Jenin, Occupied West Bank — Three Palestinians were killed early Tuesday in an Israeli airstrike near the village of Kafr Qud, northwest of Jenin, as Israeli forces carried out another deadly raid in the occupied West Bank. The assault, which involved drones, snipers, and heavy gunfire, marks a sharp escalation in Israel’s military operations amid ongoing land confiscations and mass arrests across the territory.

According to Palestinian media, Israeli forces surrounded a house west of Jenin at dawn, triggering hours-long clashes before an airstrike obliterated the building. Residents reported hearing “a large explosion followed by clouds of black smoke,” with soldiers preventing ambulances from approaching the scene.

The Palestinian General Authority of Civil Affairs later identified the victims as:

• Abdullah Muhammad Omar Jalamna, 27
• Qais Ibrahim Muhammad Beitawi, 21
• Ahmed Azmi Arif Nashrati, 29

Israeli forces seized their bodies, claiming they were members of a “local fighting cell” allegedly planning an attack, a claim the army provided no evidence for. The Islamic Jihad Movement condemned the killings as “a continuation of Israel’s systematic war crimes,” denouncing the use of airpower in civilian areas as a “dangerous escalation that exposes the depth of the occupation’s brutality.”

Escalating Raids, Detentions, And Land Seizures:

The Jenin airstrike coincides with intensified Israeli raids across the West Bank. Al Jazeera reported that at least ten Palestinians were detained overnight in sweeping operations across Nablus, Tulkarm, and Hebron.

Meanwhile, the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission revealed that Israeli authorities issued five new military orders to seize around 73 dunams of land in the Ramallah and Al-Bireh governorates, under the pretext of “security and military purposes.”

Since October 2023, Israel has established roughly 30 new buffer zones around settlements, effectively extending their boundaries and further fragmenting Palestinian territories. According to the commission, such orders have led to the confiscation of more than 75,000 dunams of Palestinian land over the past three years, a policy it says is “designed to erase the geographic and political viability of a Palestinian state.”

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that Israeli forces have conducted more than 1,400 military operations in the West Bank this year alone — the highest figure in over a decade. Over 1,057 Palestinians have been killed, more than 10,300 wounded, and 20,000 detained, including 1,600 children, since Israel began its war on Gaza two years ago.

Defying Law, Defying Ceasefire:

On October 22, the Israeli Knesset advanced two bills to annex the occupied West Bank and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement bloc, deepening what rights groups describe as a process of de facto annexation through lawfare and force.

This move directly contradicts the 2024 International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling, which declared Israel’s occupation and settlements illegal, urging immediate withdrawal from occupied territory, including East Jerusalem. Yet, Israel has not only rejected the ruling but expanded its military and settler presence, with open backing from far-right ministers who call for the “recolonisation” of Gaza and the permanent reoccupation of the West Bank.

In blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement, Israel continues to bombard Gaza and strike cities across the West Bank. Airstrikes, drone attacks, and sniper operations have become daily realities, even as world leaders call for restraint. The strikes on Jenin are part of a broader pattern of Israeli defiance, one met by global silence. As Palestinian families bury their dead, Western governments continue to arm and fund the very state committing these acts, turning silence into complicity.

Militarisation Of Occupation:

Analysts and human rights monitors warn that the West Bank is witnessing the Gaza-ization of Israeli policy, where military occupation morphs into open warfare.

The B’Tselem human rights organisation described the use of airpower in Jenin as “the institutionalisation of aerial warfare against a population under occupation,” warning that Israel is “transforming counterterrorism into a tool of territorial control.”

Al-Haq called the airstrike “a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law” and said it “may amount to a war crime.” Its director, Shawan Jabarin, stated that “Israel escalates not because it feels threatened, but because it feels untouchable. This is the logic of impunity, a state testing the limits and finding there are none.”

Even Amnesty International urged an international arms embargo on Israel, warning that continued Western military support “directly fuels unlawful killings, forced displacement, and destruction of civilian infrastructure.”

Conclusion: The Airstrike As Policy, Not Exception.

The Israeli airstrike near Jenin is not an isolated military operation; it is a microcosm of the occupation’s machinery. The combination of airstrikes, land confiscation, and mass arrests illustrates a strategy not of defence, but of dominance. What unfolds in Kafr Qud is the occupation rendered in its purest form: governance through destruction.

Each strike and seizure weaves into a single architecture of control, a campaign designed to annexe and erase the possibility of Palestinian sovereignty. The use of drones and precision strikes in the West Bank signals a paradigm shift: from sporadic raids to a sustained aerial occupation.

In defiance of the ceasefire agreement, Israel continues its bombings and strikes across Gaza, Jenin, and beyond, while the world watches in complicit silence. The international community’s failure to act has turned impunity into policy. As courts, UN bodies, and human rights groups name the crimes, Western powers remain paralysed, their statements of “concern” serving as moral camouflage for material complicity.

This is not just a legal or moral crisis; it is the collapse of accountability itself. Each unpunished airstrike sends the message that law is optional, and justice negotiable. Israel governs by destruction because the world allows it to.

Epilogue: Voices From Jenin And Beyond.

“They came at dawn, helicopters, drones, and armoured jeeps. The sound was deafening,” said Abu Yazan, a resident of Kafr Qud who witnessed the assault. “They shelled the house without warning. When it ended, there was nothing left but rubble and smoke.”
(Interviewed by WAFA, October 2025)

Medical crews told Al Jazeera Arabic that they were “shot at and blocked” while trying to retrieve the bodies. “It was not a clash, it was an execution,” said one medic.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that Israeli forces have killed more than 1,057 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 2023. Rights organisations say the aerial assault on Jenin marks a dangerous precedent, one that normalises airstrikes against a civilian population under occupation.

B’Tselem warned that “Israel’s actions in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus represent the militarisation of the occupation itself.”

Al-Haq called it “an act of collective punishment and a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”
Amnesty International reiterated its call for an arms embargo, stating that “foreign weapons are enabling Israel’s violations, making its allies complicit in war crimes.”

A UN official in Jerusalem, speaking to Reuters, described the West Bank today as “a landscape of siege, fragmented, encircled, and ruled by fear.”

Even Rashid Khalidi, historian at Columbia University, warned:

“When a state defies both a ceasefire and an ICJ ruling within the same year, it’s more than defiance, it’s a declaration that law itself no longer applies.”

For Palestinians in Jenin, that lawlessness is not abstract; it’s the sound of drones circling overhead. “We are trapped between raids and rubble,” said Um Qais, a local schoolteacher. “The world talks of ceasefires, but here, the bombs never stopped.”