The move comes amid an escalating Israeli major assault across several northern West Bank cities, particularly targeting Palestinian refugee camps for the 34th consecutive day.
According to Israel's Channel 14, citing anonymous sources, the political leadership is "pressuring for the inclusion of tanks in the ongoing military operation in the northern West Bank."
The tanks "could soon participate in the military operation," the sources further indicated.
The sources noted that the army does not rule out using the air force again if developments warrant it.
Expanding military assault
The occupation forces expanded their assault in the West Bank on Sunday to include the town of Qabatiya, south of Jenin, and they simultaneously detained six Palestinians from the city of Nablus.
On 21 January, Israel launched a major army attack, dubbed the "Iron Wall," in the occupied West Bank, killing at least 60 Palestinians and displacing thousands from their homes.
Local sources reported that Israeli forces, accompanied by military bulldozers, stormed Qabatiya, demolishing streets and damaging infrastructure, particularly around Jerusalem Square, according to Al Jazeera.
The occupation forces imposed a curfew in the town until Monday morning, with snipers deployed on rooftops.
Troops raided multiple buildings and homes, conducting searches and interrogating residents. They also sealed off Martyrs' Square at the town’s entrance and blocked part of the Jenin-Nablus road, as reported by Al Jazeera.
The assault on Jenin continued for over a month, killing 27 Palestinians, detaining dozens, and forcibly displacing thousands.
The attack also caused unprecedented destruction of homes, properties, and infrastructure in Jenin and its refugee camp.
In Nablus, security and local sources reported that Israeli forces raided several neighbourhoods in the western part of the city.
They searched multiple vehicles along Tunis Street, stormed a house at the Zawata junction in the west, ransacked its contents, and arrested young man Raed Sunobar.
Moreover, the Israeli forces continued their assault on the city of Tulkarm and its refugee camp for the 28th consecutive day and on Nur Shams camp for the 15th day, amid military reinforcements, WAFA news agency reported.
The Israeli troops raided empty homes, vandalized their contents, and turned them into military outposts with snipers stationed inside. The area echoed with heavy live gunfire, WAFA said.
Memories and scenes from Nakba repeated
According to the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency UNRWA, the Israeli current assault on the West Bank has forced more than 40,100 Palestinians to flee their homes.
“This is unprecedented. When you add to this the destruction of infrastructure, we’re reaching a point where the camps are becoming uninhabitable," said Roland Friedrich, director of West Bank affairs for the UNRWA.
Humanitarian officials say they have not seen such displacement in the West Bank since the 1967 war. At that time, Israel occupied the Palestinian territory west of the Jordan River, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, forcing the displacement of another 300,000 Palestinians, according to AP.
Unlike past operations, Israeli forces pushed deeper and more forcefully into several towns of the West Bank, scattering families and stirring bitter memories of the 1948 Nakba.
During the 1948 war, 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes by armed Zionist pogroms. That Nakba, or “catastrophe,” gave rise to the crowded West Bank towns now under assault and still known as refugee camps.
“This is our Nakba,” said Abed Sabagh, 53, who bundled his seven children into a car on 9 February as sound bombs blared in Nur Shams camp, where he was born to parents who fled the 1948 war.
Tension has been running high across the occupied West Bank, where at least 923 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 7,000 wounded in attacks by the Israeli army and settlers since the start of the genocide against besieged Gaza on 7 October 2023, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
The International Court of Justice declared in July that Israel’s long-standing occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal, demanding the evacuation of all colonial settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
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