By Raneen Sawafta and James Mackenzie
JENIN, West Bank/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel sent tanks into the occupied West Bank for the first time in more than 20 years on Sunday as it ordered the military to prepare for an “extended stay” to fight Palestinian militant groups in the area’s refugee camps.
The move came as a fragile ceasefire in Gaza hit new hurdles after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a stop to the release of Palestinian prisoners and detainees due to be freed under the truce, in retaliation for public displays of Israeli hostages handed over in exchange in Gaza.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have already been displaced from their homes in the West Bank over the past month as the military has moved into the crowded refugee camps of flashpoint cities like Jenin and Tulkarm, cracking down on Iranian-backed groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The camps, housing descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the birth of the state of Israel, have been strongholds of the militant groups for decades.
Defence Minister Israel Katz said around 40,000 Palestinians had been moved from the camps which he said were now empty.
Netanyahu ordered the military to pick up the intensity of operations after a series of explosions on buses in transport depots close to Tel Aviv on Thursday. The blasts caused no casualties but revived memories of the suicide bombings on public transport that killed hundreds of Israelis during the Palestinian uprising, or Intifada, two decades ago.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the decision to deploy tanks in the northern West Bank.
“This is a dangerous Israeli escalation that will not lead to stability or calm,” he said.
The military said it had arrested 26 militants and confiscated three guns and additional weapons as it continued operations in the Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams refugee camps and extended them into Nablus, Qabatiya and Deir Qaddis in the south.
Troops have demolished houses and vital infrastructure, including digging up roads and disrupting power and water supplies and on Sunday, Israeli battle tanks could be seen moving into the West Bank from Israel towards Jenin.
Hamas, which has fought Israeli troops for more than a year in its Gaza stronghold since attacking communities in southern Israel on Oct 7, 2023, said sending tanks showed the threats faced by Israeli troops from militant fighters in the camps.
TANKS IN JENIN
With fighting in Gaza paused during the 42-day ceasefire and a related war against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in southern Lebanon also halted, Israeli attention has switched increasingly to the West Bank.
While Israeli troops have been constantly active in the West Bank, the use of heavy tanks in addition to armoured personnel carriers underscores how intensely the military is trying to pressure the militant groups, which have long received weapons and financial support from Iran.
“For the first time in decades in Judea and Samaria, we sent in tanks,” Katz said on Sunday, using the Biblical names employed in Israel for the West Bank. “This means one thing, we are fighting terrorism by all means and anywhere”.
Hundreds of Palestinian fighters and civilians have been killed by the Israeli military in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war while dozens of Israelis have been killed in attacks by Palestinians. But the violence has not yet reached the levels seen in the Second Intifada, when Palestinian Authority forces joined fighting against the Israeli military.
The West Bank, seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, is seen by Palestinians as the core of a future Palestinian state, along with Gaza, but there have been increasingly open calls by Israeli hardliners for its annexation.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who stunned the region with a call for Palestinians to be moved out of Gaza to make way for a U.S. development project, has not yet said whether he would support full annexation.
However his call in Gaza has already awakened fears among Palestinians of a second “Nakba” or catastrophe, the name given to the loss of many of their lands in the 1948 war.
Israel has already taken steps to undermine the refugee camps by forcing the main UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, to close its headquarters in east Jerusalem. On Sunday, Katz said the agency, which Israel accuses of supporting militant groups, had been told to halt activity in the camps.
There was no immediate comment from the agency, which rejects the Israeli accusations.
(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah, Emily Rose and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Clauda Tanios in Dubai and Muhammad Al Gebaly in Cairo;Editing by Helen Popper, William Maclean)
