All IDF troops withdraw from Jenin as operation finishes

The streets were deserted. 

To the extent that there were streets.

Multiple streets that the Jerusalem Post and a small group of military reporters viewed as part of an embed with IDF troops going deep into the heart of Jenin on Tuesday afternoon had been blown up or carved up, depending on whether they had been bulldozed or set off by the IDF's bomb squads.

Then again, only a few meters away, there were streets which appeared mostly untouched.

IDF Chief Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Daniel Hagari on Tuesday said that the military's massive operation in Jenin could end faster than initially expected, even within a matter of days.

In an update early Tuesday, Hagari described how the operation had already achieved most of its goals and with less resistance or side complications than intelligence had estimated.

According to the IDF spokesperson, the military had preselected some dozens of targets to eliminate in terms of terror command centers and weapons and explosives storage areas.

All but around 10 of those locations were already destroyed or neutralized on the first day of the operation, many within the first two hours in attacks by the air force.

All told, a mix of IDF drones have already destroyed 20 targets, while the IDF commandos, Maglan, paratroopers, regular Menashe infantry, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) forces have neutralized a variety of other targets, including a concealed hiding spot of a large cache of weapons under a mosque.

Israeli forces have arrested some 120 Palestinian terror suspects, IDF Spokesperson Dnaiel Hagari said on Sunday morning as he confirmed that the Israeli military has "10 more targets at the center of the refugee camp" in Jenin.

In a statement given to media on day two of the largest Jenin operation since 2002, Hagari noted that "there is not one spot within the refugee camp left untouched" by the IDF. 

"Our opening shots rocked them," Hagari added.

In the wake of the IDF’s largest raid on Jenin since the Second Intifada, communities on the Gaza border went about their usual activity on Monday.

An operation by the IDF in Jenin had begun overnight with airstrikes and raids on terrorist groups in the city.

While Islamic Jihad and Hamas have extensive arsenals in Gaza, reports said they had been warned not to escalate and that they were holding their fire in the morning to see how the day developed. That sense of calm was clear on the border in communities such as Sderot, Nahal Oz, Alumim, and Zikim.

Chana Melul, a retired headmaster and Sderot tour guide, spoke to The Jerusalem Post in front of a bomb shelter-turned-caterpillar structure in the middle of a playground.

“You don’t want to think you are living in a war zone,” she said, gesturing towards the caterpillar. “Kids want to feel normal.”

Iran has been trying to empower Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the West Bank to create more tensions with Israel closer to Jerusalem and benefit Tehran in the region via diplomatic outreach to various countries.

In the last year, it has increasingly sought to provide terror organizations in the West Bank with weapons and it hopes that the PIJ group could carve out a zone of control that would threaten Israel. The activities of Iran-backed groups, such as PIJ and Hamas benefit Iran because it gives Tehran a way to increase its “unity” of fronts against Israel.

This means that it can add Jenin to other areas, such as Gaza, Southern Lebanon and the Golan border area where Iran has activities and backs threats. In Tehran's long-term view, it may believe it can create conditions in Jenin similar to what it did in southern Lebanon and then Gaza in the 1990s and early 2000s. For now Tehran and Hezbollah appear to be monitoring the situation. 

Unifying the fronts, a concept Iran has mentioned in the last months, is one way Iran benefits.

IDF Central Commander Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs on Monday night said, "This operation will not end the problem of terror for the State of Israel or from Jenin...but we had gotten to a point where we realized we needed to carry out something more significant."

He added that the terrorists are now going through a stage of feeling chased after and pursued.

In addition, he said that Islamic Jihad and Hamas are operating in Jenin using Iranian funds.

The IDF's operation in Jenin is meant to stop terrorist seeking to destroy Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said less than a day after the IDF entered the northern West Bank city on Monday.

“Last night, Israeli soldiers tried to reach undetected the most legitimate target on the planet - people who would annihilate our country,” the prime minister said.

Speaking at the US Embassy’s Fourth of July Party, Netanyahu said this is a day to remember that “freedom is precious and it’s never free. Often, it involves firm and decisive efforts against those who seek to destroy it and pursue terror.”

Netanyahu noted that his brother, Yoni Netanyahu, was killed while saving Israelis on a plane hijacked to Entebbe on July 4, 1976, and IDF soldiers are fighting terror on this Fourth of July, as well.

“In recent months, Jenin has become a safe haven for terrorism, and from that haven came vicious attacks against Israeli men, women and children,” he said. “Israeli soldiers are doing everything to avoid civilian casualties as Israel does everything to exercise its right to self-defense.”

Netanyahu said that the operation "will continue as long as it takes to complete the mission.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday suspended contact and security coordination with Israel after Israeli forces launched a major raid against militants in the West Bank city of Jenin, his office said in a statement.

The decision came after Abbas held a meeting with other leaders of the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas has temporarily suspended coordination with Israel a number of times in the past during previous rounds of violence.

When officials talk about the “Lebanonization” of Jenin, they generally have in mind what occurred there on June 19 when the IDF entered the city on a routine mission to arrest terror suspects.

But that operation in what is known as the West Bank’s “terror capital” was anything but ordinary.

As the troops were leaving, a powerful roadside bomb exploded, injuring seven soldiers and damaging IDF armored vehicles. The troops also came under intense gunfire.

Following this incident, there were numerous calls for an extensive IDF operation in Jenin and the northern West Bank – an “Operation Defensive Shield 2” – to keep it from becoming like southern Lebanon and to prevent the “Lebanonization” of Jenin.

However, there is another Lebanon model that the IDF sought to prevent with the launch of its campaign on Monday: The scenario where the enemy is allowed to grow to alarming proportions before decisive military action is taken.