Israel Military Launches Largest Attacks on West Bank in Nearly 20 Years Transcript

Welcome to the News Hour. Months of clashes between Israel and Palestinian militants have come to a head in the occupied West Bank. The heaviest fighting in years raged all day in Jenin, leaving at least eight Palestinians dead and dozens wounded.

Today, gunshots echoing through the Jenin refugee camp. Smoke billowing into the sky. The Israel Defense Forces launched their largest West Bank operation in two decades, since the second intifada, or uprising, in the early 2000s.

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There were strikes and bombs. They’re attacking unarmed people. They’re using planes and rockets. This is not supposed to happen in the camp.

Israeli drones struck targets from overhead, and hundreds of IDF soldiers engaged in gun battles with Palestinian militants. The Israeli Foreign Minister says the targets are militants supported by Iran.

We are striking the terrorism hub with a great strength. I want to emphasize that we don’t have a fight with the Palestinians. Actually, our fight is with the proxies of Iran.

While the Palestinian Prime Minister says civilians have been targeted.

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Israel this morning committed a new crime in Jenin refugee camp. There are dozens of injured people. And the Israeli forces have destroyed the infrastructure and properties of innocent residents.

Palestinians emerged to find roads destroyed by Israeli bulldozers. Jenin officials say the town’s water supply was disrupted. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave no timeline on the military action.

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We will continue this operation as long as required to restore calm and security to the people of Israel.

It’s the latest in a wave of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Last month, the IDF raided the same refugee camp, killing five. The next day, Palestinian attackers gunned down four Israelis near a West Bank settlement. This year has been one of the conflict’s deadliest in decades. More than 130 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, and Palestinian attacks have killed 24 Israelis.

The recent surge in violence in the West Bank raises further concerns about a renewed Palestinian uprising against Israel’s occupation, its settlers and the right wing Israeli government. Watching it all from Jerusalem is Josef Federman, the News Director for Israel and the Palestinian Territories for the Associated Press. Welcome, and thanks for joining us. As you saw in our report there, how this latest round of violence began some of the heaviest we’ve seen in a while. What’s the latest on the ground tonight? Does that violence continue?

The violence is indeed continuing. The Israeli military launched this operation almost 24 hours ago. It’s almost midnight where I am, and they launched it just after midnight last night. They began with an airstrike. They quickly moved in hundreds, perhaps thousands of troops, and the fighting has been going on all day and throughout the night.

And is there any sense of when or how it will end?

No. That’s one of the mysteries of this operation. We’ve been pressing the military for answers on that very question, and they’re quite evasive. They say that they’re going in after what they call terror infrastructure, they’re going after weapons facilities, storage facilities and so forth. But they have not said how long they expect this to last or even what the goals are that will enable them to pull out.

Josef, as we noted there, these kinds of air strikes in the occupied West Bank, they are very rare. We haven’t seen these for years. Do you have any insight from your sources as to why the Israeli military chose to use this approach right now?

It seems that this goes back a couple of weeks. What’s been going on for the past year and a half is that Israel has been carrying out raids in places like Jenin and elsewhere, usually with ground forces. Roughly two weeks ago, the army moved into Jenin and they hit roadside explosives. Much more powerful than anything they had seen in recent memory. It ended up paralyzing some vehicles and there was a very lengthy extraction process that required helicopter, gunships and so forth. So because of that, they have now moved over toward using aerial force. It’s safer, it gives them a set of eyes in the sky, and they can do things that don’t require ground forces, that would put ground forces in danger.

In response to this latest Israeli operation, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said he is suspending contact and security coordination with Israel. Josef, what does that mean for what could unfold on the ground? How does that change things?

It’s really mostly symbolic at this point because relations with Israel’s government, Israel’s now led by a very far right government that’s quite hostile toward the Palestinians. There’s almost no dialogue, no relations. So it’s a very cold relationship to begin with, but he is scaling back what limited contact there is. And the most important contact is very limited security coordination to prevent this type of fighting from spinning out of control. So if they really do cut off those ties, that does raise the risk of fighting spreading even further.

When you take a step back, as you noted, Israel now has a very far right government. They just recently announced plans for thousands of new settlements in the West Bank. From your reporting and experience there, what do you think the impact of those settlements will be? Could they further fuel violence?

They could. They’re one of many factors. Like I said, there’s a lot of bad blood to begin with. This violence has been going on for the past year and a half, but the arrival of this new government, which is led by settlers, which is pushing for more settlement construction, it’s pushing for a harder military response when there is Palestinian violence. So when you put all of this together, and when the Palestinians see more settlements being built, more land being gobbled up, the land that they hope to use for their own independent state in the future, when you put all of this together, it’s a recipe for continued friction.

Josef, many of the images we see today are reminiscent of that second intifada 20 years ago. Are there any concerns on the ground about a third intifada, that the violence could continue to grow and spread?

People ask this question all the time. It’s really hard. I try to avoid labeling what’s going on here as another intifada, but there’s definitely something going on. There are some similarities. You talked about the images when you see military bulldozers and airstrikes and huge numbers of troops pouring into a Palestinian city. There are certainly memories of the second intifada, but there are also differences. The scale of fighting is much lower than it was before. The militants who are involved are slightly different, they’re less organized as opposed to what we saw 20 years ago. And even the type of fighting, the type of attacks by the Palestinians are a little bit different. So to call it a third uprising, I don’t know if I’d go that far, but there is definitely something underway. We’ve been seeing fighting going on for nearly a year and a half, and it only seems to be getting worse.

That is Josef Federman, News Director for Israel and the Palestinian Territories for the Associated Press joining us tonight from Jerusalem. Josef, thank you.