Israel has sent more than 1,000 troops into the Palestinian city of Jenin in an effort to root out the terrorist infrastructure there, in the largest operation in the city since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002.
The Times of Israel reported Monday:
Israeli military forces launched a major operation in the West Bank city of Jenin early Monday morning focused on the city’s restive refugee camp, with airstrikes carried out against multiple targets.
A senior government official said that “the goal of this extensive operation is to end Jenin’s role as a ‘city of refuge’ for terror, and it will last as long as it needs to.”
The campaign appeared to be the largest in the West Bank in years, and came as tensions were sky-high following a series of deadly terror attacks carried out by Palestinians from the Jenin area.
Last month, as Breitbart News reported, seven Israeli soldiers were wounded in Jenin when they were attacked as they arrived to arrest a terror suspect. They returned fire, killing five Palestinians.
In 2002, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield in response to a string of Palestinian suicide bombings, including one that killed 29 Israeli civilians at a Passover meal. After a fierce fight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian terrorists in Jenin’s so-called “refugee camp” — an area where Palestinians who fled fighting in 1948 have lived for several generations — Palestinians claimed Israel had carried out a “massacre” of civilians there.
In fact, there were about 50 Palestinian casualties, most of them combatants. The false claim was repeated on international media networks, including CNN, before being reejected by a United Nations investigation.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.