
Israeli military armoured vehicles including a bulldozer block a road during a raid in the al-Faraa camp for Palestinian refugees near Tubas city in the occupied West Bank on August 28, 2024. AFP
“We need to deal with the [terror] threat exactly as we deal with terror infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian civilians and any other step needed,” he said on X . “This is a war in every sense.”
Katz claimed Israeli forces operating in Jenin, Tulkarem and other areas are working to dismantle an Iranian-backed terror network being built up in the West Bank.
“Iran is working to establish a terror front against Israel in the West Bank, according to the model it used in Lebanon and Gaza, by funding and arming terrorists and smuggling advanced weapons from Jordan,” he claimed.
The Israeli army targeted four cities-- Jenin, Nablus, Tubas and Tulkarem-- in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, launching a major new assault alongside its 10-month-old war on Gaza.
The assault, which involved air strikes, ground forces and bulldozers, killed at least 10 Palestinians , the Palestinian Red Crescent said.
They included two Palestinians killed in Jenin, four in a strike on a car in a nearby village and four more in a refugee camp near Tubas, said its spokesman, Ahmed Jibril.
Fifteen others were wounded, he said.
The latest operation comes two days after Israel said it carried out an air strike on the West Bank that the Palestinian Authority reported killed five people.
Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian resistance movement allied with Hamas, issued a statement early Wednesday denouncing an "open war" by Israel.
"With this aggression, which aims to transfer the weight of the conflict to the occupied West Bank, the occupier wants to impose a new state of affairs on the ground to annex the West Bank," the statement said.
Hamas, whose popularity has soared in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, late Tuesday reiterated its call for Palestinians in the territory to "rise up".
Its statement came in response to comments by far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who said this week he would build a synagogue at Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound if he could.
Ben Gvir, a settler himself, has openly called for the occupation of the West Bank.
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