Israel kills Palestinian gunmen in extended West Bank campaign

Israel’s army said it killed five gunmen at their hideout in a West Bank mosque, adding to the death toll from an unusually large military operation in the Palestinian territory.

The campaign that kicked off with a series of attacks in northernly West Bank towns on Wednesday has been mounted in parallel to the almost 11-month-old war with Hamas in Gaza, raising concerns internationally about the spread of violence.

“The Israeli major military operation in the occupied West Bank must not constitute the premises of a war extension from Gaza,” Josep Borrell, the top E.U. diplomat, said on X.

He was responding to Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz, who said some West Bank operations could require the evacuation of Palestinian civilians. The military actions are in response to an Iranian effort to “establish an eastern terror front” by funding and smuggling arms to militants, he said. Iran is in favor of arming the West Bank, according to the website of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

Israel has already ordered hundreds of thousands of people to leave their homes to make way for military operations in Gaza, another Palestinian territory, many of whom remain displaced as their homes have been destroyed.

While standing by its ally Israel in the campaign against Hamas, the U.S. has sought to rein in the practice of Israeli settlement in the West Bank, which is partly controlled by the internationally-recognized Palestinian Authority. On Wednesday, the State Department announced new sanctions related to violence by settlers that forced some Palestinians off their land.

The U.S. measures angered Israel’s religious-nationalist government, which leans on settler support.

“Israel views with utmost severity the imposition of sanctions on citizens of Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, adding that a “pointed discussion with the U.S.” is under way.

The U.S. misgivings were echoed in Berlin, where a spokesperson for Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he had spoken to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi about the issue. The two leaders are “united in their rejection of illegal settlement construction and their clear condemnation of extremist settler violence and any attempt to expel people from the Palestinian territories,” the spokesperson said.

Israel regards the West Bank as a security bulwark as well as the Jewish biblical heartland. Having been blindsided by the deadly Oct. 7 invasion by Hamas militants that triggered the Gaza war, Israelis worry that Iran-backed fighters are similarly building up capabilities in the West Bank for future attacks. The territory is close to the greater Tel Aviv area.

Cross-border standoff

Meanwhile, Israel remains in a tense standoff with Lebanon-based Hezbollah, the most powerful of Iran’s allied militia groups. Near daily cross-border exchanges of fire have driven out tens of thousands of civilians on both sides, and on Sunday a wide-scale Israeli bombing sortie to take out Hezbollah rocket launchers threatened to escalate the situation.

“It is not the end of the story,” Netanyahu told troops on the Lebanese border on Wednesday. “When will that be? Only when we are able to restore security and the residents to their homes.”

As the Gaza and Lebanon fighting has ground on, the West Bank has seen a steady increase in Israeli raids on Palestinian towns.

The latest began early on Wednesday, with a focus on Jenin, Tubas and Tulkarm, which are close to the northern boundary with Israel. The Palestinian health ministry said 12 Palestinians were killed and 22 wounded, with Israeli forces remaining in Jenin and Tulkarm, though they had withdrawn from Tubas.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa told all local authorities to “strengthen their emergency interventions to confront the ongoing aggression,” according to a statement.

In Tulkarm, troops killed five Palestinian gunmen, one of them a local commander named Muhhamad Jaber, in a clash at a mosque where they had been hiding, the military said Thursday. The Palestinian health ministry tally did not immediately include those five fatalities.

One Israeli soldier was wounded in the exchange of fire, the military added.

The Palestinian Health Ministry says more than 650 West Bank Palestinians had been killed since October and 5,400 injured before this week’s operation. Movement restrictions have further exacerbated problems in the territory, limiting access to essential health services.

The economic situation in the West Bank has deteriorated dramatically since last October. More than 178,000 Palestinian workers have lost their jobs after being banned from entering Israel for security reasons. Many of them worked on Israeli construction sites.