Palestinian officials reported that Israeli forces killed two Palestinians, one of them a woman, during a raid at a refugee camp in the West Bank on Tuesday in which the IDF said it had “eliminated a terrorist” and arrested 18 terror suspects.
The Israeli operation came amid an unprecedented crackdown by Palestinian Authority security forces on terrorism in the West Bank in which two officers were killed and several more wounded in Jenin on Monday.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, the Palestinians killed by the IDF in the Tulkarem camp on Tuesday were 53-year-old Khawla Ali Abdullah Abdo, who was killed in an airstrike, and 18-year-old Fathi Said Awda Ubaid, who was fatally shot in the chest and abdomen.
Both victims’ bodies were transferred to Thabet Thabet Hospital.
The Palestinian Red Crescent confirmed the deaths, saying its ambulances initially faced challenges accessing the scene due to the violence.
The IDF, which frequently conducts raids in the territory targeting terrorist infrastructure, said in a statement that it had “eliminated a terrorist” in close combat during a raid that began overnight.
Residents of the Tulkarem camp reported that the raid, which began in the early hours of Tuesday, involved bulldozers destroying roads.
It came in parallel with one of the largest crackdowns in recent years by the PA on armed groups that are rampant in the West Bank.
On Monday, Maharan Kadous, a Palestinian police officer, was killed clashing with gunmen in Jenin. Kadous was the second Palestinian security officer to be killed within 24 hours, amid an operation that began about a week ago in response to an incident earlier this month in which terror operatives stole two Palestinian Authority vehicles and paraded them through Jenin.
The PA has a relatively strong presence in the southern and central West Bank, where it can maintain order. But in the northern part of the territory, especially the refugee camps in the Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarem area, it has struggled to exercise authority against terror groups.
The Ramallah-based government’s recent operations against terror groups are also seen as an attempt to demonstrate its capacity to govern the Gaza Strip, where Israel has been battling the Hamas terror group, previously the group’s de facto government, since Hamas attacked Israel last October, triggering the ongoing multifront war.
On Sunday, it was announced that Sahar Farouk Rahil, a PA security officer who served on the PA’s elite “presidential guard,” was killed by gunmen in the Jenin refugee camp.
In a statement following Rahil’s death, the PA Security Services’ spokesman, Col. Anwar Rajab, said, “This crime only strengthens the services’ determination to pursue lawbreakers, to enforce the rule of law, and to ensure the security of the Palestinian people.”
On Monday, the Jenin Battalion of the Islamic Jihad terror group published — then took down and denied ever having published — a video of four operatives wearing suicide vests warning Palestinian security officers that if they entered the refugee camp the operatives were “ready to blow ourselves up.”
Separately, images circulated online Monday that appeared to show Palestinian security officers holding RPGs, a weapon not supposed to exist in the services’ arsenal.
According to preliminary reports, the PA forces are believed to have seized the RPGs from Islamic Jihad operatives during the operation, and are not known to have used them, according to Channel 12.
Last week, Palestinian security services arrested some 110 terror operatives, seized 100 explosives, and neutralized eight car bombs, according to Channel 12. Meanwhile, some 32 gunmen have been wounded so far, and two killed, the network reported.
Sheikh Mohammad Salah, head mufti of the Palestinian Security Services, said of the deaths, “We don’t want a second Gaza in Jenin. Better that thousands of us die, as long as they don’t destroy Jenin and Palestine,” referring to the destruction in the coastal enclave as a result of Israel’s campaign there, according to Channel 12.
Responding to the images of the RPGs, however, Yossi Dagan, who heads the Samaria Regional Council in the northern West Bank, called for an Israeli ground operation in the area, “to avoid an October 7 [style attack] in northern Samaria — which from there would advance to the cities of the center.”
“The barbarians of Hamas and of Fatah are not deterred,” he said, referring to the Ramallah-based PA’s governing party. “They want, to exactly the same extent [as before the war], to murder Jews.”
Dagan elided any distinction between the Ramallah-based PA, which is fighting Hamas in the West Bank and looking to replace it in Gaza, and the terror group itself, which led the October 7 attack.
“The growth of terrorist infrastructure in northern Samaria is a direct result of the uprooting of the communities of northern Samaria,” Dagan added, presumably referring to Israeli settler outposts that have been forcibly removed by the government.