Israeli troops leave West Bank’s Jenin with Gaza talks deadlocked

Israeli forces appeared to be winding down a deadly 10-day raid in a flashpoint city in the occupied West Bank on Friday, as key ally Germany warned against treating the territory like Gaza.

There was no official confirmation from the Israeli military that it had withdrawn from Jenin, a bastion of Palestinian armed groups, but AFP journalists reported residents returning to the city following the fighting.

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The reported pull-out came with Israel at loggerheads with its main ally the United States over talks aimed at forging a truce in the Gaza war, now nearly in its 12th month.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged both Israel and Hamas to finalise a truce deal, saying: “I think based on what I’ve seen, 90 percent is agreed.”

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied this in an interview with Fox News, saying: “It’s not close.”

Washington, along with fellow mediators in the talks Qatar and Egypt, has been pushing a proposal to bridge gaps between both sides which trade blame for the failure to reach a deal.

Netanyahu insists on an Israeli military presence on the border between Gaza and Egypt along the so-called Philadelphi Corridor.

Hamas is demanding a complete Israeli withdrawal, saying it agreed months ago to a truce agreement outlined by US President Joe Biden.

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– ‘No solution’ –

In Israel on Friday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that “a purely military approach is no solution to the situation in Gaza”, referring to the recovery of six more dead hostages announced on Sunday.

She also warned against calls by hardline right-wing members of Israel’s cabinet for the military to take a similar approach to the West Bank as in Gaza.

“When members of the Israeli government themselves call for the same approach in the West Bank as in Gaza, that is precisely what acutely endangers Israel’s security,” Baerbock told reporters.

Her Israeli counterpart Israel Katz said Iran wanted to “arm” the West Bank “just like” Gaza.

“Nobody wants a deal for the hostages’ release and a ceasefire more than Israel”, he added and blamed Hamas for the impasse in talks.

The October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians including some hostages killed in captivity, according to official Israeli figures.

Of 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the attack, 97 remain in Gaza including 33 the Israeli military says are dead. Scores were released during a one-week truce in November.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has so far killed at least 40,878 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Most of the dead are women and children, according to the UN rights office.

Netanyahu is under increasing pressure both internationally and domestically, with Israelis enraged and grief-stricken after the bodies of the six hostages were retrieved from Gaza.

He said they were “executed” with a bullet “to the head”.

At Israeli protests in several cities, the premier’s critics have blamed him for hostages’ deaths, saying he has refused to make necessary concessions for striking a ceasefire deal.

In addition to the Gaza war, Israel also faces increased anger from Palestinians in the West Bank, a territory it occupied in 1967.

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– Roads churned up –

The military launched coordinated raids across the northern West Bank on August 28 with soldiers supported by armoured vehicles and bulldozers.

There was no immediate confirmation from the military of the end of what it said on Friday was “counterterrorism activity in the area of Jenin”.

Palestinian health ministry figures put the death toll for the Israeli incursion at 36.

Many homes in Jenin camp were damaged or destroyed by Israeli bulldozers which also churned up road surfaces.

On Friday, after the pull-out, Jenin residents used bulldozers of their own to begin clearing the rubble.

One resident told AFP he returned to his family home of 20 years to find it had been raided by soldiers.

“Thank God (the children) left the day before. They went to stay with our neighbours here,” said Aziz Taleb, a 48-year-old father of seven.

“If they had stayed, they would have been killed without warning or anything.”

During the Jenin operation, Israeli forces killed 14 militants, arrested 30 suspects, dismantled “approximately 30 explosives planted under roads” and conducted four aerial strikes, the Israeli military statement said.

One soldier was killed in Jenin, where most of the Palestinian fatalities occurred.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have said at least 14 of the dead were militants.

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– Polio vaccinations –

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, posted on X Friday that he had asked Netanyahu to make the defeat of Hamas “and other terrorist organisations” in the West Bank one of the aims of the war in Gaza.

Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip has left it in ruins, with the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure blamed for the spread of disease.

The humanitarian crisis has led to Gaza’s first polio case in 25 years, prompting a massive vaccination effort launched on Sunday with localised “humanitarian pauses” in fighting.

The World Health Organization said Thursday nearly 200,000 children in central Gaza have received a first vaccine dose, as a second stage got underway in the south.

Gaza’s health ministry and a spokeswoman from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on Friday that medical teams vaccinated 161,188 children on the first day of the second phase of the anti-polio campaign.

By: Agence France-Presse