Israel presses on with major West Bank military raid as Tel Aviv attack injures 7

Tel Aviv attack

Israel says it is targeting the refugee camp because it is home to Palestinians responsible for a spate of attacks on Israeli citizens in recent months. Early Tuesday, Israeli forces said they had been able to find and seize weapons and explosives as well as destroy tunnels and command posts.

“In recent months, Jenin has turned into a safe haven for terrorism. We are putting an end to this,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, adding that the operation was being carried out with “minimum harm to civilians.”

Some Palestinians say this violence is a consequence of more than 50 years of occupation by Israeli forces. They observed a general strike across the West Bank in protest.

Tuesday’s attack saw an attacker ram into pedestrians on Tel Aviv’s Pinchas Rosen Street before getting out and stabbing people with a “sharp object,” police in the bustling city said, adding that “the terrorist has been neutralized.”

Police chief Kobi Shabtai told reporters that an armed civilian shot and killed the assailant, The Associated Press reported.

Surveillance footage of the incident showed a car crashing outside an area where people where sitting at tables, with the driver then climbing out of the window and chasing people.

Of those injured, three were in serious condition, two were moderate and two were mild, police said.

Hamas, which praised the attack, is classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States and others.

International alarm

The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank condemned the raid and said late Monday it would freeze its few remaining points of cooperation with Israel, as well as minimizing contact with Israel’s main benefactor, the United States.

A State Department spokesperson said it supported Israel’s “right to defend its people” against “terrorist groups.” Meanwhile they cautioned it was “imperative to take all possible precautions to prevent the loss of civilian lives” and urged “Israeli and Palestinian security forces to work together to improve the security situation in the West Bank.”

International bodies have also expressed concern. 

United Nations Mideast envoy Tor Wennesland warned that the escalation in the West Bank was “very dangerous.”

Lynn Hastings, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in the Palestinian areas, tweeted that she was “alarmed” by the “scale of Israeli forces operation” and noted the airstrikes in a densely populated refugee camp. She said the U.N. was mobilizing humanitarian aid.