed to this report.
