RAMALLAH: The office of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas denounced an Israeli operation in the occupied West Bank as "ethnic cleansing" on Monday, with the health ministry saying Israeli forces killed 70 people in the territory this year. In a statement, spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the Palestinian presidency "condemned the occupation authorities' expansion of their comprehensive war on our Palestinian people in the West Bank to implement their plans aimed at displacing citizens and ethnic cleansing".
Later the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said there had been "70 martyrs in the West Bank since the beginning of this year", with 10 children, one woman and two elderly people among the dead. The ministry confirmed that they were "killed by the Israeli occupation".
The figures showed 38 people killed in Jenin and 15 in Tubas in the north of the West Bank. One was killed in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, it added. The Israeli military launched a major offensive in the West Bank on January 21 aimed at rooting out Palestinian armed groups from the Jenin area, which has long been a hotbed of militancy. "We demand the intervention of the US administration before it is too late, to stop the ongoing Israeli aggression against our people and our land, " Rudeineh told the Palestinian official news agency WAFA in a statement coinciding with a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington. On Sunday, the army said it had killed more than 50 Palestinians during the operation that began on January 21 and in air strikes the preceding week.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to begin talks Monday on a second phase of the ceasefire with Hamas as he visits the new Trump administration in Washington. Before departing, Netanyahu told reporters he would discuss "victory over Hamas", countering Iran and freeing all hostages when he meets President Donald Trump on Tuesday. It will be Trump's first meeting with a foreign leader since returning to the White House in January, a prioritisation Netanyahu described as "telling". "I think it's a testimony to the strength of the Israeli-American alliance, " he said before boarding his flight. While Trump's predecessor Joe Biden sustained Washington's military and diplomatic backing of Israel, it also criticised the mounting death toll and aid restrictions.
Trump moved quickly to reset relations. In one of his first acts back in office, he lifted sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of violence against Palestinians and reportedly approved a shipment of 2, 000-pound bombs that the Biden administration had blocked.
With fragile ceasefires holding in both Gaza and Lebanon, Israel has recently turned its focus to the occupied West Bank, where an operation it says is aimed at rooting out extremism has killed dozens. The offensive began on January 21, with the Israeli military saying it aimed to root out Palestinian armed groups from the Jenin area, which has long been a hotbed of militancy. Violence has surged across the West Bank since the Gaza war broke out in October 2023. Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 883 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the war, according to the Palestinian health ministry. At least 30 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military raids in the territory over the same period. — AFP
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