AFP Asia Business

Israel’s military on Wednesday launched a new operation against Palestinian armed groups in the occupied West Bank, where a local governor told AFP that Israeli forces had raided several towns.The Israeli military, police and internal security service said in a joint statement that they had begun “a broad counter-terrorism operation” in the north of the Palestinian territory after they received intelligence about “attempts to establish terrorist strongholds”.The military said the operation began with air strikes to isolate the area, which were followed by “searches” on the ground, during which suspects were questioned and funds were confiscated.It also said it shot and killed a “terrorist (who) hurled an explosive toward (Israeli) troops operating in the Qabatiya area”, in the Jenin governorate, adjacent to Tubas.The Israeli army confirmed to AFP that it was a new operation, and not part of the one launched in January 2025, which primarily targeted Palestinian refugee camps in the northern West Bank.Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.The operation, which began overnight, was taking place in predominantly agricultural Tubas, the northeasternmost of the 11 governorates in the West Bank.Ahmed al-Asaad, governor of the Tubas region, told AFP: “This is the first time that the entire governorate is included — the whole governorate is now under Israeli army operations.”Asaad said Israeli forces raided the towns of Tammun and Tayasir and the Al-Faraa Palestinian refugee camp.”The army has closed the city entrances with earth mounds, so there is no movement at all,” he added.He told AFP that “an Apache helicopter” was involved in the operation, and said it had fired in the direction of residential areas.”This is a political operation, not a security one,” he said.- Injuries reported -An AFP photographer saw some soldiers walking around inside Tubas city, with a few armoured cars driving through and a surveillance aerial vehicle buzzing overhead. Most shops were closed.The road entrance to nearby Tammun had been closed off by a military vehicle. An ambulance was allowed to go through but citizens were not. Armoured cars were driving around at the scene.The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said its teams in the governorate had treated 10 injured people, four of whom had to be transferred to hospital.It added that some of its teams were “facing obstruction in transporting patients in the city of Tubas and the town of Tammun since dawn” and were still responding to calls for help following the raids.The UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said on Wednesday evening that a curfew had been imposed in the area, and that at least two dozen families were forced to evacuate as Israeli troops took over their homes.Militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad condemned the Israeli operation.Hamas said in a statement that it was part of a policy “aimed at crushing any Palestinian presence in order to achieve complete control over the West Bank”.Violence in the West Bank has soared since Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war, and has not ceased despite the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas coming into effect last month.Israeli troops or settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians, many of them militants, but also scores of civilians, in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry figures.At least 44 Israelis, including both soldiers and civilians, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or Israeli military operations, according to official Israeli figures.

Tension is escalating between Israel’s political and military top brass over accountability for the failures behind the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused of sidestepping blame.Weekly protests against Netanyahu’s leadership of the subsequent two-year war in Gaza and demanding the return of hostages became emblematic of the anger boiling within parts of Israeli society over how the attack and its fallout have been handled.Much of the Israeli public has been calling — in vain — for an independent inquiry into the events leading up to the 2023 Hamas attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people.Polls show more than 70 percent of Israelis want a state commission of inquiry, which have been set up in the past to investigate major state-level failings.The one established after the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war led to the resignation of prime minister Golda Meir in June 1974.The decision to create a commission rests with the government, but its members must be appointed by the president of the supreme court.Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government has accused the court of political bias.More than two years on from the Hamas attack, no such inquiry has been established, and Netanyahu once again rejected the idea in parliament on November 10 — accusing the opposition of seeking to turn it into a “political tool”.Netanyahu is no stranger to the art of political survival. The 76-year-old is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having spent more than 18 years in the post across three spells since 1996.”Netanyahu doesn’t take responsibility for anything: it’s always someone’s fault,” said Yossi Mekelberg, a Middle East expert at the London-based think-tank Chatham House.”The idea that after these two years, there’s no inquest, and he tried to escape it — most Israelis won’t accept it,” he told AFP.- ‘Puzzling’ -Israel’s military announced on Sunday the dismissal of three generals and disciplinary action against several other senior officers over their failure to prevent the October 2023 attack.The move came two weeks after the publication of a report raking over the military’s internal investigations into the October 7 attacks.Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, Israel’s top military chief, appointed an independent committee of experts to undertake the review.In presenting their findings on November 10, Zamir called for a wider “systemic investigation”, to learn lessons from the October 7 onslaught.According to Israeli media, the remarks were seen as a betrayal by Netanyahu, for whom Zamir had served as a military adviser.On Monday, Defence Minister Israel Katz announced that he had commissioned a review of the committee’s work.The decision was swiftly labelled “puzzling” by Zamir.The military “is the only body in the country that has thoroughly investigated its own failures and taken responsibility for them,” said a military statement on Zamir’s behalf.”If any further examination is required to complete the picture, it must take the form of an external, objective and independent commission,” it added.- ‘Yes man’ -According to independent analyst Michael Horowitz, Katz is seen by the Israeli public as a “political loyalist, a ‘yes man’ who rarely diverges from Netanyahu”.Friction between the political and military elite is not a new phenomenon under Netanyahu, he told AFP, but the recent spat is unusually public.”The main reason is that this isn’t about personality so much as a divide as to who is to blame for October 7, and how this question should be settled,” he said.Netanyahu has said there will be no state commission of inquiry before the end of the war in Gaza.Instead, in mid-November, the government announced it was setting up an “independent” probe into the October 7 failures — but one whose composition would be chosen by a panel of cabinet ministers.The move sparked anger in Israel, with thousands of protesters rallying in Tel Aviv on Saturday to demand a full state commission of inquiry.”It should be an objective committee,” Eliad Shraga, the chairman of the NGO Movement for Quality Government, told AFP at the protest.”A committee who will really find out how come that we had such a failure, such a crisis.”Netanyahu has so far never acknowledged responsibility for the failures that led to October 7.”He has one strong and straightforward incentive not to take responsibility,” Horowitz told AFP.”Accepting the blame means leaving office. After all, almost all of those who accepted part of the blame have left.”Netanyahu has said he will stand in the next elections, to be held before the end of 2026.