Mourners carry the body of a 40-year-old Palestinian who was killed during an Israeli settlers’ attack, during his funeral near Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on August 27.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israel said it killed three Hamas militants in an air strike in the occupied West Bank on Friday (August 30, 2024) taking the death toll, from a large-scale military operation now in its third day, to at least 19.

A top UN aid official meanwhile questioned “what has become of our basic humanity”, as the war raged on in Gaza and humanitarian operations struggle to respond.

The United Nations has warned the military operation which Israel launched in the West Bank early on Wednesday (August 28, 2024) is “fuelling an already explosive situation” in the territory and has pressed Israel to end it.

In the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris pledged she will not change Washington’s policy of supplying weapons to Israel if elected to the top job in November. But she stressed it was time to “end this war”.

Israel has described its raids on towns and refugee camps across the northern West Bank as “counter-terrorism” operations.

They have killed at least 19 Palestinians since Wednesday (August 28, 2024), the military and the Palestinian health ministry said.

The military said it killed three Hamas militants in an air strike near the northern city of Jenin on Friday (August 30, 2024).

Witnesses told the media that the strike hit a car in the town of Zababdeh, southeast of the city.

Israeli troops pulled back from other West Bank towns late Thursday (August 29, 2024) but fighting raged on around Jenin, long a hub of militant activity.

Loud explosions have been reported from the city’s refugee camp and thick plumes of smoke have been seen rising from the area.

Vaccination ‘pauses’

The World Health Organization said Israel had agreed to at least three days of “humanitarian pauses” in parts of Gaza, starting Sunday (September 1, 2024) to facilitate a vaccination drive after the first case of polio in a quarter of a century was recorded in the territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the measures were “not a ceasefire” in the nearly 11-month-old war triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack.

In the West Bank, the army said it killed seven militants on Thursday (August 29, 2024), including five militants in Tulkarem refugee camp.

A military statement said one of the five was Muhammad Jaber, also known as Abu Shujaa, who Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad said was its commander in the nearby Nur Shams refugee camp.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said at least 45 people had been detained in the West Bank since Wednesday (August 28, 2024) . An Israeli military spokesman said “10 wanted individuals were arrested”.

‘Basic sense of humanity’

In Gaza, the Israeli military said on Thursday (August 29, 2024) that it had “eliminated dozens” of militants in a day of combat and strikes.

Israeli shelling in the Jabalia refugee camp killed two people on Friday (August 30, 2024), the civil defence agency in the Hamas-ruled territory said.

The UN had to halt the movement of aid and aid workers within Gaza on Monday (August 26, 2024) due to a new Israeli evacuation order for the Deir el-Balah area, which had become a hub for its workers.

“More than 88% of Gaza’s territory has come under an (Israeli) order to evacuate at some point,” the acting head of the UN humanitarian office, Joyce Msuya.

She said civilians were being forced into just 11 percent of the Gaza Strip, already one of the most densely populated territories in the world before the war.

“What we have witnessed over the past 11 months… calls into question the world’s commitment to the international legal order that was designed to prevent these tragedies,” Msuya said.

“It forces us to ask: what has become of our basic sense of humanity?”

Palestinians inspect a damaged building following an Israeli army raid in Nour Shams refugee camp in the northern West Bank, on September 24, 2023. Palestinians said at least two people were killed in the raid, which the Army said was carried out to destroy a militant command center and bomb-storage facility in the building.
| Photo Credit: AP

Two Palestinians were killed during an Israeli military raid on September 24 in the northern West Bank, Palestinian health officials said, the latest bloodshed in a surge of violence during a sensitive Jewish holiday period.

The Israeli military said it moved into the Nour Shams refugee camp, near the town of Tulkarem, to destroy what it described as a militant command center and bomb-storage facility in a building.

It said that engineering units detonated a number of bombs planted under roads, and that militants opened fire and hurled explosives, as troops responded with live fire.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said two men — Asid Abu Ali, 21, and Abdulrahman Abu Daghash, 32 — were killed by Israeli fire. The raid caused heavy damage to roads and the suspected building.

Israel has been carrying out stepped-up military raids, primarily in the northern West Bank, for the past year and a half in what it says is a campaign to root out Palestinian militants and thwart future attacks.

But Palestinians say the raids entrench Israel’s 56-year occupation over the West Bank. The raids have shown little sign of slowing the fighting and contributed to the weakening of the Palestinian Authority, the self-rule government that administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Some 190 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the year, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Israel says most of those killed have been militants, but youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.

At least 31 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis this year.

The tensions have begun to spread over the past week to the Gaza Strip, where hundreds of Palestinians have been holding daily demonstrations along the fence separating the territory from Israel.

On Saturday, Israeli airstrikes hit a militant site for the second time in as many days, after Palestinians sent incendiary balloons into Israeli farmland and Palestinian protesters threw stones and explosives at soldiers at the separation fence

The spike in violence comes during the Jewish New Year holiday season. Jews are set to mark Yom Kippur, the holiest day on their calendar, on Sunday night followed by the weeklong Sukkot festival later in the month.

During Sukkot, large numbers of Jews are expected to visit Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. The compound, home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, is often a focal point for violence.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.