Jenin has long embodied militant Palestinian resistance in the West Bank — to both the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian Authority — providing fertile ground for armed groups. Conflict there intensified sharply during the war in Gaza, when local officials say more than 800 Palestinians were killed in West Bank clashes with Israeli forces and settlers.
Israel mounted a 10-day raid into the West Bank in August and September that demolished homes, shops and roads, and killed 39 people — most of them in Jenin — according to Palestinian officials. And last month, Palestinian security forces launched an assault of their own in Jenin against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Now Israeli soldiers are back in Jenin, but this time appears to be different.
Israel’s latest war with Hezbollah in Lebanon ended eight weeks ago, its 15-month war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip reached a cease-fire on Sunday, and some Israeli units have withdrawn from both war zones. That leaves the military free to concentrate on the West Bank, and its leaders say they are determined to do so.
On Monday, Israel Katz, Israel’s defense minister, told military commanders, “The battle against Palestinian terrorism in the West Bank is now at the top of the military’s and Israel’s priorities,” according to a statement from his office.
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, made clear on Wednesday that the West Bank offensive — which Palestinian officials said had killed 10 people so far and wounded more than 40 — would continue for days at least. That reflects the lessons Israel has drawn from the brutal Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed about 1,200 people and touched off the war in Gaza.
“We have to learn from Oct. 7, and not let terror groups regroup and rearm and plan terror attacks from a few hundred meters from us,” Colonel Shoshani said.
The remarkable parallel offensives in Jenin by Israel and the Palestinian Authority illustrate that both see a threat in the city and its status as a haven for militants. The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank but has not held elections since 2006, has grown deeply unpopular, seen by many Palestinians as a corrupt collaborator with an occupying enemy, while the appeal of armed groups has grown.
Jenin, a city of about 50,000 people in the northern West Bank, has been a center of resistance for generations, first to British rule and then to Israeli forces in the war following Israel’s creation in 1948. It was the site of one of original camps for Palestinian refugees from Israel, which has since been built up into apartment blocks and shops, often of substandard construction.
During the second intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation, in the early 2000s, the area of the Jenin refugee camp was home to many of the suicide bombers who attacked Israel, and it was the scene of that conflict’s biggest battle, which killed dozens. The United Nations says the community has the highest rates of unemployment and poverty in the West Bank.
The current Israeli incursion into the West Bank began on Tuesday, as Israel launched a spate of raids and airstrikes, as well as security checkpoint crackdowns.
“The situation is very difficult,” Muhammad al-Masri, a resident and former member of the local committee that administers Jenin’s refugee camp, said in an interview on Wednesday. He said his family had fled their home when the Israeli raid began, because “there’s no water or electricity.”
Mr. al-Masri said that Israeli forces had divided parts of Jenin into blocks, and began ordering people in several of them to evacuate while the men were detained. The city’s mayor, Mohammad Jarar, also said people in some areas had been ordered from their homes.
Colonel Shoshani denied the claim. “There’s no evacuation order in Jenin,” he said.
The latest rash of violence in Jenin coincides with the inauguration on Monday of President Trump, who many Israelis expect will offer less resistance to its uses of force than did his predecessor, Joe Biden.
Israel describes the raids as a counterterrorism operation, and they have reached beyond Jenin and into other towns and villages across the West Bank. Palestinians and some rights groups have described such operations as unlawful collective punishment against the population that causes indiscriminate destruction and civilian casualties.
On Wednesday, the Palestinian Authority’s commission of prisoners’ affairs said that Israeli forces had arrested at least 25 Palestinians across the West Bank since Tuesday evening. The Israeli military would not confirm the figure, citing concerns that numbers were likely to change.
At a checkpoint outside Hebron, a 45-year-old woman died while waiting to be cleared through on her way to the hospital on Tuesday night, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Enhanced security at Israeli checkpoints has brought traffic to a standstill in many places.
In Jenin, Mayor Jarar told the Palestinian news agency Wafa that Israeli forces had held as many as 600 people overnight at the Jenin Governmental Hospital, but that they were allowed to leave Wednesday morning. The news agency described Israeli bulldozers blocking the hospital’s doors with dirt from nearby streets.
Mahmoud al-Saadi, the head of the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Jenin, said that patients who had been evacuated were led to a checkpoint to be searched and that their identification cards were checked before they were allowed to pass. Some people were detained there, Mr. al-Saadi said.
Another Red Crescent official, Nebal Farsakh, said that Israeli forces continued on Wednesday “to impose a tight siege” that has stopped ambulances from reaching wounded people. A day earlier, she said, the Israeli military fired warning shots at ambulances.
Briefing reporters about the offensive, Colonel Shoshani said people at the hospital had been held temporarily to ensure they were not hurt by explosives that the military was detonating nearby. He said the raids aimed to curb militant attacks, many of which involved improvised explosives that had been planted on civilian streets and under Israeli military vehicles.
“Our strategy is to fight those terrorists while we enable the civilian population to go on with their lives,” Colonel Shoshani said.
Colonel Shoshani said the offensive would be similar in scope to one the military carried out last summer. That 10-day action, one of the most extensive and deadly raids in the West Bank in years, killed 21 people in Jenin, according to Palestinian officials.
In series of social media posts on Wednesday, Roland Friedrich, the West Bank director of the primary United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, said the Israeli operation was “expected to last days” and was using advanced weapons on Jenin.
At the same time, the Jenin battalion of the Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an armed group loosely affiliated with Fatah, the political faction that controls the Palestinian Authority, said in a statement on social media that its fighters were engaged in “fierce clashes” with Israeli forces in several areas of Jenin and had detonated explosive devices.
Jenin residents offered a bleak outlook.
Marah Salama, a 45-year-old mother of three, on Wednesday said Israeli forces had detained her 15-year-old nephew and marched residents through checkpoints with hands in the air and faces visible, likely to be photographed.
“The situation was terrifying, truly terrifying,” she said.
