RAMALLAH: Israeli forces killed eight Palestinians in a large-scale operation on Monday in the occupied West Bank.
Sixty people were wounded, 10 of them seriously, in the Jenin refugee camp during the extensive military operation launched at dawn.
More than 1,000 Israeli armed forces personnel and dozens of armed vehicles, bulldozers, helicopters, and drones took part in the military operation — the largest since the Jenin camp’s destruction in 2002.
Mahmoud Al-Saadi, ambulance director of the Red Crescent in Jenin, confirmed that the Israeli armed forces prevented ambulance crews from entering the camp at certain points, blocking the way and pointing weapons at crew members.
The municipality of Jenin said that the Israeli forces destroyed the electricity and water networks in the camp and prevented crews from working to repair them.
Mansour Al-Saadi, deputy governor of Jenin, told Arab News that the army isolated the camp from the city using dirt mounds that its bulldozers piled up at all entrances leading to the camp.
He likened the situation in parts of the city near the camp to being under a curfew and said that the city had turned into something like a ghost town.
Firefighting vehicles could only move in Jenin with security coordination with the Israeli side.
Family members of the wounded called on the city’s hospitals to check on the health status of their loved ones, some of them children, who were injured by the army bullets.
Jenin hospitals called on citizens to donate blood, while ambulances were reinforced with a fleet from Tulkarm and Tubas neighboring cities.
Al-Saadi asked the Red Cross to enter the Jenin camp to evacuate the wounded, but Israeli bulldozers damaged the streets leading up the camp so that vehicles could not move easily.
“If the military operation continues for a longer period, the situation in Jenin camp will turn into a humanitarian catastrophe,” Al-Saadi told Arab News.
Walid Masharqa, a resident of the Jenin camp, told Arab News that conditions inside the camp are brutal and that this invasion of the camp has been more severe and violent than all previous ones.
Israeli snipers are deployed on the roofs of tall buildings, firing at every moving target, even if it does not pose a threat to them, said Masharqa.
“Soldiers are stationed on the roofs of buildings, and drones are hovering in the air all the time,” Masharqa told Arab News.
All entrances to the camp are now closed, he said.
Bulldozers have destroyed the camp’s streets and vehicles parked on them and demolished homes and commercial places inside the camp. The army is also carrying out a campaign of house searches, said Masharqa.
Palestinian sources in Jenin said that the Israeli army continued to besiege the Al-Ansar Mosque in the camp and that a military bulldozer was carrying out a demolition operation around the mosque.
Loudspeakers meanwhile asked citizens inside to surrender amid the outbreak of violent confrontations and the flight of Israeli “reconnaissance” planes, said the sources.
There were also clashes with the Israeli army in Al-Khader, south of Bethlehem, and in the Bab Al-Zawiya area in Hebron late on Monday.
Ambassador Muhannad Al-Aklouk, permanent representative of Palestine to the Arab League, said that he submitted a request to convene an urgent meeting of the league’s permanent delegates on Tuesday to discuss confronting the Israeli aggression on the city of Jenin and its camp.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said that the crimes in Jenin, Nablus, and Gaza would not bring security to Israel if “our Palestinian people were attacked.”
Speaking at the beginning of the Cabinet session in Ramallah on Monday, Shtayyeh said that Israel was guilty of committing a crime on Monday when it invaded the camp in Jenin, resulting in the death of innocent people and the destruction of infrastructure.
He called on the international community to intervene and put an end to the aggression against Palestinians, impose sanctions on Israel, “which sponsors terrorism,” and prevent the Israeli seizure of Palestinian lands to expand their settlements.
The prime minister affirmed that President Mahmoud Abbas and the government were following up with friendly countries to stop the aggression, saying: “We will provide everything we can to strengthen the steadfastness of our people in Jenin and its camp.”
Abbas chaired an urgent meeting of the Palestinian leadership late on Monday to discuss the Israeli aggression against Jenin and its camp.
In the wake of a march condemning the Israeli aggression on Jenin, the Israeli army shot in the head Mohammed Hassanein, a 21-year-old Palestinian youth from the Gaza Strip who lives in Ramallah, while he was with several other young men at the northern entrance to the city of Al-Bireh.
Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, called on the Israeli army to secure the entry of ambulance crews into the Jenin camp to rescue the injured.
In a post on Twitter on Monday, Hastings expressed her deep concern about the scale of the Israeli military aggression in Jenin.
Also on Monday, the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the continuous Israeli escalation of violence in the Palestinian territories.
It called on the international community to take immediate action to stop the Israeli attacks.
Ambassador Sinan Majali, official spokesperson for the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stressed the need to stop the continuous incursions into Palestinian cities and the escalation of violence, which constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law and Israel’s obligations as the occupying power.
Majali warned of the consequences of the escalation, which would only lead to more violence.
He reiterated Jordan’s position rejecting these attacks and all unilateral measures that undermine efforts to achieve stability.
Hussein Al-Sheikh, secretary of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Al-Safadi discussed the situation in Jenin and joint efforts at the regional and international levels to stop Israeli aggression against Jenin.
During a phone call on Monday with Al-Safadi, Al-Sheikh said that the continued aggression against “our people would drag the region into a spiral of violence and instability.”
