Israel’s military on Thursday pressed ahead with its offensive in and around Jenin, a city known as a center of militant opposition to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, killing two men in a nearby village who were wanted for the murder of three Israelis.
The men, identified on Thursday as Mohamad Nazzal and Qutayba Shalabi, had earlier this month shot at Israeli vehicles in the West Bank village of Al Funduq, the Israeli military said. The attack killed three Israelis: a police investigator and two women from a nearby settlement.
Since the cease-fire in Gaza began this week, Israel has turned its attention to the West Bank, particularly Jenin. The Israeli military has launched at least three major operations there over the past year and a half, arresting militants, tearing up roads and leaving many Palestinian civilians hiding in their homes in fear.
Israel’s last major military operation in the West Bank — in August and September — lasted 10 days and killed 39 people, mostly in Jenin, according to Palestinian officials. But the repeated raids have seemingly failed to subdue Palestinian militants, who have accrued increasing power in recent years.
At least 10 people have been killed in the raids this week, and more than 40 others have been wounded, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Wednesday. The official Palestinian prisoners’ commission said dozens of people had been arrested.
Mohammad Jarrar, the mayor of Jenin, said thousands had fled the neighborhood known as the Jenin camp, the focus of the Israeli operation. Those who remained were cut off from electricity and running water, he said, creating the potential for a “humanitarian disaster.”
“Each time we rebuild, only for the next raid to destroy again,” he said.
Israeli soldiers have set up checkpoints near the Jenin Government Hospital, inspecting every vehicle that enters and leaves the medical complex, said Wissam Bakr, the hospital director. The troops let most ambulances go through relatively quickly after inspection, Dr. Bakr said, but occasionally the soldiers hold them up, causing delays.
On Thursday, the Israeli military said its forces had killed Mr. Nazzal and Mr. Shalabi in an overnight shootout in the village of Burqin, near Jenin. An Israeli soldier was injured in the confrontation, the military said.
Hamas’s armed wing claimed both men as members and said they had committed the attack in Al Funduq.
“The enemy’s bloody plans that it has begun to implement in the West Bank will only bring it more painful blows,” the group said on social media.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group, also put out a statement mourning Mr. Nazzal, calling him a leader in its Jenin Brigade, leaving it unclear to whom he owed allegiance. But the group similarly identified him as committing the deadly attack in Al Funduq.
Jenin’s refugee camp, founded for Palestinians displaced by the wars surrounding Israel’s establishment in 1948, has emerged as a stronghold for groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Last month, the Palestinian Authority — which administers parts of the occupied West Bank — launched a rare crackdown against Palestinian militants there.
Tensions have already spiked in the West Bank in the shadow of the war in Gaza. Earlier this week, Israeli settlers stormed Al Funduq in an apparent revenge attack for the killing of the three Israelis there, torching a plant nursery and smashing cars, the town’s mayor said.
Israeli security forces and settlers have killed more than 800 Palestinians in the territory since the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, set off the war, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Roughly three million Palestinians live in the West Bank alongside some 500,000 Israeli settlers. The International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion this summer saying that Israel’s decades-long occupation violated international law. Israel rejected the accusation.
