How Israel's raids on Jenin led to a big military operation in the West Bank

Israel started its biggest military operation in the West Bank in 20 years on Monday. It was in the city of Jenin, which has been a target of Israeli forces many times this year because it is a center of terrorist activity.

Since coming to power in December, Israel's far-right government has made it a top goal to crack down on the Jenin refugee camp, which it says is hiding fighters who have attacked Israel or are planning to do so. According to the Israel Defense Forces, at least 50 attacks on Israeli citizens were fired from Jenin in the past few months, and 19 of the people who took part in those attacks ran away to the camp afterward.

The camp was set up in 1953 to house Palestinians who had to leave their homes because of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It is now run by the Palestinian Authority. But the group's old and disliked leaders have had a hard time keeping armed groups in Jenin and the rest of the occupied West Bank under control.

At the moment, it looks like 2023 will be the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005, when the UN started keeping track of deaths after the last Palestinian revolt. The United Nations says that between January 1 and June 15, 114 Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops and 16 Israelis were killed by Palestinians.

Since a raid in January in Jenin, things have continued to get worse in the city.

The raid on Monday was a huge step up for Israeli actions in Jenin. About 1,000 Israeli forces stormed the city with the help of drone strikes. The Palestinian Health Ministry says that at least eight people were killed and 80 more were hurt.

Israeli officials said they were going after a militants' "operational command center," but they didn't say when the raid would end. This has been typical of Israeli military operations in Gaza in the past.

An Israeli raid meant to catch two suspected terrorists turned into a firefight that killed five Palestinians and hurt many more. At least 91 Palestinians and eight Israeli soldiers and border police officers were among those hurt.

Israel sent a combat helicopter to help the hurt troops for the first time since the early 2000s. The IDF said that the planes shot at Palestinian rebels on the ground to clear the area. Later that night, Israel used a rare drone attack on a car outside of the city that was thought to be carrying terrorists.

The following day, Palestinian aggressors shot and killed four individuals at a café at a service station in Eli, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. The militant group Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, took credit for the attack and said it was a reaction to the raid in Jenin.

Yamam, a special Israeli unit, killed four people, including two Palestinian militants and 14-year-old Omar Awadin, during a daytime raid on a busy commercial street that Israeli officials said was meant to "apprehend terrorists."

A Washington Post review of video evidence and witness accounts found that Awadin was one of 16 civilians in the area where Israeli forces fired at least 20 shots from an AR-style rifle and a handgun. After one of the militants was knocked out, Israeli officials shot him several times. Experts said this may have been an execution without a trial, which could be against Israeli law.

Israeli military vehicles rushed into the Jenin refugee camp to look for a man accused of killing two Israeli brothers from the settlement of Har Bracha. The brothers were 21 and 19 years old.

The Palestinian Health Ministry says that the raid killed at least six Palestinians and hurt 26 more. The IDF said that the suspect was one of those who died.

A raid by Israeli forces in Jenin turned into a gunfight that lasted for hours. At least nine people were killed, including a 61-year-old woman, and 19 others were hurt. At the time, it was the deadliest operation in the West Bank in 20 years.

Because of the raid, the Palestinian government stopped working with the Israeli government for a while.

Nearly every day, Israeli troops went into Jenin, mostly at night, to look for militants who were thought to be planning or taking part in strikes. The January action in the early morning was the start of a more aggressive military strategy that ended with Monday's bloody incursion.