TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel said Sunday it was scaling up a weekslong offensive in the occupied West Bank, sending in tanks to a militant stronghold and pledging to keep troops in place for the next year in areas where Palestinians have fled.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he had instructed the military to prepare to remain in some of the West Bank's refugee camps, from where he said some 40,000 Palestinians had fled, leaving the areas “emptied of residents.”
He said in a statement he had ordered the military to “prepare for an extended stay in the camps that were cleared for the coming year and to not allow the return of residents or for terror to grow again."
Israel launched a new offensive on the city of Jenin on Jan. 21 — two days after the ceasefire that paused the war in Gaza took effect — and then deepened it to include other areas nearby, among them urban refugee camps that house the descendants of Palestinians who fled their homes in wars with Israel decades ago.
The offensive, said by Israel to crack down on spiking Palestinian militancy, has increased the death toll in the West Bank and also sent tens of thousands fleeing.
The military said Sunday it was expanding the raid in the West Bank to other areas and was sending tanks to Jenin, long a bastion of armed struggle against Israel.
Violence has surged in the West Bank throughout the Israel-Hamas war. There has also been a spike in Palestinian attacks emanating from the West Bank and late Thursday, blasts rocked three empty parked buses in Israel, what police are viewing as a suspected militant attack.
The raid’s intensification comes at a sensitive time, as the truce between Israel and Hamas holds yet remains tenuous. The sides do not yet appear to have begun negotiations on extending the ceasefire and its collapse could lead to renewed fighting in war-torn Gaza.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and Palestinians want all three territories for their future independent state.
Under interim peace agreements from the early 1990s, Israel maintains control over large parts of the West Bank while the Palestinian Authority administers small areas. Israel regularly sends troops into Palestinian areas but it typically withdraws them once forces complete their missions.
Tia Goldenberg, The Associated Press
