The Israeli military conducted a massive operation in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, killing at least nine people in a string of fierce gunbattles across Jenin and other major cities as tensions heightened in a war that already has laid to waste most of Gaza.

Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday called on Israel to consider temporarily relocating Palestinians in Jenin and elsewhere during a major anti-terror raid. The Israel Defense Forces said it is allowing residents who wish to flee the combat zones to safely leave.

Israel is ramping up its efforts in the West Bank while continuing operations in Gaza, clashing with Iran-backed Hezbollah on its northern border with Lebanon at the same time commercial ships − some with Israeli ties − are threatened by Iran-backed, Yemen-based Houthi militants.

Katz said the military was "working intensively" in the West Bank refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarm to crush Iran-backed terrorist infrastructures. He accused Iran of trying to establish an eastern terrorist front against Israel in the West Bank "according to the Gaza and Lebanon model" by financing terrorists and smuggling weapons from Jordan.

"We must deal with the threat just as we deal with the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever steps are required," Katz said. "This is a war for everything and we must win it."

The IDF said Wednesday's operation followed a sharp rise in militant activity in the West Bank in recent months. Israel has stepped up raids in the West Bank, where settler violence targeting Palestinians also has surged. Since the war in Gaza began, more than 600 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the U.N. says.

Developments:

∎ The U.S. imposed sanctions on the Israeli nonprofit Hashomer Yosh and a Jewish West Bank settlement security official on Wednesday in an effort to discourage extremist violence against Palestinians.

∎ The U.N. estimates that almost 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians have been under various evacuation orders since the Hamas-led assault on Israel that triggered the war Oct. 7.

∎ The Israeli military said its armed aircraft "attacked and eliminated" at least three armed militants in Jenin who posed a threat to the fighters on the ground. Special Forces raiders killed at least two more, the military said.

∎ Israeli forces also launched Operation Mosk, during which aircraft took out four armed terrorists who endangered forces in the Bekaa area of the West Bank. Israeli troops confiscated weapons and uncovered and destroyed explosives.

Hostage story of heartbreak and rescue

A former mayor of Rahat said hostage Qaid Farhan Alkadi, who was rescued Tuesday, told him a fellow captive died alongside him in Gaza.

Ata Abu Madighem told Channel 12 news Alkadi, a Rahat resident, said the other hostage was Jewish and that they had been held together for about two months. Abu Madighem said he had no other details. Alkadi, who is Muslim and a member of Israel's Arab Bedouin minority, told Abu Madighem he was not given any kind of special treatment by his captors.

“This story is breaking his heart. He has many (terrible) memories," Abu Madighem said. "But ultimately, he is talking about being saved.”

Iran trying to set 'ring of fire' around Israel, analyst says

The IDF's recent campaign in the West Bank is a response to Iran's attempt to establish a "ring of fire'' of its proxies around Israel, says Avi Melamed, a regional analyst and former Israeli intelligence official.

Given the likelihood Tehran-allied Hamas will lose control of Gaza after the war, "Iran has renewed its efforts to destabilize Jordan and the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank to serve as another front,'' Melamed said via e-mail.

He added that Iran's tactics have included fostering discontent and protests in Jordan, which has a border with Israel, as well as smuggling weapons and drugs into Jordan and the West Bank. In the latter, Iran-backed militants have gained a foothold in the large refugee camps, the focus of the Israeli military action, Melamed said.

Trying to stamp out the militants in those camps won't be enough, he argues. "Eventually, all strings lead back to Tehran,'' Melamed says, "and its imperialistic vision and aggression must be thwarted. It is not only a regional interest: it is a global necessity.”

UN: Israeli assault violates 'human rights norms'

The Israeli military operation in the West Bank “risks seriously deepening the already catastrophic situation” in the territory, U.N. Human Rights Office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said. She said many children have been killed "while throwing stones at highly protected Israeli security forces as have other Palestinians posing no imminent threat to life." Israel, as an occupying power, must abide by its obligations under international law, she said.

"The Israeli security forces use of airstrikes and other military weapons and tactics violates human rights, norms and standards," she said.

Militants attack Israeli vehicles in West Bank

The armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah factions said their gunmen were detonating bombs against Israeli military vehicles in the West Bank areas. The Palestinian health ministry said troops had surrounded Jenin's main hospital, blocking off access with earth mounds to stop fighters seeking refuge.

Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, a spokesperson for the military, said the operation followed a sharp rise in militant activity in recent months. He said the military assessed there was an "immediate threat" to civilians, but he said the operation was part of a broad strategy aimed at thwarting attacks.

"This terror threat in this area is not new, it hasn't started yesterday and it's not going to end tomorrow," Shosani said.

Palestians warn of 'dangerous consequences'

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he was cutting short a state visit to Saudi Arabia following the launch of a large-scale IDF operation in the West Bank, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reports.

Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh warned that the West Bank operation will have “dangerous consequences.” Abu Rudeineh called on the U.S. to intervene immediately and force the occupation authorities to stop their "comprehensive war" on the Palestinian people.

"The world must take immediate and urgent action to curb this extremist government that poses a threat to the stability of the region and the world as a whole," he said.

West Bank has been scene of unrest

Unlike Gaza, which was administered by Hamas before the war, the West Bank is partially run by the Palestinian Authority. Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem − areas of historic Palestine that the Palestinians want for a state − in the 1967 Six Day War. Israelis have since built and steadily expanded settlements in the West Bank, and now almost 500,000 Israelis live there in addition to about 3 million Palestinians.

The United Nations' highest court ruled last month that Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories are illegal and all states should cooperate to bring an end to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

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West Bank city of Jenin: Hotbed of Israel-Palestinian conflict

The city of Jenin, a Palestinian militant stronghold in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has been a hotbed of conflict between the Israeli military and Palestinians in recent years.

The Israeli military killed at least nine people on Wednesday in a major operation in the West Bank that involved Jenin and other cities, ratcheting up tensions as a war rages in Gaza between Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel.

Here's what you need to know about Jenin.

REFUGEE CAMP

Jenin is a small city in the hilly, far north of the West Bank, near the border with Israel, and contains a teeming, concrete and cinder-block refugee camp by the same name housing some 14,000 people.

They are descendants of Palestinians displaced when Israel was created in 1948, and most are impoverished and unemployed. This has generated die-hard hostility to Israel and support for Palestinian militant groups.

Jenin has one of the highest rates of unemployment and poverty among 19 refugee camps in the West Bank, according to UNRWA, a U.N. agency that delivers basic services to Palestinian refugees.

Alienated from mainstream Palestinian leadership and raised in an era of social media, a new generation of Palestinians has formed a clutch of militant groups in the West Bank such as the Jenin Brigade which includes fighters from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Jenin produced many of the suicide bombers who spearheaded the second Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, between 2000 and 2005. To curb it, Israeli armoured forces carried out devastating raids in the city where militants had an array of light weapons and a growing arsenal of explosive devices.

The Israeli military regularly accuses militant groups of basing fighters within densely populated urban areas such as refugee camps that date back to 1948. Many of the militants live in the Jenin camp, often with their families.

Since March 2022, Jenin and outlying areas in the north of West Bank have drawn intensified Israeli raids after a spate of Palestinian street attacks.

Militant groups present in Jenin include the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad and Islamist Hamas.

FADING PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY

Jenin used to be a bastion of 88-year-old Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction, a rival of Hamas, which started the Oct. 7 war in Gaza with a cross-border raid on Israel which killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.

But Fatah has lost ground to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Their growing presence has arisen in part from inaction by the security forces of Abbas' Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank and says Israel has undercut its credibility on the street.

But their strength also feeds on what critics say is the weakness of Abbas, whose formula of statehood negotiations with Israel collapsed in 2014, with no revival on the horizon, and perceived endemic incompetence and corruption within the PA.

Israel says the Jenin refugee camp is a hub for planning and preparing militant attacks as well as a safe haven for fighters funded by Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

BATTLEGROUND DURING 2000-2005 UPRISING

Jenin was the scene of some of the worst violence during the second Intifada, which began after the collapse of U.S.-backed peace talks in 2000 and mushroomed into an armed conflict between Israel and Palestinian militant groups.

In April 2002, Israel carried out a major armoured assault on the Jenin refugee camp, part of a wider West Bank operation which Israel said aimed to stop militant attacks including a spate of deadly suicide bombings.

A U.N. report issued in August 2002 said 52 Palestinians had been killed in Israel's Jenin incursion, as many as half of them civilians, while Israel lost 23 soldiers there.

The report, which disputed a claim by then-Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat that 500 people had been killed in Jenin, faulted all combatants for putting civilians in harm's way.

The report listed more Israeli than Palestinian abuses, especially Israel's refusal to let humanitarian workers enter the camp. But it also said Palestinian fighters were lodged in civilian homes.

RENEWED VIOLENCE

Jenin has re-emerged as a flashpoint during the current wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence that has convulsed the West Bank for more than two years, with frequent deadly confrontations.

Violence in Jenin persisted in 2024.

In May Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians and wounded 25 others. A doctor and a teenager were among those killed during a major operation that involved dozens of vehicles.

In June, Israeli forces killed three Palestinians and wounded at least 13 others in a raid on Jenin.

This month, Israel said it killed two senior Hamas militants in an airstrike on their car in Jenin.

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