Israel steps up raids and deadly strikes in occupied West Bank

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• Geoff Bennett:

  Tensions also seem to be growing ever more concerning in the West Bank, the other Palestinian territory that borders Jordan. Since the Hamas attacks on October 7, 95 Palestinians in the West Bank have reportedly been killed in clashes with Israeli troops, and some with Israeli settlers. Another 1,250 have been arrested.

  The Israeli government says they are going after terror targets and cells there.

  "NewsHour" special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen was in the West Bank city of Jenin and has this report.

• Leila Molana-Allen:

  The occupied West Bank, long scarred by sporadic clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters in displacement camps and between Israeli settlers and Palestinian farmers.

  In response, Israeli authorities enforce harsh restrictions until calm is restored. But since the October 7 Hamas attacks, Israel has made clear that the gloves are off, with increasingly violent raids and clashes spreading across the West Bank daily, and now a rare sight in the West Bank and a major escalation, Israeli airstrikes.

  This weekend, the IDF struck this mosque in Jenin camp with an airstrike. Two people were killed. Israeli authorities say underneath it is a compound being used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad to plan attacks.

  Worshipers here deny that. This man is under suspicion from security forces, so we have hidden his face. But he says he is simply trying to protect his community.

• Man (through interpreter):

  They are liars. There used to be a tunnel here, but they already bombed that months ago. They bombed the place where the children make their paintings because there is no other place in the camp for children to play.

• Leila Molana-Allen:

  He says the psychological impact of using such a weapon in the densely populated camp, which the U.N. says in home to 24,000 people, has been devastating.

  And many here fear worse to come. Across the West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces are cracking down, aiming to kill or arrest every possible accomplice of militant groups they are fighting in Gaza. This morning in the town of Jaba', they caught a man they have long hunted.

• Fatima Fashasha, West Bank Resident (through interpreter):

  The special forces came and they opened fire, and they called over the loudspeakers: "(SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) Come out or we will demolish your house over your head."

• Leila Molana-Allen:

  Thirty-four-year-old Yahya had been hiding from the IDF for six months, but went out to visit his family today. They say an informant turned him in.

• Fatima Fashasha (through interpreter):

  He is a leader in Islamic Jihad and is wanted by the Israelis. They wanted to catch him. They had a spy with them who was covering his face when they came to search the house.

• Leila Molana-Allen:

  After they arrested him, soldiers found weapons, including M-16s, stashed away. His aunt says the family is traumatized from the raid, but she still supports the men they call resistance fighters in their community, who she believes fight for all Palestinians.

• Fatima Fashasha (through interpreter):

  We feared for ourselves and for the neighbors. Now they are bombing in Gaza in they may do the same in the West Bank. We are all with the Islamic resistance and we are all united.

• Leila Molana-Allen:

  But some here say that, as Israel tracks down wanted terror suspects, innocent civilians, many of them children, are bearing the brunt of these increasingly hostile raids.

  Ali Hammour came out of his house this morning when ordered to, but the shooting started anyway.

• Salsabil Hammour, West Bank Resident (through interpreter):

  My daughter and I were sleeping down by the window, and they shot at as. He did not do anything.

• Leila Molana-Allen:

  There are bullet holes all over the doors and walls of the house. And it was 6:00 in the morning when Israeli soldiers started firing through this window where the kids were.

  Ali was imprisoned for seven years as a teenager after slinging rocks at IDF soldiers. But Salsabil says he's stayed out of trouble since they married eight years ago. But, this morning, they came for him.

• Salsabil Hammour (through interpreter):

  He didn't do anything. I don't know why they want to arrest my husband. My little girl saw her father being beaten, and she called out for her daddy.

• Leila Molana-Allen:

  Ali's father asks his grandson, 5-year-old Adam, to show us what the soldiers told him to do when they arrested his dad and searched the house: "Put your hands in the air."

  Left to look after three kids under 7, she doesn't know how she will cope without her husband.

• Salsabil Hammour (through interpreter):

  I'm afraid for my children and I'm afraid of the world. Can't you see what they are doing to us?

• Leila Molana-Allen:

  As the strikes on Gaza intensify, and Israel prepares for a ground invasion, Palestinians across the West Bank say they feel constantly under suspicion.

  Trapped inside their towns and villages by an increasingly strict Israeli curfew, they can do little more than watch, wait, and worry what comes next.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Leila Molana-Allen in Jaba', the West Bank.