3 Israeli police officers killed as West Bank violence spirals

JERUSALEM — Shooters killed three Israeli police officers Sunday morning as they drove through the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the latest episode in the spiral of violence in the territory that includes attacks by Palestinian and Israeli extremists, as well as ongoing raids by the Israeli military in Palestinian cities.

The officers were shot and killed as they drove along a highway in the southern part of the West Bank, close to a major checkpoint where traffic is screened before entering Israel, according to statements from the Israeli police and Magen David Adom, the emergency medical service.

One of the officers was the father of a police officer who was killed during Hamas’ Oct. 7 raid on southern Israel that started the war in the Gaza Strip, according to police.

The episode followed two attacks Friday night by Palestinian militants, one of whom attempted to detonate a car bomb at a busy intersection in the southern West Bank, according to the Israeli military. In the second attack, a Palestinian drove into a nearby Israeli settlement, prompting a car chase and a shootout that caused an explosion in the Palestinian’s car, the military said.

The Israeli military raided three major cities in the northern West Bank last week, killing at least 22 people, according to Palestinian health authorities. The military said the operation was aimed at quelling armed Palestinian groups, but critics warned that the death and destruction caused by the raids risked encouraging the same violence that they aimed to reduce.

Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 after capturing it from Jordan during the Arab-Israeli war that year. Israel has since built hundreds of settlements in the territory, which are considered illegal by most of the world. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis now live under military protection in the West Bank, interspersed among roughly 3 million Palestinians who generally want the territory to form the backbone of a future Palestinian state.

Since Wednesday, hundreds of Israeli soldiers have surged through the Palestinian cities of Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas, clashing with militants and churning up the streets with bulldozers in search of improvised explosive devices. The chaos left many people trapped in their homes without running water or internet.

The Israeli military said it had killed more than 20 militants in those raids, and militant groups said many of the slain were members of their organizations. One family said that a relative with mental illness was shot dead during the raid, his body left untended for hours during the violence.

By Sunday morning, troops had withdrawn from Tulkarem and Tubas.

In Jenin, they were still surrounding one of the city’s major hospitals, closely inspecting everyone who arrived and left, for the fifth consecutive day, said Wissam Bakr, the hospital director. The Israeli military said it had deployed troops around the hospital to prevent militants from entering it in an attempt to seek cover.

With the power cut, the hospital was making do with backup generators, Bakr said. Scores of patients, particularly those on dialysis, were being transferred to other hospitals, as the generators were incapable of powering all of the wards, he added. Before the raid, there had been roughly 180 patients in the hospital; as of Sunday there were about 50 left, according to Bakr.

In the early 2000s, Bakr was working at the same hospital when Israeli forces swept into Jenin, part of a major crackdown in response to a surge in Palestinian suicide bombings that were planned by groups based in the city, he said. At that time, Israeli soldiers also surrounded the hospital for nearly two weeks before withdrawing, Bakr recalled.

“History is repeating itself,” he said.

The tense atmosphere across the territory has been exacerbated in recent weeks by rising violence by Israeli extremists, some of whom have also attempted to seize land used and owned by Palestinians. In mid-August, a group of Israeli arsonists surged through a Palestinian village, setting fire to vehicles and property.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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