Israel ‘on offensive’ after Tel Aviv attacks, launches W.Bank raids

Israeli police raided the volatile West Bank district of Jenin again on Sunday, a stronghold of Palestinian terrorist groups and the home of gunmen who carried out two recent deadly attacks.

Gunfights rocked the Jenin area for a second day on Sunday, as Israel laid to rest three recent shooting fatalities. According to the Palestinian health ministry, ten individuals were wounded in skirmishes across the West Bank on Sunday.

“The State of Israel has gone on the offensive,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said after a cabinet meeting, vowing to “settle accounts with everyone who was linked, either directly or indirectly, to the attacks”.

Israeli troops on Sunday detained 20 Palestinians, a military source said.

The operation came after a gunman from Jenin went on a shooting rampage in a Tel Aviv nightlife area Thursday, killing three Israelis and wounding more than a dozen others — the latest in a spate of bloody attacks in Israel.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad welcomed the Tel Aviv attack, which was condemned by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

“This is a difficult day,” Bennett said Sunday, “the day on which the three people who were murdered in the Tel Aviv terrorist attack are brought to rest.”

– Palestinian woman killed –
Elsewhere in the West Bank, near the southern city of Bethlehem, Israeli troops on Sunday shot dead a Palestinian woman who had approached them and failed to stop after they had fired warning shots, the military said.

The woman — a widowed mother of six in her 40s named by the Palestinian news agency Wafa as Ghada Ibrahim Sabatien — died after suffering massive blood loss from a torn artery, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The militant Islamic Jihad movement condemned her killing in Bethlehem as an “execution in broad daylight”.

But the centre of the heightened tensions was the Jenin area where, the Israeli military source told AFP, Palestinian militants shot from passing vehicles at Israeli soldiers, who responded with live fire.

A total of 20 “wanted individuals” suspected of involvement in “terrorist activities” were apprehended, the source said, while the Palestinian Prisoners Club announced 24 arrests across the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 Six Day War.

The Israeli military source said forces had located stolen Israeli army ammunition and uniforms in the residence of one of the suspects, and an explosive device in another home.

No Israeli forces were reported injured, while the Palestinian health ministry said at least 10 Palestinians were wounded in clashes in Jenin, as well as in Jericho and Tulkarem.

– ‘No limits’ –
Tensions have surged during Ramadan, after violence flared during the Muslim holy month last year leading to 11 days of devastating conflict between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

In recent weeks, Israel has been stunned by a string of attacks, some carried out by assailants linked to or inspired by the Islamic State group.

A total of 14 people have been killed in four attacks in Israel since March 22, including another shooting spree on March 29 in Bnei Brak, an Orthodox Jewish city near Tel Aviv, also carried out by a Palestinian attacker from Jenin.

Over the same period, at least 11 Palestinians have been killed, including assailants, according to a count by AFP.

Following Thursday’s attack, Bennett gave security agencies “full freedom” to end the deadly violence, warning that “there are not and will not be limits for this war”.

“We will do whatever it takes, whatever is necessary, for however long and wherever needed, until both safety and the sense of security are restored,” army chief Aviv Kochavi told soldiers in a video released by the military.

Three more Palestinians related to an anti-Israeli attack were slain by the army last week in the Jenin refugee camp, which is a bastion of armed organizations.

Thousands of Israelis gathered on Sunday to bury the victims of the Tel Aviv killings that occurred on Thursday.

Tomer Morad, 27, was remembered by mourners in Kfar Saba, as his girlfriend, Ariel Weinblat talked of her lost love.

“You came to me yesterday in a dream and said it’s all a joke,” she said in her eulogy. “I believed it. And then I woke up. I love you so much my heart is bleeding.”

Eytam Magini, 27 and Barak Lufan, 35, were to be buried the same day.