Israel’s West Bank assault live: Attacks ‘fuelling explosive situation’

Our colleague from Al Jazeera Arabic, Laith Ja’arm, has an update from Tulkarem:

• Israeli forces are still besieging the camp from all sides, conducting extensive search operations in civilian houses.
• According to local sources from inside Nur Shams refugee camp, specifically from the al-Manshiyya neighbourhood, five houses have been burning, injuring dozens of people.
• Israeli forces prevented rescue teams and the Palestinian Red Crescent from entering the camp to put out the fires and evacuate the injured.
• The Israeli army claims that the fires were caused by explosive devices inside houses it had targeted.

  In case you are just joining us

  Let’s bring you up to speed with the latest developments from the occupied West Bank:

  • The Israeli military says its forces killed the commander of the Tulkarem Battalion, Mohamed Jaber, also known as Abu Shuja’a, and four other Palestinian fighters in a firefight in the Nur Shams refugee camp.
  • Palestinian Islamic Jihad has confirmed that the commander of its armed wing has been killed in the Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem.
  • The US has sanctioned an Israeli NGO known as Hashomer Yosh – a group that funded in part by the Israeli government and that is affiliated with far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
  • Ireland’s foreign minister calls for a revision of the so-called Association Agreement which regulates ties between the EU and Israel as “it is clear to us that international humanitarian law has been broken”.

  Prisoners watchdogs say 25 arrested in a day

  Israeli forces have detained 25 Palestinians in the past 24 hours, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society and the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs.

  The arrests were carried out in the north of the occupied West Bank.

  Palestinians face ‘unlawful killings’ in West Bank: Amnesty

  Israeli forces have followed their “escalation in unlawful killings” in the occupied West Bank with a major military assault on the Palestinian territory that puts “more Palestinians at risk”, Amnesty International said.

  Describing an already “horrifying spike in lethal force” against Palestinians by Israeli soldiers and armed settlers, Amnesty said the new military operation will result “in further loss of Palestinian lives” as well as “an increase in forced displacement, destruction of critical infrastructure and measures of collective punishment”.

  “Amid alarming reports that Israeli forces have encircled and blocked off access to hospitals, Amnesty International urges the Israeli authorities to take action to safeguard health facilities and personnel,” Amnesty’s Erika Guevara Rosas said in a statement.

  “As the occupying power, Israel has a clear obligation to protect Palestinians, their homes and the infrastructure throughout the occupied Palestinian territory,” Guevara Rosas said.

  Father of killed commander Abu Shuja’a said he ‘dedicated his life to defending homeland’

  Samer Jaber, the father of Mohamed Jaber, the commander of the Tulkarem Battalion who was killed by Israeli forces, says he welcomed the “martyrdom of our son”.

  In an interview with Al Jazeera Arabic’s presenter Fida Bassil, Jaber said that despite numerous arrests and four previous assassination attempts his son, also known as Abu Shuja’a, remained steadfast in his mission to defend Palestine.

  “We congratulate the Arab and Islamic nations, as well as the heroes of Gaza,” Jaber said. “From the age of 17, he was deeply passionate about our nation and land, dreaming of a free Palestine. He dedicated his life to defending his homeland.”

  Abu Shuja’a, 26, had previously spent five years in Israeli prisons.

  Israel’s West Bank operation must not go ‘down the path’ of Gaza

  More from Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and visiting professor at Princeton University, who spoke to Al Jazeera earlier about Israel’s major incursion into the occupied West Bank

  “The last thing that we want is this kind of massive displacement taking place in the West Bank, too,” Roth told Al Jazeera.

  “Frankly, ‘the dream’ of the far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s government is to ‘solve the problem’ of the West Bank. ‘Solve the problem’ of the apartheid regime that Israel is maintaining there, by just getting rid of the Palestinians,” Roth said.

  “That would be a massive war crime. But this is what certain members of the Netanyahu government – whose votes in the Knesset Netanyahu needs to stay in power – this is what they talk about,” he said.

  “This is an urgent reason to nip this in the bud and not to let this continue down the path that we have seen in Gaza,” he added.

  Situation in the West Bank is continuation of war against Palestinian people

  Adel Abdel Ghafar, the director of the foreign policy and security programme at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, says the situation in the West Bank is “troubling” as it highlights a potential expansion of the Israel-Gaza conflict into the West Bank.

  “I think the Israelis here are pursuing two objectives. First of all, their stated objective is to go after the militants in the West Bank,” he told Al Jazeera. “But more widely, really, this is the continuation of the war against the Palestinian people and the potential expansion of the settlement.”

  Ghafar added that increased settler violence and the increasingly harsh rhetoric of the Netanyahu government all point in that direction.

  “This is really part and parcel of the collective punishment of Palestinian people. We’ve seen 40,000 dead, destruction of the civilian infrastructure, the return of polio, the use of starvation as a weapon of war.”