Palestinian authorities have raised “ethnic cleansing” accusations while a U.N. special rapporteur blamed Israel of ‘genocidal intent’ after it killed at least 70 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in January and caused massive destruction.
“Seventy martyrs in the West Bank since the beginning of this year,” the Ramallah-based ministry said in a statement detailing 10 children, one woman and two elderly people among the dead.
The ministry confirmed to AFP they were “killed by the Israeli occupation.”
The death toll was confirmed shortly after Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas’s office denounced Monday the ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank, saying it was aimed at “ethnic cleansing” and urging the United States to intervene.
In a statement, spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the 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.”
“We demand the intervention of the U.S. 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.
The Israeli military launched a major offensive in the West Bank on Jan. 21 reportedly aimed at rooting out Palestinian resistance groups from the Jenin area.
‘Genocidal intent’
The Palestinian accusations echoed earlier statements made by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese on Sunday.
In a statement on X, she issued a stark condemnation of Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank, labeling them as “criminal.”
She underlined that the alarming nature of Israel’s targeting of the Palestinian population showed a clear “genocidal intent.”
Albanese cited her previous warnings at the UNGA last October, highlighting that the scope of Israel’s aggression extends beyond just Gaza, threatening the entire Palestinian population and the occupied territories.
“Israel’s actions in the West Bank are CRIMINAL, as widening the scope of destruction beyond Gaza across all the occupied Palestinian territory … The genocidal intent is evident in the way Israel targets (1) the totality of the Palestinians ‘as such’; (2) in the totality of the occupied Palestinian territory,” she wrote.
She also urged immediate action from the international community, urging nations to intervene to halt the ongoing destruction and suffering inflicted on Palestinians.
“It’s past the time to intervene to stop it,” she said, underlining the urgency of the situation.
Gaza 2.0
Earlier Sunday, the Israeli military blew up at least 20 buildings in the Jenin refugee camp, the Palestinian state news agency reported.
Footage capturing the demolitions showed a series of simultaneous explosions in the densely populated camp.
Thick clouds of smoke rose above the Palestinian city where Israeli forces have been conducting a major military operation for nearly two weeks.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a statement urged the United States to end Israel’s military operation and requested an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council “to stop the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.”
The Israeli military claimed 23 structures had been “dismantled” in the northern West Bank after explosives laboratories, weapons and observation posts were uncovered.
In a previous statement Sunday, the military shared images of firearms, ammunition, and what appeared to be gas canisters. It did not say where exactly those images were taken.
Jenin Government Hospital Director Wisam Baker told the Palestinian state news agency that part of the hospital was damaged in the explosions but that there had been no casualties.
Jenin is home to a crowded refugee camp of descendants of Palestinians who were driven out, or fled their homes, in the 1948 war when the state of Israel was established.
The refugee camp there has been a center of resistance movements for decades and the target of repeated raids by Israeli security forces.
Israeli forces, backed by helicopters and armored bulldozers, began the assault on the city on Jan. 21, two days after a cease-fire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas took effect.
Israel regards the West Bank as one part of a multi-front war against Iranian-backed groups established around its borders, from Gaza to Lebanon and including the Houthis in Yemen, and it turned its attention to the area immediately after the halt to fighting in Gaza.
The U.N. Palestinian refugees agency (UNRWA) has said that almost all of the Jenin camp’s 20,000 residents have been displaced over the past two months.
Hamas on Sunday called for an “escalation in the resistance” against Israel following the demolition of buildings in Jenin.
The Palestinian Authority, a Hamas rival, exercises limited governance over the West Bank where around 3 million Palestinians live and over which Israel maintains overall military control.
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