While the war in Gaza is halted by the truce, in the other occupied Palestinian territory, the West Bank, the Israeli army is intensifying operations to prevent any action by armed groups. Jenin, in the northern West Bank, has concentrated military incursions in recent days and the entrance to this city of 70,000 inhabitants has been tightly controlled by Israel.
On Tuesday, troops laid siege to much of the city for 15 hours, surrounding three hospitals and declaring the refugee camp, where 20,000 people reside under the auspices of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), a military zone.
The operation ended on Wednesday morning, as a Palestinian social activist explained to La Vanguardia from Jenin, who assured that there were no deaths but there were injuries and “dozens of detainees.”
The army surrounded the city’s three main hospitals, which are not within the refugee camp, preventing entry and exit from these medical centers. Two of these health facilities are located near the camp, the Government Hospital and the Ibn Sina hospital, while the third center is Al Razzi, located in the Al Marah area, on the outskirts of Jenin.
Since October 7, 231 Palestinians, including 59 children, have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank and another 2,750 have been injured.
The president of Doctors Without Borders denounced on Tuesday that he was “trapped” for hours with staff inside the Jalil Suleiman hospital, in the Jenin refugee camp, in the occupied West Bank, in the midst of the Israeli incursion. Two Palestinians died from his injuries after ambulances could not reach them, he reported.
“For two hours, we could not go out to provide care and people could not reach us, as Israeli military vehicles blocked the entrance to the hospital and the road, preventing ambulances from leaving,” Christos Christou said in a post on X “There is nothing worse for a doctor to know that there are people who need our attention and can’t get it,” he said.
Jenin, a half-square-kilometre camp housing more than 17,000 Palestinian refugees, has been a hotbed of unrest over the past year, with Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants operating in the area. Soldiers and gunmen exchanged fire as Israeli drones flew over Jenin, Al Jazeera television reported.
The United Nations Palestine Refugee Agency (UNRWA) made an urgent call on Tuesday to achieve a definitive ceasefire in Gaza, the uninterrupted entry of humanitarian aid into the Strip and an end to violence in the West Bank. Regarding the latest demand, UNRWA denounced that with its eyes fixed on Gaza, the Palestinian population of the West Bank endures the violence of settlers and Israeli forces indiscriminately,”
