Israeli fighting intensifies in northern West Bank

Jenin, Palestinian Territories. Fighting gripped the northern West Bank on Saturday, the fourth day of a large-scale Israeli operation in the occupied territory, where Palestinians are reporting “black days.”

In Gaza, despite fighting and Israeli bombing, a polio vaccination campaign has begun after the conflict-ravaged territory recorded its first case in a quarter of a century.

In parallel with the Gaza offensive, the Israeli army launched a major operation in the West Bank on Wednesday, with bombings and armored vehicle raids in Jenin, Nablus, Tubas, Tulkarem, and in refugee camps, where armed groups fighting Israel have a strong presence.

“It’s hard, it’s very hard for the children and everyone is scared, we are terrified, look at the destruction,” said Faiza Abu Jaafar, an 82-year-old woman who lives in Jenin in the West Bank. “We are living through dark days,” she added.

Israeli military raids are common in the West Bank, but it is unusual for them to take place in several cities simultaneously. However, violence has escalated since the war in the Gaza Strip began.

“I think it’s the worst day since the raid began. We hear clashes and sometimes loud explosions,” Wisam Bakr, director of Jenin’s public hospital, told AFP.

The Israeli army announced on Saturday its first casualty since the start of the operation, saying it had killed two Palestinians who were planning to carry out bomb attacks near Israeli settler settlements in the West Bank.

“One terrorist attempted to carry out a car bomb attack” near the Guzh Etzion settlement, and another was arrested after having “infiltrated Karmei Zur” further south, the armed force said.

Both the Islamist movement Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, and its ally Islamic Jihad welcomed the move.

At least 22 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli army since Wednesday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The Israeli military says the dead are fighters, but the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that one of the dead was an elderly man in his 80s.

“I’m very scared for him”

In Gaza, despite the ravages of the war between Israeli forces and Hamas, unleashed on October 7 by the attack of the Palestinian Islamist movement in southern Israel, a polio vaccination campaign has begun.

The World Health Organization said Israel has agreed to impose “humanitarian pauses” for at least three days in several parts of Gaza to facilitate a vaccination campaign that began on Saturday and will be rolled out on a large scale on Sunday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed this week that these “pauses” do not constitute “a ceasefire.”

Parents of children who received the first dose of two drops – two doses are needed, one month apart – told AFP they feared epidemics.

Aid Abu Taha, 33, brought his 11-month-old son. “I came because I am very scared for him,” he said, referring to a disease that can cause deformities, paralysis and even death.

The goal is to immunize more than 640,000 children under 10 years of age.

Nine members of a family killed in bombing

Gaza’s Civil Defense reported that it recovered 29 bodies from the rubble on Saturday. In the evening, Israel bombed the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north of the territory.

Using cellphones as their lights lit up, rescuers carried the injured to ambulances. Others searched for missing people in the rubble, according to AFPTV images.

Nine adults from the same family, including two women, were killed on Saturday when their home was bombed in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Syria, Marwan Abu Nasar, a doctor at Al Awda hospital where the bodies arrived, told AFP.

The war in Gaza, which has plunged the 2.4 million inhabitants of the territory into a catastrophic humanitarian situation, broke out on 7 October.

That day, Hamas Islamist militants killed 1,199 people, mostly civilians, in southern Israel, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.

They also kidnapped 251 people, of whom 103 remain captive in Gaza, including 33 who the Israeli military declared dead.

In response, Israel vowed to destroy Hamas and launched a vast retaliatory offensive that has already left 40,691 dead in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.