Muhammad Amin
Israel has switched its genocide focus from Gaza to the West Bank, launching Wednesday its biggest incursion into the occupied territory in twenty years, targeting the cities of Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas.
The attacks came amid calls by Israeli ministers for the entire West Bank Palestinian population to be exiled.
Air and ground forces accompanied by bulldozers and drones attacked the cities at night, firing indiscriminately at anyone who moved. Nine people have been reported killed so far.
Israel also attacked central and southern Gaza where at least 40 Palestinians were killed, taking the genocide death toll to over 40 534. The wounded number 93 778, while at least 11 000 ar missing, believed dead.
Al-Jazeera reports the Israeli army is talking about an operation that could last for days in the biggest assault on the West Bank since 2002 during the Second Intifada.
Israeli media reported the operation was focussed mainly on Tulkarm where the military believed a Hamas group that carried out a martyr bombing on Tel Aviv on August 18 was operating.
And hospitals are again being targeted, raising concerns Israel wants to do to the West Bank’s infrastructure what it has done to Gaza’s.
Jenin’s governor, Kamal Abu al-Rub, said genocide forces ordered the complete evacuation of one of their hospitals, the Ibn Sina Specialised Hospital. Its director was told the army intends to raid the facility while troops outside blocked off roads leading to it in preparation for an assault.
“Israel’s objective number one is not Gaza, it is the West Bank. This is the heart of what they say is the biblical land,” Professor Hassan Barari of Qatar University told Al Jazeera, adding that Israel aims to render Palestinians into homeless refugees in their own land.
That was underlined by a Israel Katz, the Zionist foreign minister, who called in a post on X for the forcible transfer of all Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
“Our army is working hard in the Jenin and Tulkarem camps to dismantle the Islamic-Iranian infrastructure that have been established there.
“Iran is trying to establish an eastern front against Israel in the West Bank, similar to the model in Gaza and Lebanon, by financing and arming terrorists and smuggling advanced weapons from Jordan.
“We must deal with the threat in the West Bank as we are doing in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever other steps are required. This is a war in every sense of the word and we must win it.”
Israel has reduced Gaza’s two million residents to a confused mass of exhausted, terrified humanity, desperately seeking a place of safety as it issues more and more evacuation orders.
For instance, Unwra said five evacuation orders were issued in six days last week. Most of the residents are concentrated at the Al Mawasi sand dune camp that has also come under direct attack, despite being a “safe zone”.
“The people of Gaza are waking up on every other day to evacuation orders, giving them a very, very short time to move or face the consequences,” Unwra Director Sam Rose said. “This is women, children, the elderly, people who have moved five to 10 times already faced with an impossible dilemma.”
“If they stay,” he said, “they risk bombardment, further destruction, further death. And if they go, they don’t know what’s coming for them. There’s either no space when they get there, or they’ll be in even more squalid conditions than those they left behind. Many unfortunately, tragically, horrifically, have been killed en route.”
Unwra warned the aid flow trickling into Gaza was at its lowest ebb in nine months. Rose said less than 100 trucks were entering each day.
“That compares to about 300 per day before the Rafah operation started in May, and way below the 500 trucks that we have insisted are the requirements to meet the minimum humanitarian needs of the population,” Rose said.
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