Hundreds flee Jenin as death toll rises to 12 amid Israeli raid

Military operation is being carried out amid a security clampdown across the occupied West Bank

Israeli armoured bulldozers in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. AFP

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Hundreds of Palestinians in Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank have left their homes after eviction orders from Israeli troops.

The displacement orders were issued as part of a large-scale raid that has killed at least 12 people so far.

The Israeli military operation started on Tuesday and has included air strikes. About 40 people have been injured and extensive damage to infrastructure and private property has been recorded in the camp in the northern West Bank, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. Israeli troops set fire to several homes during raids on Thursday, it said.

“Hundreds of camp residents have begun leaving after the Israeli army, using loudspeakers on drones and military vehicles, ordered them to evacuate the camp,” Jenin governor Kamal Abu Al Rub told AFP.

Palestinians walk across the rubble of a building in Burqin, west of Jenin, where Israeli troops killed two suspected militants on Thursday. AFP

The death toll rose to 12 after Israeli troops surrounded a building in Burqin, west of Jenin, and killed two men who it accused of carrying out a shooting on January 6 that killed three Israelis and injured six in Al Funduq. Wafa identified the men as Qutaiba Shalabi, 30, and Muhammad Nazzal, 25, both from Qabatiya.

The Palestinian Authority's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs cautioned that allowing the war in Gaza to spill over into the West Bank would be catastrophic, not only for Palestinians but also for the wider region.

“The West Bank is extremely volatile, it's very dangerous,” Varsen Aghabekian told the World Economic Forum in Davos, adding that Jewish settlers were “creating havoc” in the area.

“If we transfer what has happened in Gaza to the West Bank, I think this means total chaos,” she told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on Wednesday that Jenin, one of the most embattled areas in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was “almost uninhabitable”.

“Yesterday, Israeli security forces launched a massive operation in Jenin camp and city, using advanced weaponry and warfare methods, including air strikes,” Roland Friedrich, director of UNRWA affairs for the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, said on X.

“The camp is nearly uninhabitable, with some 2,000 families displaced since mid-December,” he said. He added that UNRWA had been unable to provide its full services due to the current situation.

Bulldozers have reportedly destroyed the main street leading to one of the primary hospitals in the area, impeding the ability of emergency services to transport patients. Israeli raids on Jenin and the region often ruin roads and damage or destroy vital services such as medical centres.

Israel's raid began days after the Palestinian Authority ended a weeks-long assault on the Jenin camp after reaching a deal with armed groups in the area.

Israel imposed restrictions on movement and set up checkpoints that have caused traffic jams across the occupied West Bank. AFP

Israeli troops have cut off the camp from the rest of the city introducing traffic restrictions and checkpoints.

The measures have brought traffic on many of the roads on which Palestinians are allowed to travel to a standstill amid severe restrictions introduced after the attacks by Hamas on southern Israel in 2023 that led to the war in Gaza.

Israel’s leadership has ordered that the restrictions remain in place throughout the six-week phase of the three-stage ceasefire deal, Haaretz reported on Wednesday.

Far-right ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government have called for strong military action in the West Bank after the Gaza truce came into effect. On Tuesday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that Israel had “begun changing the security perception” in the region.

Meanwhile, Jordan's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ayman Safadi, said Jordan could not afford another war in the West Bank.

“What's happening in the West Bank should not be allowed to lead to what has happened in Gaza, i.e. we cannot afford another war on the West Bank,” he said, also in Davos.

“I think the majority of the world agree that the two state solution is the answer … On the ground we're seeing unilateral measures by Israel that are rendering the two state solution unviable,” he said, referencing settlement expansion, land grabs and “suffocation” of the Palestinian Authority.