The streets looked like Gaza. Homes reduced to rubble, walls pockmarked by bullet holes, roads ripped apart by bulldozers. Neighborhood after neighborhood was deserted.
But this was not Gaza, a territory devastated by the war between Israel and the militant group Hamas, where tens of thousands have been killed and hunger stalks the population. It was the occupied West Bank, another Palestinian territory where the Israeli military has been tightening control in the most sweeping crackdown on militancy there in a generation.
The contours of the new offensive were unfolding during a recent visit by New York Times reporters to the city of Jenin, among the once densely populated neighborhoods that have been cleared out since an operation began in January. In one of those areas, more than 10,000 people lived until recently. Now, it is empty — its roads blocked by mounds of dirt and flanked by piles of rubble.
This week, the Israeli military said it would be demolishing homes in Tulkarm, a city near Jenin, to make crowded neighborhoods and streets more accessible to Israeli forces and to prevent the re-emergence of militants.
“They’re taking away my future,” Muath Amarne, a 23-year-old university student, said on Wednesday, the day he learned that his home in Tulkarm would be destroyed.
Israel conducted frequent military operations in this area in recent years, but its forces almost always left within hours or days. Since January, however, its military has maintained its longest-running presence in the heart of West Bank cities in decades.