Israel is using a range of “lethal war-like tactics” amid its assault of the occupied West Bank, the UN has warned, as Israeli forces destroy crucial civilian infrastructure and carry out drone strikes in Jenin refugee camp and beyond.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Wednesday that Israeli forces have killed over two dozen people in the West Bank just over the past week, while the Palestinian Health Ministry reports a death toll of at least 39 people so far, with over 145 people injured. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has said that the past week was the deadliest in the occupied West Bank since November.
The brutal tactics employed by Israeli forces include “airstrikes, with people being killed, injured, displaced or deprived of access to basic services,” OCHA said. The group noted that more thorough assessments of the damage done have been impossible because Israeli forces are denying UN and other humanitarian groups access.
Over the past week alone, Israel has cut northern parts of the region off from the rest of the West Bank, putting cities there under siege as Israeli forces turned neighborhoods into war zones and razed others. Soldiers have used bulldozers to tear up major streets.
The assault, dubbed “Operation Summer Camps” by Israeli forces due to their targeting of refugee camps like Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarem, has no end in sight. Israeli officials have pledged an attack like their genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
Multiple Israeli air strikes have been reported, and on Thursday Israel killed at least five Palestinians in a drone strike in the city of Tubas, claiming that they were soldiers. Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a 16-year-old in nearby Far’a refugee camp, Majed Fida Abu Zeina, and reportedly dragged his body on the street with a bulldozer.
Videos circulating on social media on Thursday appeared to show large explosions in Jenin and bulldozers targeting electrical utility trucks in the city.
Attacks on health care have been continuous, as Israeli forces have sieged hospitals and prevented ambulances from reaching injured Palestinians. On Tuesday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society shared a video of Israeli forces using military vehicles to block one of its ambulances from moving forward.
Israeli forces claim that the Palestinians they’ve killed were militants. But, like it’s done in Gaza, the Israeli military is destroying civilian infrastructure in the occupied West Bank.
On Sunday — just a few days into Israel’s current assault — Jenin officials reported that the Israeli army had already bulldozed over 70 percent of Jenin’s streets, destroyed 20 kilometers miles of water and sewage infrastructure, and cut off water to 80 percent of the city. OCHA reports that Israel has destroyed the homes of at least 120 people in Tulkarem, while 13,000 people in Nur Shams have lost water access to their homes.
Meanwhile, Palestinians say that Israel’s endless assaults on the occupied West Bank are constantly radicalizing the victims of such attacks. “What do you think they’re doing? They’re pushing for escalation so that they can fully depopulate us,” one resident of Jenin told +972 Magazine. “They’re making life for us unbearable.”
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