Israeli soldiers withdraw from Jenin, step up raids in other West Bank areas

The Palestinian news agency Wafa has confirmed that Israeli forces had pulled out of the city following a 10-day siege, but residents feared soldiers would return after temporarily moving to surrounding military checkpoints.

At least 21 Palestinians, including children and the elderly, have been killed in Jenin over the last few days, the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced in a statement on Friday, and at least 130 more were injured.

The Israeli military launched the offensive in the north of the West Bank on August 28 targeting Jenin and Tulkarem among other areas in its largest assault on the occupied territory since the second Intifada in the early 2000s.

“Palestinians in Jenin are finally able to come out of their homes and see and assess the level of damage, while those who had to leave [the city] are finally coming back,” said journalist Leila Warah, reporting from Ramallah.

She added that the Israeli military was still present in other areas of the West Bank, with attacks in the Nablus and Balata refugee camps and raids in areas of Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah.

Jenin residents used the lull in violence to rummage through the rubble of destroyed buildings and take stock of the damage.

Wafa reported that military checkpoints surrounding Jenin remained active, heightening fears of future incursions.

In advance of the reported withdrawal, five Palestinians were “severely beaten” on Thursday night by Israeli forces at the al-Jalama military checkpoint north of Jenin, according to Wafa.

Aziz Taleb, a 48-year-old father of seven, found out his family home of 20 years in Jenin had been raided.

“Thank God [the children] left the day before. They went to stay with our neighbours,” Taleb told the AFP news agency as he surveyed the damage.

Imra Itisadeh, a 60-year-old Jenin resident, stated: “At first, we didn’t want to leave. Later, [the Israeli army] pressured us, and we had to leave our homes. I left with my husband [on foot].”

In a statement on Facebook, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused Israel of transferring to the West Bank its brutal destruction and devastation the Gaza Strip has been witnessing for 11 months.

It added the raids conducted in Jenin as well as Tulkarem were “a clear targeting of Palestinian civilians and the foundations of their national and human existence on their homeland”.

The Mayor of the occupied West Bank City of Jenin, Nidal Obeidi, stated on Friday that the Israeli incursion has affected large swaths of Jenin’s infrastructure, adding that the reconstruction of it will take months.

Obeidi described the raid as an “earthquake”, adding that Israeli bulldozers destroyed more than 20km (12.5 miles) of the city’s road network.

Obeidi said clearing the rubble left in the wake would take only days, but that repairs to the water and sewage networks damaged or destroyed would take months, noting that the city was completely cut off from water during the raid by the Israeli company that supplies it.