Israel has destroyed nearly two dozen buildings in the embattled West Bank city of Jenin. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in a statement released on Sunday, noted that the destroyed buildings were “terrorist infrastructure.”
The Israeli military destroyed more than two dozen buildings in Jenin, a city in the occupied West Bank, as Israel turned to the territory since withdrawing some of its troops during the ongoing ceasefire across the border in Gaza.
Footage captured by Reuters showed a series of explosions tearing through the city, sending towering plumes of smoke into the sky.
In a statement on Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had demolished 23 buildings in Jenin that were “used as terrorist infrastructure.”
Hamas has also made a statement, claiming that they will escalate their resistance to Israel:
Hamas called for an “escalation in the resistance” against Israel following the demolition in Jenin.
The number of casualties, if any, is currently unknown.
It’s been a bad few days to be an Islamic terrorist goblin.
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A video captured by someone who is presumably a local – the camera wielder is speaking Arabic – shows several towers of smoke rising into a clear sky above Jenin. The few seconds of video do not show the strikes themselves, nor are there any secondary explosions that would indicate stored explosives or munitions; those, however, may have already happened. The only information we can glean here is that several buildings are burning.
WILD🔴
I told you the operation in Samaria has just begun, at least 20 buildings have just been blown up.
Jenin Is Becoming a Serious Battlefield! pic.twitter.com/PsI7xPlwa3
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) February 2, 2025
Here’s where it gets interesting: There are still tensions in Gaza, the latest being that an IDF aircraft has fired on a vehicle in Gaza that was traveling outside the approved inspection zone; this happens as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is preparing to travel to the United States for meetings with President Donald Trump. And Hama leaders have travel plans, too:
Netanyahu, the first foreign leader to visit Trump since his inauguration in January, left Israel as negotiations for the second phase of talks were expected to begin on Monday.
Meanwhile, the deputy head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzouk, will lead a delegation to visit the Russian capital Moscow on Monday, the RIA state news agency reported on Sunday.
This is nothing new, of course. These are lines that have been drawn for years now. Hamas and Hezbollah, along with other Islamic terror groups, seem to have struck some kind of devil’s bargain with Russia; this dates back to the bad(der) old days of the Cold War when Islamic groups in the region were bought off by the major Cold War players; the Taliban, in Afghanistan, got their start in irregular warfare when the Soviet Union invaded that country, and the Mujahadeen, as we called them in those days, used a lot of American-supplied weapons to remind the Soviets why Afghanistan is known as the Graveyard of Empires.
It’s a great illustration of the old saying, “Nations have no permanent friends, only permanent interests,” and if arming the Mujahadeen against the Soviets was a lot like throwing a mad dog into someone’s backyard–well, it suited our purposes at the time.
What happens next is anyone’s guess. We will be watching as the situation develops, and will bring you updates as events warrant.
