Live Updates: At Least 9 Killed as Israel Begins Major Military Operation in West Bank

Hundreds of troops entered cities in the occupied territory, targeting Palestinian militants. It was a significant escalation after months of raids that have unfolded alongside the war in Gaza.

Here are the latest developments.

Despite the toll in the West Bank — more than 580 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, according to the United Nations, in violence involving both the Israeli military and extremist Jewish settlers — the raids have failed to tamp down the armed groups. They have also further immiserated Palestinian civilians in the territory, who saw Israeli bulldozers tear up roads early Wednesday and feared being caught in the crossfire.

The raids on Wednesday appeared to be the largest since July 2023, when about 1,000 Israeli soldiers carried out a 48-hour incursion in the West Bank city of Jenin that killed 12 Palestinians, at least nine of whom militant groups claimed as members.

Israeli forces on Wednesday were focusing on Jenin and Tulkarm, two cities that have become militant strongholds, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said at a news briefing. Israeli troops also operated farther east in the Far’a neighborhood, conducting an aerial strike that killed four militants, the Israeli authorities said. The raids comprised hundreds of soldiers, according to another Israeli security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss troop movements.

Colonel Shoshani said all nine of those killed were militants, without providing further information about their identities. He added that the operation was just getting started.

Here is what else to know:

• Gunfire and explosions: Kamal Abu al-Rub, the Palestinian governor of Jenin, said the Israeli incursion was unusually fierce, with the sounds of gunfire and blasts intermittently resounding through the city. Israeli officials had informed their Palestinian counterparts that they were imposing a formal curfew on parts of the city and that soldiers had surrounded Jenin’s hospitals, entrances and exits, he said, adding: “People are living in a state of terror and anxiety.”

• Iranian smuggling: The raid comes as U.S., Israeli and Iranian officials have said that Tehran is trying to flood the West Bank with weapons. The covert operation, employing intelligence operatives, militants and criminal gangs, has heightened concerns that Iran is seeking to turn the territory into another flashpoint in its longstanding conflict with Israel, The New York Times reported in April.

• Settler violence: While the Israeli military cited rising Palestinian violence, extremist Israelis have also stepped up attacks against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. Many escape legal accountability for the mob attacks, some of which turn deadly. This month, a 23-year-old Palestinian was killed when dozens of Israeli settlers attacked the town of Jit in the northern West Bank.

• Prospect of evacuations: Israel’s foreign minister raised the prospect of temporarily relocating West Bank residents as the military operation goes on, saying, “We must deal with the threat just as we deal with the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza,” where most people have been forced from their homes during the war. But Colonel Shoshani said on Wednesday morning that there were currently no plans to order the relocation of residents from Jenin or Tulkarm.

Jenin, a focus of the raids, is a symbol of defiance for Palestinians.

A woman raised a Palestinian flag in the ruins of Jenin in 2002, after much of the area was destroyed in a two-week Israeli military offensive.Scott Nelson/Getty Images

But Jenin’s resonance today, both for Palestinians and Israelis, largely stems from the second intifada, or uprising, against the Israeli occupation in the early 2000s.

Israelis remember Jenin, which sits in the rolling hillsides of the northern West Bank, as a source of dozens of suicide bombers sent into Israel at that time.

Palestinians remember a 10-day battle, known as the Battle of Jenin, in 2002 between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces. Israel killed 52 people, of which up to half may have been civilians, according to the United Nations in a report on the event. The fighting killed 23 Israeli soldiers.

Yasir Arafat, the late Palestinian leader, dubbed the camp “Jeningrad,” a reference to the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II.

Palestinian officials called the Israeli assault a massacre — a claim that was rejected by the United Nations in its report, though it criticized both sides as putting Palestinian civilians at risk. Nonetheless, the attack is widely remembered as such to Palestinians.

During the period of British administration, Jenin was a stronghold of rebellion against colonial rule and the wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine. British forces blew up a quarter of the town in 1938 after one of their officers there was killed.

In the wake of the 1948 war, Jenin became known as a town that never surrendered, after Palestinian fighters, backed by Iraqi soldiers, repelled an Israeli attempt to take Jenin.

It also was home to one of the original refugee camps set up for Palestinians displaced by that war. Although all of these sites are still called “camps” to recognize the displacement of the residents’ ancestors, the areas are actually ramshackle neighborhoods of apartment blocks and roads, usually of poor quality.

In more recent years, the Jenin refugee camp has frequently been a target for raids by Israeli forces. In addition to widespread violence in Jenin, the camp is considered by the United Nations to have the highest rates of unemployment and poverty in the West Bank.

Both Hamas, which controls Gaza, and the militant group Islamic Jihad have recruited in Jenin. But in recent years, the ranks of the militants have been joined by newer, loosely affiliated militias that emerged among a younger generation that is frustrated with a Palestinian leadership they see as corrupt and enabling of the Israeli occupation.

Israeli officials say that more than 50 shooting attacks on Israelis have emanated from the Jenin area this year. Violence has surged in the West Bank amid Israel’s war in Gaza. Israeli forces say they are fighting off efforts to move arms into the West Bank, but Jewish settlers have also escalated attacks and expanded settlements.

‘We are in the first stages of this operation,’ an Israeli military spokesman says.

An Israeli military bulldozer in the Nur Shams area near the city of Tulkarm, in the occupied West Bank, on Wednesday.Jaafar Ashtiyeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Israeli forces launched the unusually large military raids, focusing on the cities, Jenin and Tulkarm, after months during which Palestinian militants resisted Israeli efforts to subdue them in the territory.

Both cities have seen deadly battles between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants. Colonel Shoshani said that more than 150 “shooting and explosive attacks” against Israelis had originated in the two cities over the past year, including an attempted bombing in mid-August in the coastal metropolis of Tel Aviv.

Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks prompted full-blown war in Gaza, Israeli forces have stepped up raids in the West Bank, targeting what it says are Hamas and allied groups. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed, including both militants and civilians; at least 4,500 have been arrested, according to the Israeli military.

In the operation announced on Wednesday, nine militants were killed, the Israeli military said; Colonel Shoshani said that at least seven had been killed in aerial attacks. The West Bank once rarely saw bombardments by Israeli drones, but they, too, have become commonplace since Oct. 7.

Another Israeli security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that roughly hundreds of soldiers were participating in the operation. In Jenin, Israeli forces deployed near a major hospital, stoking fears that they might raid it. Colonel Shoshani argued that the military was trying to prevent the hospital from becoming a haven for militants.

Israeli officials have long said that militants have planted improvised explosive devices in an attempt to blow up Israeli soldiers as they drive along roads in Palestinian towns. Colonel Shoshani said that Israeli troops had worked overnight to disarm the explosives, deploying combat engineers specialized in dismantling them.

During another major raid in Jenin last year, scores of Palestinians fled their homes temporarily as Israeli troops pursued people suspected of being militants. Colonel Shoshani said there were currently no plans to order the evacuation of residents. Earlier, Israel’s foreign minister had raised the prospect of temporarily ordering residents to evacuate as the military operation goes on.

“If people wish to leave, they can leave,” Colonel Shoshani told reporters. “But I am not aware of a plan of evacuation or something like that.”

Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting.

Posted on social media, via Reuters

Iran has smuggled arms to the West Bank to foment unrest, officials say.

The covert operation, employing intelligence operatives, militants and criminal gangs, has heightened concerns that Iran is seeking to turn the West Bank into another flashpoint in its longstanding conflict with Israel.

Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, said on Wednesday that its military was operating in the West Bank “to thwart Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructures,” adding: “Iran is working to establish an eastern terrorist front against Israel in the West Bank, according to the Gaza and Lebanon model.”

Many weapons smuggled to the West Bank largely travel along two paths from Iran through Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel, the officials said. As the arms cross borders, the officials added, they change hands among a multinational cast that can include members of organized criminal gangs, extremist militants, soldiers and intelligence operatives. A key group in the operation, the Iranian officials and analysts said, are Bedouin smugglers who carry the weapons across the border from Jordan into Israel.

“The Iranians wanted to flood the West Bank with weapons, and they were using criminal networks in Jordan, in the West Bank and in Israel, primarily Bedouin, to move and sell the products,” said Matthew Levitt, director of the counterterrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research organization, and the author of a study on the smuggling route.

Israeli forces carry out raids in the West Bank.

Israeli soldiers in the Nur Shams area near the city of Tulkarm, in the occupied West Bank, on Wednesday.Jaafar Ashtiyeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The comments suggested the start of a significant escalation in Israel’s military campaign in the West Bank, which has ramped up since the war in Gaza began. While 90 percent of Gaza’s population of more than two million people have been forced to leave their homes, residents of the West Bank have not endured the scale of bombardments, raids and evacuation orders that Gazans have in the past 10 months of war.

The Israeli military said it was carrying out counterterrorism operations in Tulkarm and in Jenin, without providing details. The operations appeared to be occurring elsewhere in the West Bank as well. The Palestinian Health Ministry said that seven of the people had been killed in Tubas, in addition to two in Jenin, and that 11 others had been injured.

Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, said that Israeli troops had moved in on hospitals, hindering ambulances at one medical facility, and were bulldozing infrastructure in Jenin and Tulkarm.

Israeli forces blocked access in and out of Jenin and Tulkarm early Wednesday, and large numbers of military vehicles entered Jenin, Wafa reported.

On Monday, the Israeli military carried out an airstrike on the densely populated Nur Shams area in the West Bank, killing at least five people whom it described in a statement on Wednesday as terrorists. The military said that one of those killed in that strike was a man who had been released in November in the prisoner exchange that was part of the weeklong cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza.

Since the war in Gaza began last Oct. 7, more than 600 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, according to the United Nations. The U.N. humanitarian coordinator also said Israeli forces had demolished, confiscated or forced the demolition of more than 1,400 structures across the West Bank since then.