Israel is struggling to contain a new generation of Palestinian militants, many of whom are based in Jenin, and who are using new techniques and weapons to confront Israeli soldiers as they carry out near-daily raids across the West Bank.
The Israeli raid was aimed at arresting two suspected militants, including the son of an imprisoned senior Hamas official from the West Bank and a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but the operation quickly spiraled into a prolonged firefight.
Palestinian militant groups, including the Jenin Brigade and Islamic Jihad, claimed several of the dead as their members, but the fatalities also included a 15-year-old boy, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. At least 91 other Palestinians were injured, including a Palestinian photojournalist clearly displaying his press credentials, the ministry said.
Eight Israeli soldiers and border police officers were injured Monday when they came under unexpected fire on the street and after at least one roadside bomb hit an Israeli armored vehicle as it attempted to leave. For more than eight hours, Israeli soldiers were pinned down as they awaited extraction.
In a a move not seen since the days of the second intifada of the early 2000s, Israel dispatched combat helicopters to rescue the injured soldiers. The helicopters fired at the Palestinian combatants on the ground to clear the area, the army said in a statement.
“Throughout the duration of the activity, gunmen fired toward the [Israel Defense Forces] helicopters with light weapons. A number of hits were identified,” an Israeli military statement said.
The battle, which began around 7 a.m. local time and ended late in the afternoon, was the latest in a series of intensifying clashes that have accompanied near-nightly Israeli military raids. In the past year and a half, Israeli operations have become more prolonged and more deadly, leading to the deaths of targets and an increasing number of civilians.
The 15-year-old boy, Ahmad Yousef Ahmad Saqer, was standing with a group of young Palestinians when Israeli forces opened fire with live ammunition, wounding him in the abdomen, according to Defense for Children International, a Palestinian organization.
The clashes have also seen the introduction of more guns and homemade Palestinian weapons, including low-tech bombs and rockets, that the Israeli military said are created under the direction and specific instructions of groups such as Hamas.
Monday’s events were seen by some as a major Israeli military failure, evoking memories of the bloody battles of the second Palestinian uprising which saw brutal raids on the West Bank, specifically around the city of Jenin.
“Yesterday’s operation in Jenin will come to be regarded as a milestone for the IDF not only because of the amount of time it took to get out of the ensnarement (the longest offensive operation undertaken since the second intifada), but also for the reason that caused that: The introduction of powerful IEDs that turn the area into one that resembles 1990s-era south Lebanon, even if these devices are less powerful than the ones we saw back then,” wrote Yossi Yehoshua, a military correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot.
In Jenin, he added, Palestinian militants have a new “goal … to deter the IDF from sending forces into an area so they can build up their military capabilities, exactly as was done in the Gaza Strip.”
“The current situation is unprecedented and we will not remain silent amid the Israeli escalation,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf, who visited the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday.
The confrontation incensed far-right members of Israel’s ruling coalition, who have called for a permanent presence of Israeli air forces in the northern West Bank, which, during the past year and a half, has become a hotbed for newly formed, mostly small, Palestinian militant groups.
“The time has come to replace tweezer activity with a broad operation to eradicate the nests of terrorism in northern Samaria,” tweeted far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds a position in the Defense Ministry, using the biblical term for the West Bank.
“We will continue to fight terror,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after a visit to the Rambam Hospital, where several of the soldiers and medics injured in Jenin were being treated.
But many experts say that an Israeli military escalation will be met with more Palestinian violence. On Monday, images of damaged Israeli armored vehicles circulated on social media, delivering “some morale and feeling of achievement” to the Palestinian territories, said Ghassan Khatib, a professor of political science at Birzeit University. He said that, under the new far-right, pro-settler Israeli government, more Palestinians have begun to support armed warfare.
“In previous situations, at least you heard rhetoric about peace negotiations, diplomatic contact, envoys coming and going,” said Khatib. “Now the Israeli government is making it very clear that they have no intention to consider the ending of the Israeli control over any part of the territories, leaving youths with only one choice — resistance.”
The raid came a day after the Israeli cabinet approved a resolution to expedite the process for approving West Bank settlement construction, altering a system in place since the 1990s and building on an earlier decision to reverse the closure of Israeli outposts deep inside the West Bank.
The approval process for more than 4,000 settlements will be partly overseen by Smotrich, a radical settler who has called for a Palestinian village to be “wiped out” and has advocated for the Israeli annexation of the West Bank, home to more than 3 million Palestinians.
Retired colonel Miri Eisin, a former senior intelligence officer in the Israeli army, said that Israel’s accelerating land grab on territory that Palestinians once envisioned as their future state is partly to blame for the despondency and militancy that has swept Palestinian cities including Jenin, from where dozens of attackers have in the past year set out to kill Israeli soldiers and civilians.
“Israel is going to win the battle, but lose the war, which is what has been going on for the past 25 years,” Eisin said.
