As war rages in Gaza, Israel’s crackdown on West Bank insurgency is killing Palestinian youths

As war rages in Gaza, Israel’s crackdown on West Bank insurgency is killing Palestinian youths
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The body of Odei, a 22-year-old Palestinian militant, is carried into a morgue at the hospital in Jenin, West Bank, on June 6, 2024. (AP)
As war rages in Gaza, Israel’s crackdown on West Bank insurgency is killing Palestinian youths
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Young Palestinians are seen approaching a militant outside a mosque in Jenin, West Bank, on June 6, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 13 September 2024
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As war rages in Gaza, Israel’s crackdown on West Bank insurgency is killing Palestinian youths

As war rages in Gaza, Israel’s crackdown on West Bank insurgency is killing Palestinian youths
  • More than 150 teens and children 17 or younger have been killed in the embattled territory since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel
  • Most died in nearly daily raids by the Israeli army that Amnesty International says have used disproportionate and unlawful force

JENIN, West Bank: As the world’s attention focuses on the deadly war in Gaza, less than 80 miles away scores of Palestinian teens have been killed, shot and arrested in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has waged a monthslong crackdown.
More than 150 teens and children 17 or younger have been killed in the embattled territory since Hamas’ brutal attack on communities in southern Israel set off the war last October. Most died in nearly daily raids by the Israeli army that Amnesty International says have used disproportionate and unlawful force.
Amjad Hamadneh lost son Mahmoud when the 15-year-old’s school dismissed students at the start of a May raid.




Amjad Hamadneh tapes a photograph to the grave of his son, Mahmoud, who was killed by an Israeli sniper on his way home from school in Jenin, West Bank, on June 5, 2024. (AP)

“He didn’t do anything. He didn’t make a single mistake,” says Amjad Hamadneh, whose son, a buzz-cut devotee of computer games, was one of two teens killed that morning by a sniper.
“If he’d been a freedom fighter or was carrying a weapon, I would not be so emotional,” says his father, an unemployed construction worker. “But he was taken just as easily as water going down your throat. He only had his books and a pencil case.”
It is clear from statements by the Israeli military, insurgents and families in the West Bank that a number of the Palestinian teens killed in recent months were members of militant groups.
Many others were killed during protests or when they or someone nearby threw rocks or homemade explosives at military vehicles. Still others appear to have been random targets. Taken together, the killings raise troubling questions about the devaluation of young lives in pursuit of security and autonomy.

The Israeli army said in a statement to The Associated Press that it has stepped up raids since Oct. 7 to apprehend militants suspected of carrying out attacks in the West Bank and that “the absolute majority of those killed during this period were armed or involved in terrorist activities at the time of the incident.”
On the June afternoon that 17-year-old Issa Jallad was killed, video from a neighbor’s security camera shows, he was on a friend’s motorbike with an Israeli armored vehicle in close pursuit. Days later, a poster outside his family’s home in Jenin showed him cradling an assault rifle and declared him a holy warrior.
But the grainy tape, reviewed by AP days after the raid, and others from nearby cameras do not explain where he fit in the conflict. The Israeli army said that its soldiers had spotted two militants handling a powerful explosive device. When the pair tried to flee, troops opened fire and “neutralized them.”
But an Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, says its review of multiple security camera videos showed Jallad and his friend posed no threat.
“We all expected to be in this situation,” said the teen’s brother, Mousa Jallad. “It could happen to any of us.”
Jenin’s refugee camp has long been notorious as a hotbed of Palestinian militancy, raided repeatedly by Israeli forces who have occupied the West Bank since seizing control in their 1967 war with neighboring Arab states.
The embattled territory was already seeing deadly clashes before the war began. But Israeli forces, which police about 3 million Palestinians while assigned to protect 500,000 Jewish settlers, has significantly stepped up raids in the months since.
Youths represent almost a quarter of the nearly 700 Palestinians slain in the West Bank since the war began, the most since the violent uprising known as the Second Intifada in the early 2000s. More than 20 Israeli civilians and soldiers have been killed in the territory since October.
A military spokesman said the Israeli army makes great efforts to avoid harming civilians during raids and “does not target civilians, period.” He said human rights groups focus on a few outlier cases.
Military operations in the West Bank are fraught because forces are pursuing militants, many in their teens, who often hide among the civilian population, said the spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani.
“In many cases many of them are 15, 16 years old who are not wearing uniforms and might surprise you with a gun, with a knife,” he said.
Critics say the crackdown is shaped by retribution, not only military strategy.
When sirens erupted at the start of the May raid, Amjad Hamadneh says, he called Mahmoud on his cellphone and was relieved to hear that the brothers had reached their school. But then Mahmoud’s twin brother, Ahmed, called back to say that the principal had dismissed classes. As students poured into the street, the brothers were separated in the chaos.




Young Palestinian refugees walk past a damaged vehicle in the West Bank refugee camp of Tulkarem on Sept. 12, 2024. (AP)

Four bullets hit Mahmoud as he fled, and another pierced his skull. He was the third student from his school killed in a raid since the war began.
A former classmate, Osama Hajjir, who had dropped out of school to work, was also killed, along with a teacher from a nearby school and a doctor from the hospital down the street.
“Now when I hear the sound of sirens I go to my room and stay there,” says Karam Miazneh, another classmate, who was shot during the raid but survived. “I’m still in fear that they will come to shoot me and kill me.”
Immediately after the May raid, a spokesman for the army said it had carried out the operation with Israeli border police and the country’s internal security agency, destroying an explosive device laboratory and other structures used by militants. But police recently declined to comment, and three weeks after the AP asked the military to answer questions about the May raid, an army spokesman said he was unable to comment until he could confer with police.
When Amjad Hamadneh heard his son had been wounded, he sped through Jenin’s twisting streets, drawing gunfire as he neared the hospital. But Mahmoud was already gone.
Nearby, Osama’s father, Muhamad, broke down as he leaned over his son’s body. Months earlier he’d snapped a photo of the smiling teen beside graffiti touting Jenin as “the factory of men,” tirelessly cranking out fighters in the resistance against Israel. Now, he pressed that same, still-smooth face between his hands.
“Oh, my son. Oh, my son,” he sobbed. “My beautiful son.”
Since Mahmoud Hamadneh was killed, his siblings ask frequently to visit his grave. His younger sister now sleeps in his bed so her surviving brother, Ahmed, will not be in the room alone.
“I feel like I cannot breathe. We used to do everything together,” Ahmed says. His father listens closely, despairing later that such grief could drive the teen into militancy. If the risk is so clear to a Palestinian father, he says, why don’t Israeli soldiers see it?
“They think that if they kill us that people will be afraid and not do anything,” he says. “But when the Israelis kill someone, 10 fighters will be created in his place.”
 


Hezbollah drone strike kills four, wounds dozens at Israeli base

Hezbollah drone strike kills four, wounds dozens at Israeli base
Updated 9 sec ago
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Hezbollah drone strike kills four, wounds dozens at Israeli base

Hezbollah drone strike kills four, wounds dozens at Israeli base
  • Hezbollah says “squadron of attack drones” launched at military training camp in Binyamina, south of Haifa
  • Strike was in response to Israeli attacks on Thursday that Lebanon says killed at least 22 people in central Beirut

Beirut: Israel’s military said a Hezbollah drone killed four soldiers at one of its northern bases Sunday, as it expanded its bombardments of Lebanon and troops battled militants across the border.

The attack on a military training camp in Binyamina, near Haifa, was the deadliest such assault on an Israeli base since September 23, when Israel increased its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Emergency services reported more than 60 wounded.

Authorities in Gaza, meanwhile, said the death toll from an Israeli strike Sunday on a school being used as a shelter for displaced people had risen to 15, including whole families, while a separate overnight strike on a hospital killed four.

And as fighting raged between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon’s south, United Nations peacekeepers said they had again been in the firing line.

They said Israeli troops “forcibly” entered a UN position with two tanks, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the force to withdraw from the area.
Israel’s military said a tank had backed into the UN post while under fire.

Iran-backed Hezbollah said late Sunday that it launched “a squadron of attack drones” at the Binyamina camp, around 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of the major city of Haifa.

The strike was in response to Israeli attacks, including air strikes on Thursday that Lebanon’s health ministry said killed at least 22 people in central Beirut.

In a later statement, Hezbollah warned Israel that “what it witnessed today in southern Haifa is nothing compared to what awaits it if it decides to continue its aggression against our noble and dear people.”

An Israeli volunteer rescue service, United Hatzalah, said its teams in Binyamina assisted “over 60 wounded people” with injuries ranging from mild to critical.

Hezbollah has been firing rockets and drones into Israel for more than a year in support of Hamas militants in Gaza.

Since late September, however, its strikes have reached further into the country.

Israel’s sophisticated air defenses have intercepted most of the projectiles, with few casualties caused by strikes or falling debris.

Israel’s recent strikes have increasingly focused on areas beyond Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds in southern Beirut, and Lebanon’s south and east.

Israel said its air force hit “Hezbollah launchers, anti-tank missile posts, weapons storage facilities” and other targets, while on the ground its soldiers “eliminated dozens” of fighters.

Lebanon’s official National News Agency said Israeli forces had “escalated their attacks” on southern Lebanon with “successive air strikes” pounding several border villages.

It later reported that an Israeli strike on Mayfadoun, near Nabatiyeh, in southern Lebanon, had killed five people and wounded one other.

Hezbollah said its forces clashed several times with Israeli troops who tried to “infiltrate” villages along the border.

Before the drone strike it had said it launched a salvo of rockets at a “base in southern Haifa.”

The group later aired an audio recording of its slain leader Hassan Nasrallah calling on fighters to “defend this holy and blessed land and this honorable people.”

Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air strike in south Beirut on September 27, and several other senior commanders of the movement have also been killed.

Israel’s military said about 115 projectiles fired by Hezbollah had crossed into Israeli territory by Sunday afternoon.

A Hezbollah fighter was captured emerging from a tunnel in south Lebanon on Sunday, Israel’s military said, the first such announcement since the start of the ground offensive.

UN peacekeepers accused Israeli troops of breaking through a gate and entering one of their positions before dawn Sunday in south Lebanon, the latest of several incidents the UNIFIL mission has reported since Thursday.

Five Blue Helmets have so far been injured, provoking international condemnation.

“Two IDF (Israeli military) Merkava tanks destroyed the position’s main gate and forcibly entered the position” in the Ramia area, before leaving 45 minutes later, UNIFIL said.

The Israeli military later said a tank “backed several meters into a UNIFIL post” while “under fire” and attempting to evacuate injured soldiers.Earlier Sunday, Netanyahu had called on the UN to move peacekeepers in southern Lebanon out of harm’s way, after the mission rejected requests to abandon its positions.

The peacekeepers’ presence had “the effect of providing Hezbollah terrorists with human shields,” said Netanyahu.

UN chief Antonio Guterres on Sunday said “attacks” against peacekeepers “may constitute a war crime.”

UNIFIL, with about 9,500 troops, is in southern Lebanon under the longstanding UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which stipulated that only the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers should be deployed in south Lebanon.

Three Lebanese soldiers were wounded on Sunday, the country’s army said, when Israeli forces fired on military vehicles in the Marjayoun area.

French President Emmanuel Macron, in a phone call with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, appealed to Tehran to support “a general de-escalation” in Lebanon and Gaza, his office said.Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli shelling had killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens more Sunday at a school turned shelter for displaced Palestinians in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp.

“The school was bombarded with a large volley of Israeli artillery, resulting in an initial death toll of 15 martyrs, including children, women and entire families, and 50 wounded,” said Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the agency.

Israel’s military said it was “looking into the reports.”

Separately, the military said early Monday that it had carried out a strike targeting a “command and control center, which was embedded inside a compound that previously served as the ‘Shuhadah Al-Aqsa’ hospital.”

Civil defense spokesman Bassal said the strike had killed four people and wounded many more, noting it was the seventh time an attack had hit the “tents for displaced people inside the walls of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.”

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said late Sunday that a WHO-Palestine Red Crescent operation had managed to resupply two hospitals in northern Gaza.

“WHO and partners finally managed to reach Kamal Adwan and Al-Sahaba hospitals yesterday after 9 attempts this past week,” he posted on X.

Hamas sparked the war in Gaza with the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

The number includes hostages killed in captivity.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says more than 42,000 people, the majority civilians, have been killed since Israel’s military campaign began there. The UN considers these figures to be reliable.

Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed more than 1,300 people since September 23, according to an AFP tally of official figures, including for Saturday.

That toll exceeds the entire Lebanese toll of 1,200 — mostly civilians — in the last Hezbollah-Israel war in 2006, when 160 people, mostly soldiers, died in Israel.

The Pentagon said it would deploy a high-altitude anti-missile system and its US military crew to Israel to help the ally protect itself from potential Iranian attack.


Hezbollah threatens Israel with more attacks if Lebanon assault continues

Hezbollah threatens Israel with more attacks if Lebanon assault continues
Updated 14 October 2024
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Hezbollah threatens Israel with more attacks if Lebanon assault continues

Hezbollah threatens Israel with more attacks if Lebanon assault continues
  • Drone attack on base near Israel’s Haifa killed four soldiers on Sunday 
  • Escalation in Lebanon has killed over 1,300, displaced more than a million

BEIRUTU, Lebanon: Lebanese militant group Hezbollah threatened Israel with more attacks if its offensive in Lebanon continued, after a drone attack on a base near Israel’s Haifa Sunday killed four soldiers.
Israel’s military said four soldiers were killed in the attack, the deadliest such assault on an Israeli base since September 23, when Israel increased its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Hezbollah “promises the enemy that what it witnessed today in southern Haifa is nothing compared to what awaits it if it decides to continue its aggression against our... people,” it said.
In what it described as a “complex” operation, the Iran-backed group said it had launched dozens of missiles toward Nahariya and Acre north of Haifa “with the goal of keeping Israeli defense systems busy.”
At the same time, it launched “squadrons of various drones, some of which were being used for the first time, toward various areas in Acre and Haifa, where they were able to get past Israeli air defense radars without being detected” and hit the training camp in Binyamina south of Haifa, it added.
They “exploded in the rooms where dozens of officers and soldiers of the Israeli enemy were present.”
After claiming the Binyamina attack, Hezbollah said it had launched missiles at a “maintenance and rehabilitation base” of the army, also south of Haifa.
The incident comes two days after air raid sirens sounded in central Israel after two aerial drones entered the country from Lebanon. At least one building north of Tel Aviv was damaged during the incident.
Hezbollah has been regularly firing rockets and drones into Israel for more than a year, but has reached further since the fighting escalated in late September.
Israel’s air defenses, including the Iron Dome system, have intercepted most of the projectiles, with few casualties caused by strikes or falling debris.
The escalation in Lebanon has killed more than 1,300 people and displaced over a million more from their homes, according to official figures.
 


Hezbollah threatens Israel with more attacks if Lebanon assault continues

Israel's Iron Dome air defence system intercepts rockets fired from Lebanon, near Acre in northern Israel on October 11, 2024.
Israel's Iron Dome air defence system intercepts rockets fired from Lebanon, near Acre in northern Israel on October 11, 2024.
Updated 14 October 2024
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Hezbollah threatens Israel with more attacks if Lebanon assault continues

Israel's Iron Dome air defence system intercepts rockets fired from Lebanon, near Acre in northern Israel on October 11, 2024.
  • After claiming the Binyamina attack, Hezbollah said it had launched missiles at a “maintenance and rehabilitation base” of the army, also south of Haifa

BEIRUTU, Lebanon: Lebanese militant group Hezbollah threatened Israel with more attacks if its offensive in Lebanon continued, after a drone attack on a base near Israel’s Haifa Sunday killed four soldiers.
Israel’s military said four soldiers were killed in the attack, the deadliest such assault on an Israeli base since September 23, when Israel increased its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Hezbollah “promises the enemy that what it witnessed today in southern Haifa is nothing compared to what awaits it if it decides to continue its aggression against our... people,” it said.
In what it described as a “complex” operation, the Iran-backed group said it had launched dozens of missiles toward Nahariya and Acre north of Haifa “with the goal of keeping Israeli defense systems busy.”
At the same time, it launched “squadrons of various drones, some of which were being used for the first time, toward various areas in Acre and Haifa, where they were able to get past Israeli air defense radars without being detected” and hit the training camp in Binyamina south of Haifa, it added.
They “exploded in the rooms where dozens of officers and soldiers of the Israeli enemy were present.”
After claiming the Binyamina attack, Hezbollah said it had launched missiles at a “maintenance and rehabilitation base” of the army, also south of Haifa.
The incident comes two days after air raid sirens sounded in central Israel after two aerial drones entered the country from Lebanon. At least one building north of Tel Aviv was damaged during the incident.
Hezbollah has been regularly firing rockets and drones into Israel for more than a year, but has reached further since the fighting escalated in late September.
Israel’s air defenses, including the Iron Dome system, have intercepted most of the projectiles, with few casualties caused by strikes or falling debris.
The escalation in Lebanon has killed more than 1,300 people and displaced over a million more from their homes, according to official figures.
 

 


Israel military shows journalists area of operations in south Lebanon

Israel military shows journalists area of operations in south Lebanon
Updated 14 October 2024
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Israel military shows journalists area of operations in south Lebanon

Israel military shows journalists area of operations in south Lebanon
  • The military has escorted staff from several media organizations into southern Lebanon since Israel began its ground assault on September 30

EBANON-ISRAEL BORDER, Lebanon: The Israeli military on Sunday took a group of journalists across the border into south Lebanon, and showed what it claimed were three Hezbollah positions including two tunnels, just a few hundred meters from the border.
The Israeli soldiers escorting the media team, which included an AFP photographer, through the mountainous and densely forested terrain said they were near the Lebanese town of Naqura near the border.
The soldiers did not specify how far they were inside southern Lebanon, nor did the journalists see any other people in the area during their brief embed that lasted for about 90 minutes.
The movement of journalists was restricted by the military to a limited area, while the photos and video footage taken during the embed had to be approved by the military before publication.
One of the tunnels was, according to the military, just a few hundred meters (yards) from a United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) post.
Israel has repeatedly asked UNIFIL, deployed along Lebanon’s southern border since 1978, to abandon its positions since it escalated its campaign against Hezbollah in September.
UNIFIL has rejected the requests.
“This is how you build an operational attack outpost. And that’s what we found here, just 300 yards from the UN post,” said Lt. Col. Rotem, an Israeli commander accompanying the journalists, who gave only one name for operational purposes.
The journalists were also shown a ditch located amid a cluster of trees, which the military claimed was a Hezbollah post.
The AFP photographer saw Israeli military vehicles crossing the border into Lebanon near Naqura, where troops had cut down trees near the entrance to one of the tunnels.
The military has escorted staff from several media organizations into southern Lebanon since Israel began its ground assault on September 30.
Israel stepped up its campaign in Lebanon on September 23, nearly a year after Hezbollah began launching cross-border attacks in what it said was support for its Palestinian ally, Hamas.


WHO, Red Crescent resupply two hospitals in north Gaza: WHO

WHO, Red Crescent resupply two hospitals in north Gaza: WHO
Updated 14 October 2024
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WHO, Red Crescent resupply two hospitals in north Gaza: WHO

WHO, Red Crescent resupply two hospitals in north Gaza: WHO
  • The resupply mission also delivered 20,000 liters (5,300 gallons) of fuel to keep Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda operational, and 23,000 liters of fuel were delivered to Al-Sahaba Hospital, along with 800 units of blood and essential medicines and supplies

GENEVA: World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said late Sunday that a WHO-Palestine Red Crescent operation had managed to resupply two hospitals in northern Gaza.
“WHO and partners finally managed to reach Kamal Adwan and Al-Sahaba hospitals yesterday after 9 attempts this past week,” he posted on social media platform X.
“The missions were completed amid ongoing hostilities,” he added.
He said drivers had been subjected to “humiliating security screening” and even temporarily detained at a checkpoint, “which is unacceptable.”
The WHO regularly criticizes the obstacles the Israeli authorities put in the way of these supply and patient evacuation missions.
It did so again on Friday during a news briefing in Geneva specifically on the subject of this relief mission to the northern Gaza Strip.
“One-off missions are not enough. There is a sustained need for resupplying hospitals to keep them functioning,” Tedros said, reiterating his call “for sustained facilitation of humanitarian missions and ensuring safety for humanitarian staff; and for a ceasefire.”
According to the WHO, 13 patients in critical condition were transferred from Kamal Adwan hospital to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
“The hospital is overwhelmed and still serving around 60 in-patients and receiving at least 50-70 injured daily,” Tedros said.
Six other patients who had been transferred earlier from Al-Awda Hospital to Kamal Adwan were also taken to Al-Shifa, along with those accompanying them.
The resupply mission also delivered 20,000 liters (5,300 gallons) of fuel to keep Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda operational, and 23,000 liters of fuel were delivered to Al-Sahaba Hospital, along with 800 units of blood and essential medicines and supplies.
The fuel is mainly used to run the hospitals’ generators to ensure power supply.
The hospital infrastructure throughout the Gaza Strip is very fragile after a year of war between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas, with many facilities having been hit by shelling or fighting.
The Israeli military accuses Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and carried out the October 7, 2023 attacks in Israel that triggered the war, of operating under the cover of these buildings, which normally enjoy increased protection under the rules of war.