The Israeli military is expanding its operations in the occupied West Bank and will remain in some refugee camps for the \u201ccoming year,\u201d Defense Minister Israel Katz said Sunday. <\/p>\n
Israel has been carrying out \u201cOperation Iron Wall\u201d \u2013 a military campaign focused on the northern West Bank which launched last month, just two days after the Gaza ceasefire began. At least 27 people have died in the offensive, the Palestinian health ministry says. <\/p>\n
\u201cI have instructed the IDF to prepare for a prolonged presence in the cleared camps for the coming year and to prevent the return of residents and the resurgence of terrorism,\u201d Katz said in a statement. <\/p>\n
The Israeli military meanwhile said Sunday that it was operating in \u201cadditional towns\u201d in the Jenin area. <\/p>\n
\u201cSimultaneously, a tank platoon will begin operating in Jenin as part of the operational activity,\u201d it added, the first time Israeli tanks have operated in the Palestinian territory since the end of the second intifada, or uprising, in 2005. <\/p>\n
The Israeli military has launched regular incursions into Jenin and its refugee camps in recent years but has not established a permanent presence in the immediate area. Jenin came under Israeli occupation in 1967 but was put under the administration of the Palestinian National Authority in 1995 as a result of the Oslo Accords. <\/p>\n
Since Hamas\u2019 October 7 attack, Israel has engaged in an increasingly militarized campaign that it says targets West Bank militants, employing tactics like airstrikes that were once nearly unheard of there. <\/p>\n
Katz said Sunday that the Israeli military is \u201cconducting offensive operations to eliminate terrorist strongholds, neutralizing militants, and destroying terror infrastructure, buildings, and weapons caches on a large scale.\u201d <\/p>\n
He vowed to \u201ccontinue clearing refugee camps and other terror hubs to dismantle the battalions and terror infrastructure of radical Islam.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will not return to the previous reality,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The Palestinian foreign ministry has dismissed such justifications as \u201cpretexts\u201d to bring the territory under Israeli control. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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The Israeli military is expanding its operations in the occupied West Bank and will remain in some refugee camps for the \u201ccoming year,\u201d Defense Minister Israel Katz said Sunday. Israel has been carrying out \u201cOperation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4258,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/invest360pro.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}