ISLAMABAD: Pakistan strongly condemned repeated raids by Israeli occupation forces on the Jenin refugee camp that have resulted in the killing of multiple Palestinians, the Pakistani foreign office said on Tuesday, a day after Israel conducted drone strikes in the occupied West Bank and deployed hundreds of troops in an incursion resembling broader attacks carried out during the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago.
Israel's massive ground offensive in the densely populated Palestinian refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Jenin bears hallmarks of Israeli military tactics during the second Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s. The assault, involving aerial bombardments, ground incursions through Israeli special forces, has intensified clashes and reignited the sense of Palestinian resistance.
Largely made up of camps that were initially set up in the 1950s, Jenin is home to more than 22,000 Palestinians who were expelled from their original homes during the Nakba — the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist militias to create the State of Israel — in 1948. To Palestinians, the enclave embodies armed resistance against the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
“Pakistan strongly condemns repeated raids by Israeli occupation forces on Jenin refugee camp, which have resulted in multiple casualties,” Pakistan’s foreign office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told Arab News.
In a strong display of solidarity, she said the people of Pakistan were "outraged" by this deliberate targeting of innocent Palestinians and reiterated Pakistan's unwavering support for the Palestinian cause and their fundamental right to peacefully live in an independent state.
“We believe the Palestinian people have a right to live peacefully in an independent state of Palestine, based on pre-1967 borders, with Al Quds Al Sharif as its capital,” she added.
The large-scale raid, which began Monday, was one of the most intense military operations in the occupied West Bank in nearly two decades and comes amid a more than a yearlong spike in violence. More than 140 Palestinians have been killed this year in the West Bank, and Palestinian attacks targeting Israelis have killed at least 26 people.
The recent raids came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces growing pressure from his ultranationalist political allies for a tough response to recent attacks on Israeli settlers, including a shooting last month that killed four people.
