Israel Raids West Bank Hospital as Clashes Erupt With Hamas in Northern Gaza

One of the Israeli soldiers wore medical scrubs, another a white coat and surgical mask. Their team swept into the West Bank hospital brandishing rifles, took up positions by the waiting-room chairs, then entered a patient’s room and killed a Hamas commander.

Fifteen minutes later they were gone.

The raid on Tuesday took place as the Israeli military battled Hamas on multiple fronts: with the dramatic operation in the West Bank, renewed clashes in northern Gaza, and beneath the territory’s surface. The Israeli military confirmed for the first time on Tuesday that its engineers had begun pumping seawater into the vast Hamas tunnel network beneath Gaza.

Israel’s latest efforts in the nearly four-month war came amid a renewed push by multiple peace brokers, including the United States, Israel, Qatar and Egypt, for an agreement to pause the fighting. The political chief of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, said on Tuesday that he was studying a proposal for a temporary cease-fire that had come out of talks between officials from those nations in Paris.

But even as those talks continued behind closed doors, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted anew that Israel would continue fighting until it achieved “complete victory.” And the raid at the Ibn Sina Specialized Hospital in the northern West Bank city of Jenin suggested that Israel would continue chasing down Hamas leaders across the region.

Israeli forces have tried to strike Hamas leaders and their allies both inside Gaza and outside the territory. Earlier this month, Hamas blamed Israel for an explosion in Lebanon that killed its deputy political chief, and Iran accused Israel of an airstrike that killed senior Iranian military figures in Syria.

Israeli forces have escalated efforts against Palestinian militant activity in the West Bank, arresting more than 2,980 Palestinians since the war began in near-daily raids, over 1,350 of them affiliated with Hamas, according to the Israeli military. The raid at the hospital on Tuesday took less than 15 minutes, according to its director, Niji Nazzal.