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JERICHO, West Bank — Israeli security forces killed five Palestinian men during an early morning raid Monday in the normally sleepy city of Jericho. The bloodshed in a tourist town — famous for its archaeology and winter villas — comes amid the worst violence in the West Bank in nearly two decades.

The Israeli army said two of those killed were captured on surveillance camera video Jan. 28 preparing to use assault-style weapons to attack a Jewish-run restaurant on the main road outside Jericho. The pair had become the target of an intensive manhunt that led to Monday’s raid.

Hours after the operation, blood was still drying on a small shed next to large villas across the road from the Aqbat Jabr refugee camp, a densely populated slum that is home to 13,000 people. Young men from the camp burned tires in protest and set up barricades around the camp.

‘Guns are everywhere’ in Israel, occupied territories as violence spikes

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confiscated the bodies of the five slain men; no Israeli casualties were reported. During the manhunt, soldiers had erected checkpoints around Jericho, creating hours-long lines as they searched vehicles and checked identifications.

Israel in recent months has launched a series of deadly raids in Palestinian cities and villages as part of its “Breaking the Wave” operation. The IDF is seeking to suppress a spate of violence against Israelis by lone-wolf attackers and by newly emerging Palestinian armed groups that are largely centered in the northern cities of Jenin and Nablus. These groups are small, decentralized, led by young men and often organized on a very local level outside the main Palestinian political parties, making them harder to penetrate or control.

It is unusual for militants to be from Jericho, instead of Nablus or Jenin. Jericho is a quiet farm town and tourist spot in the Jordan Valley known more for its “Banana Land” theme park than for armed groups. It is a stronghold of the increasingly unpopular Palestinian Authority, the government body led by the Fatah party, and was home to Saeb Erekat, former Palestinian peace negotiator who died in 2020.

Jericho is also popular with Christian pilgrims, who take a cable car up a nearby mountain to see the place where tradition says Jesus fasted and was tempted by the devil.

Residents condemned recent Israel’s operations as collective punishment and said the violence would not end until the occupation of Palestinian land did.

“The occupation is the problem,” said Jamal Omar, chair of the committee charged with administration of the Aqbat Jabr refugee camp. “All Palestinians are now afraid for their children.”

The spreading violence, analysts have warned, is the product of a combustible combination of a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/13/palestine-biden-future-abbas/?itid=ap_shirarubin" target=_blank>deep political void among Palestinians</a> and the return of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads Israel’s most right-wing government to date. Members of Netanyahu’s coalition include settler activists and Jewish nationalists calling for annexation of the West Bank and harsher policies against Palestinians.

Ayman Daraghmeh, a former Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said the group in Jericho was “close to” but not organized or led by Hamas.

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said more violence would follow in response to the raid. “Our people and their resistance will not delay in responding to this crime,” he said.

The IDF released a photo showing the weapons confiscated during the raid: five assault rifles, one handgun, a homemade gun, and ammunition. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/04/israel-palestine-guns-violence-attacks/" target=_blank>widespread presence of illegal weapons</a> has contributed to the lethality of the current wave of violence.

In the Jan. 28 restaurant attack, the assailants fired a single round before one of their guns appeared to jam. No one was hurt, but Israeli officials warned that many could have been injured or killed in the assault, which took place a day after a Palestinian gunman <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/01/27/israel-shooting-synagogue-jerusalem/" target="_blank">killed seven people outside a synagogue in East Jerusalem</a>. An <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/01/26/israel-raid-palestine-jenin-deaths/" target="_blank">Israeli raid in Jenin</a> on Jan. 26 targeting a militant cell killed 10 Palestinians, including a woman in her 60s.

Jericho is in a part of the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian Authority, set up in the 1993 Oslo accords as a step toward a Palestinian state. But two decades later there is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/01/31/blinken-israel-palestinians-two-state/" target=_blank>little belief on either side in a two-state solution</a>, as Israeli settlements, illegal under international law, have spread throughout the West Bank.

Awni Lafi, the father of Malik Lafi, 22, one of the alleged restaurant attackers who was killed in the Jericho raid, stood in a chilly funeral tent receiving mourners Monday. He was waiting for his son’s body to be returned by the IDF. Lafi said he didn’t know his son had bought a gun. He called him “a smiling boy who was good to his mother.” He worried that more young men would follow his path.

Even before Monday’s raid, camp residents were recovering from a large Israeli incursion Saturday morning that in part targeted the Awadat family, which would go on to lose four members in Monday’s raid.

Adel Awadat, 61, said that during Saturday’s incursion two shoulder-launched missiles hit his house without warning about 7 a.m. while he and four other family members, including a 16-year-old nephew, were inside. An Israeli soldier then called and told the family to come outside as a bulldozer barricaded the front exit.

Soldiers made male members of Awadat’s extended family, who live in neighboring homes, strip down and stand in the cold and rain, he said, while women and children were put into nearby jeeps.

About 12 male members of the Awadat family were arrested that night, and six remain in jail, said Hasan Awadat, 27.

A day after that raid, the Awadat family was already beginning to rebuild their bullet-riddled, heavily damaged home.

“Jericho has always been safe. We heard about these things happening elsewhere but never imagined it here,” said Mais Awadat, 28, seated in her relatives’ house, which had gaping holes. “Now it feels worse than the second intifada,” she said, referring to the period of intense clashes between the Israeli military and Palestinians in the early 2000s.

Then on Monday, women crowded into a home adorned with a Hamas flag to mourn the four relatives killed in Monday’s raid — brothers Ibrahim, 27, and Refat Awadat, 21, and their cousins Adham, 22, and Thaer Awadat, 28.

Over the past two years, their grandmother Saadiya Awadat said, her grandsons had closely followed the cases of Palestinians killed and houses demolished by Israeli forces. Angry and frustrated, she said, they had shown increasing interest in violence and martyrdom.

Hanadi Awad, 41, struggling to speak amid her grief, said she had no idea that her son Adham and his friends possessed any weapons. But after the Israeli raid on the camp Saturday, they briefly passed by to say their goodbyes bearing guns. “Praise God he is a martyr now,” she said.

Qassam, 19, an aluminum worker who declined to give his family name as he attended one of the funerals, agreed that Jericho was not known for its militancy but said he fears that could be changing.

“We have a friend who is now so angry. He keeps talking about getting a gun and shooting Israelis. We try to calm him down. But it’s not easy. I feel like the whole atmosphere is changing,” he said.

<i>Hazem Balousha contributed to this report.</i>

Fulbright research fellow in Egypt 

Wesleyan University, BA in College Social Studies 

Oxford University, MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies 

Miriam Berger, a staff writer on The Post's international news desk in Washington, has since Oct. 7 been on assignment in Jerusalem, where she covers Israel, the Palestinian territories and the war in Gaza. Before joining The Post, she was based in Jerusalem and Cairo and was a freelance reporter.

Miriam Berger

Overseas Press Club, Kim Wall Award, "Occupied," 2018

 Overseas Press Club, Robert Spiers Benjamn Award Citation, "Mexico's Middle Class," 2012  

Overseas Press Club, Robert Spiers Benjamin Award Citation, "Mexico at War," 2010

Finalist, Pulitzer Prize, Breaking News, "Fort Hood Shooting," 2010

University of Texas at Austin, literature 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vannevar Bush Fellow

William Booth is The Washington Post’s London bureau chief. He was previously bureau chief in Jerusalem, Mexico City, Los Angeles and Miami.

William Booth

Fatima Abdul Karim