Israel says West Bank operation will last for a year as it sends tanks to Jenin

Israel has sent tanks to the West Bank city of Jenin, in the first deployment of its kind in the area in more than two decades, as troops intensify operations in the territory that officials said will last at least a year.

The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Sunday that the latest operation across the West Bank was expanding, and that troops would remain in the area’s urban hotspots “for the coming year”, meaning approximately 40,000 people displaced by the fighting will not be able to return to their homes.

The Israel Defense Forces said they were sending tanks to the northern city of Jenin for the first time since the height of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in 2002.

Israel’s latest operation in the West Bank, launched two days after the ceasefire in Gaza came into effect on 19 January, has killed more than 50 people and ripped up roads and infrastructure in the territory’s refugee camps, set up to house Palestinians displaced after the creation of Israel in 1948.

Today the camps resemble urban slums, and have long functioned as bastions of armed resistance to the occupation.

The Israeli army began large-scale operations in the West Bank in the spring of 2022 after a spate of Palestinian attacks against Israelis, and violence there has soared since the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 that ignited the latest war in Gaza.

Tensions in the West Bank have risen further since Thursday night after a series of bus explosions near Tel Aviv that appeared to detonate early, causing no casualties. In a Telegram post, a branch of Hamas’ military wing, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, from the West Bank city of Tulkarem, praised the attacks but stopped short of taking responsibility.

Intensified raids in the West Bank come as the fragile Israel-Hamas truce in Gaza lurches from crisis to crisis.

Hamas released six Israeli hostages on Saturday under the terms of the agreement, but Israel suspended the handover of more than 600 Palestinians it was due to free from its prisons in exchange, putting the five-week-old ceasefire agreement in further jeopardy.

Delayed talks on the second stage of the deal, which is supposed to involve a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, are due to begin this week, but no date has been announced.

On Sunday, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said Israel was prepared to return to hostilities in Gaza “at any moment” and vowed to complete the war’s objectives “whether through negotiation or by other means”.

A senior Hamas official, Mahmoud Mardawi, said: “There will be no dialogue with Israel through the mediators at any stage before the release of the Palestinian prisoners. The mediators must oblige Israel to implement the agreement.”