The Palestinian Authority announced an unusually public crackdown on militants in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Saturday, sending armored vehicles through a city’s streets and engaging in gun battles with armed groups.
Palestinian security forces began deploying in the city, Jenin, to “put an end to sedition and chaos,” said Brig. Gen. Anwar Rajab, a spokesman for the authority’s security services. The authority administers some West Bank areas under Israeli occupation.
The forces killed a local militant leader in a neighborhood founded by Palestinian refugees, according to General Rajab and residents.
“This situation cannot be allowed to continue. It is unfortunate that we now need to deploy security forces to impose order,” said Mohammad Mustafa, the Palestinian prime minister. “But we will not watch our country destroyed and be silent.”
Violence in the West Bank has sharply escalated since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza. The growing power of militants in West Bank cities like Jenin and Tulkarm has prompted a deadly cycle of Israeli raids and drone strikes, which have devastated Palestinian neighborhoods.
In an attempt to break the cycle of violence, U.S. officials recently urged the Palestinian leadership to escalate their own law-and-order operations in the West Bank, according to two Western diplomats and a Palestinian security official familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
U.S. officials also asked Israel to rein in its own raids against the militants to give Palestinian law enforcement time to work, they said. The official Palestinian security forces are funded and trained in part by the United States.
The Biden administration and many of its allies hope the fragile Palestinian government will rule postwar Gaza, although Israel has rejected the idea.
While the authority has international backing, its control at home is widely unpopular and increasingly fragile. Many Palestinians now see the body, which was established after Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the 1990s, as ineffectual and corrupt.
Palestinian militants now hold sway in parts of the northern West Bank where the authority’s control has eroded. Some are affiliated with well-established armed groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, while many others have joined new bands of local fighters who oppose both Israel and the authority.
Israeli officials sometimes point to militancy in the West Bank as evidence that the authority is incapable of running Gaza after the war. Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in 2007 after a short and brutal civil war with the authority’s leaders.
Facing an incoming Trump administration and an emboldened Israeli right-wing government, Mahmoud Abbas, the authority’s president, was likely worried about being sidelined, said Tahani Mustafa, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group.
“Mahmoud Abbas is trying to show that he has everything under control, that they can crack down on resistance,” Ms. Mustafa said.
Israeli troops have seized Palestinian neighborhoods for days at a time, searching for suspected militants as bulldozers chew through roads looking for explosives. The Israeli military says its soldiers were compelled to conduct the deadly raids in order to clamp down on the militants.
The cost for Palestinians has been high. At least 800 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 2023, according to the Palestinian Authority Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between militants and civilians.
Saturday’s raid focused on the Jenin refugee camp, a built-up neighborhood founded decades ago by Palestinian refugees displaced by the wars surrounding the establishment of Israel in 1948.
General Rajab said that Palestinian forces were continuing to make arrests and neutralize explosive devices in an attempt to “regain control of the Jenin camp from lawbreakers who ruin the lives of the citizenry.” He said it was not clear how long the operation would last.
Yazid Jaayseh, a local militant leader, was killed in the raid, General Rajab said. Hamas mourned Mr. Jaayseh as a local militant leader, although it did not claim him as a member. Hamas said the authority’s crackdown was “absolutely identical to Israel’s aggression and criminality.”
Omar Obeid, 62, a resident of Jenin’s refugee camp, said he was huddled at home with family members. Gunfire between Palestinian security forces and the militants began around 5 a.m. and had yet to let up, he said on Saturday afternoon.
“None of this fighting should ever have happened,” Mr. Obeid lamented. “Violence isn’t going to get us anywhere. We need a bigger solution.”
Palestinian forces had already begun to deploy more aggressively in Jenin over the past week, before the operation was announced on Saturday. The heightened operations and clashes with militants have put civilians in the crossfire as well.
On Friday, the authority took responsibility for the killing of Rabhi Shalabi, 19, in Jenin two days after footage circulating on social media showed him being gunned down. Palestinian officials had initially blamed “lawbreakers” for Mr. Shalabi’s death.
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