RAMALLAH: One Palestinian was killed and 12 others were wounded during a raid by Israeli soldiers on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
The raid was conducted to arrest the father of a Palestinian man who had killed three Israelis in a shooting attack on a bar in Tel Aviv on Thursday and who was later shot dead by Israeli forces.
It was unclear whether the soldiers made any arrests at his home on Saturday. The troops left the camp hours later.
The Israeli Defense Forces reinforced their forces along the borders with the West Bank to prevent intrusion by any future Palestinian attacker.
Israel also conveyed a message to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas via the US, asking him to stop the pension of the attacker’s father who had retired as a security officer in the Palestinian Authority.
Maj. Gen. Akram Rajoub, Jenin’s governor, told Arab News that what the Israeli army did constitutes “retaliatory measures against the people of Jenin and its camp, and a search for lost dignity to satisfy the Israeli public opinion.”
Rajoub said that Israeli security authorities had asked the Tel Aviv attacker’s father to surrender and when he refused, they came with great force to arrest him.
He expressed his fear that radical Palestinian groups might exploit public anger in the Jenin camp to escalate violence and further deteriorate the Palestinian security situation.
Mansour Al-Saadi, a resident of the Jenin camp, told Arab News that the Israeli army took the dimensions of the house of the Tel Aviv attacker in preparation for its demolition, describing the situation in the camp as “very tense.”
Large Palestinian crowds mourned Ahmed Al-Saadi, who was killed during an armed clash with Israeli soldiers on Saturday.
Palestinians have opposed the imposition of collective punishment — a complete security cordon and the rolling back of eased restrictions during Ramadan — by Israel on 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank.
Gaza rulers Hamas have sent a message to Israel through international mediators that if Israeli forces invaded Jenin on a large scale, Gaza would join the confrontation as happened a year ago when Israel harassed the residents of Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The issue had led to an 11-day war between Hamas and Israel.
Palestinians living in Jenin told Arab News that various security and economic measures taken by Israel have not helped it as without a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the attacks would not end.
Over the years, they said, Palestinians have had popular uprisings, and the present period was ripe for a new wave of attacks by angry youth who have decided to respond to what they see as an “existential threat, daily insults, and the loss of any hope in the future.”
Israeli Knesset member Ofer Kasif said: “Killings in Jenin will only bring more killings in Israel.”
