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Palestinian president cuts short Saudi trip over West Bank violence: Report
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has interrupted his visit to Saudi Arabia to return to the occupied West Bank after Israel launched military operations there, Palestinian news agency Wafa has reported.
“Abbas cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia and returned to his homeland on Wednesday to follow up on the latest developments in light of the Israeli aggression on the northern West Bank,” Wafa said.
‘It is an act of war’
Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, says the ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank is “not just raids … it’s an act of war”.
“What Israel is doing is conducting a war on occupied people which is a total violation of international law on how an occupying power should behave,” Barghouti told Al Jazeera, stressing that the West Bank has been under Israeli occupation since 1967.
“They are using air strikes, air force, tanks, bulldozers, and what they are trying to do is to transfer the actual genocide and ethnic cleansing ongoing in Gaza into the West Bank,” Barghouti said.
The amount of damage Israeli forces inflicted on the Palestinian territory’s infrastructure also indicates their goal to make it uninhabitable for its citizens, Barghouti added.
“They destroyed water pipelines, electricity lines, houses, schools – what do they want? They want to create a situation where we cannot live in our country and that is exactly what the settlers’ plans are about.
“It’s about Judaization of the West Bank, about annexing the West Bank and killing any opportunity for the Palestinians to be free and to have a state of their own,” he said.
Israeli forces storm Shu’fat camp in Jerusalem
An Al Jazeera correspondent reports that Israeli forces have stormed Shu’fat camp north of Jerusalem from several points with more than 150 soldiers and closed its entrances.
Earlier today Israeli forces conducted raids in refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas, killing at least nine Palestinians.
Israeli forces impose curfew in Jenin neighbourhood
Israeli forces have imposed a curfew on the eastern neighbourhood of Jenin and have prevented Palestinians from leaving their homes, an Al Jazeera correspondent has reported from the occupied West Bank.
The correspondent said the army has continued with raids and storming homes in the neighbourhood.
Separately, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society reported that a Palestinian was injured by Israeli forces’ bullets in al-Yamoun, Jenin governorate, in the northern West Bank.
‘Anxiety and fear’ for residents of West Bank
Israeli rhetoric about this (West Bank) operation is that it might last for days. There is a lot of anxiety and fear here where the Israeli forces say they are working to crack down on Palestinian fighting groups.
The feeling here is that there has been a lot of incitement and at the core of it is Israeli media telling the Israeli security establishment that it has failed to thwart certain Palestinian attacks that targeted Israeli settlers.
What Palestinians want the world to know is that there is a lot of collective punishment, collective pain inflicted on around 80,000 people here in these three locations in the occupied West Bank.
These places have already been subjected to lots of raids and they tell you that the main goal is to push them out of their land and remind them who has the ultimate power and control, who can make their lives more and more difficult if they even think about resisting Israel’s occupation.
Medical teams face obstruction by Israeli forces in occupied West Bank
British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians has provided the following update summary from Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestine Red Crescent Society:
- Our medical teams in Tubas, Tulkarem, and Jenin are facing obstruction by Israeli forces while trying to perform their humanitarian duties in reaching the injured Palestinians.
- In Far’a refugee camp [near Tubas], our teams were prohibited from operating, so volunteers within the camp’s medical point had to handle cases and provide first aid until ambulances could arrive, where they dealt with four people killed and eight injured Palestinians.
- Israeli forces stormed the medical point in Far’a camp, detained the medical teams and prevented them from any communication tools.
- They continued firing shots inside the medical point and assaulted the director of the Tubas Emergency Centre before leaving.
- In Jenin, the situation is equally bad. Jenin Governmental Hospital is being blocked, where medical teams and ambulances are prevented from entering and/or leaving the hospital making it hard to deliver healthcare services to the injured.
