After placing significant reinforcements in the northern Jordan Valley, Israel has seceded from the rest of the occupied West Bank and placed a comprehensive siege on the area.
In a bid to threaten Palestinian residents, Israeli Apache helicopters shot rounds over empty fields around Tubas while military bulldozers piled earth across every approach road before dawn, according to residents.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
As the army announced a new military operation it claimed was aimed at resistance fighters, troops immediately began conducting house-to-house searches in the city of Tubas as well as the four nearby towns, including Tammun and Aqqaba.
Ahmed Asaad, the governor of Tubas, refuted that justification, telling Al Jazeera that the Israeli assault is entirely related to geography and has nothing to do with security.
In a new effort to impose new realities, he said, “The assault is targeting Tubas because its location is close to the Jordan Valley.”
About 30 families were forced from their homes, according to Asaad, and several buildings on high ground overlooking the governorate had been seized by troops.
The five towns that the army has now encircled now have more than 50 000 Palestinians living in them.
Collective punishment
Asaad criticized what he termed a new round of collective punishment for a neighborhood that is already enduring daily incursions and constant harassment at nearby checkpoints.
He claimed that local authorities have activated emergency committees throughout the governorate and suspended schools and public institutions as a result of the military curfew.
Additionally, there is a restriction on the movement of medical teams and ambulances. According to Asaad, Israeli forces restricted access to a number of patients in need of urgent care.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has been in contact with local authorities to arrange for medical transfers.
cleansing of ethnic groups
According to the doctors from the Palestine Red Crescent Society, at least two Palestinians were taken to a hospital on Wednesday after being brutally beaten during raids in Tubas and Tammun.
Residents told the Palestinian news agency Wafa that the scale of the operation, which started shortly after midnight, resembles the extensive invasions Israel has carried out in the West Bank since the genocide in Gaza in 2023, when troops have taken down homes, detained thousands, and attempted to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homes.
Hamas criticized the “criminal Zionist occupation army,” blaming recent sieges, curfews, and raids for revealing “the scale of systematic crimes committed by the extremist occupation government.”
The group claimed that the assault is an attempt to “ethnically cleanse” the occupied territory and that it is a part of a strategy that “crushing any Palestinian presence in order to achieve complete control over the West Bank.”
Hamas claimed that Israel’s “colonial project” will not violate the “will of our people” and that this operation is a part of the ongoing annexation and displacement plans.
Another resistance group, the Palestinian Mujahideen Movement, denounced the raid as part of an Israeli “open war” to annex the West Bank and forcibly remove its residents. A different statement was released. It accused the US of facilitating “systematic aggression” by Israel.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israeli forces have carried out nearly 7,500 raids across the West Bank this year alone.
According to OCHA, “the occupied West Bank is experiencing its worst displacement crisis in decades,” citing Israeli settler violence, military operations, and demolitions.
In the past two years, Israeli forces have killed more than 1, 000 Palestinians in the West Bank.
Human Rights Watch reported earlier this month that Israel’s systematic displacement of three refugee camps constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Source: Aljazeera
Leave a Reply