West Bank & Jerusalem
Israel resumes West Bank airstrikes and kills three men in Jenin
Image credit: Israel Katz — Itzhak Harari via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) · License
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An Israeli drone struck a building under construction in the Hirsh al-Sa'ada area west of Jenin refugee camp on Friday afternoon, killing three Palestinian men. It was the first Israeli airstrike in the occupied West Bank in roughly ten months.
The Israeli army said it had killed Qais al-Bitawi, whom it described as the man responsible for Hamas activity inside Jenin refugee camp, and said he had directed, financed and carried out attacks. It named neither of the other two men.
Local sources cited by the Palestine News Network identified them as Ahmad Yaqub Krozou and Basel Turkman. Al Jazeera reported that the three were struck after leaving a car at the entrance to the unfinished building.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said its crews reached the site and were held by Israeli soldiers who arrived on the ground, then ordered away without being allowed to carry the dead or the wounded to hospital.
What the army says, and what is contested#
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the strike a successful proactive operation. Defence Minister Israel Katz said it was the fruit of what he called Israel's offensive policy in the West Bank, and repeated that the army would stay deployed inside the refugee camps.
Who al-Bitawi belonged to is not settled. Hamas mourned the three men and held Israel responsible for the consequences, and the Palestinian Information Center described him as a fighter of the Qassam Brigades. Islamic Jihad said in its own statement that he was a senior figure in its armed wing.
Al-Monitor reported that the Israeli army also said al-Bitawi kept contact with Hamas figures in Gaza and abroad. None of the affiliation claims has been independently verified, and the Israeli account of his role rests on unpublished intelligence.
The Israeli army has said his relative Nour al-Bitawi, who commanded an armed network in Jenin, was killed in May 2025.
Ten months, and a camp that is still empty#
The gap matters because of what filled it. Al Jazeera reported that the last Israeli airstrike in the Jenin governorate was on 28 October 2025; since then the army has worked in the northern West Bank on the ground, in the manner Katz described.
Ynet reported earlier the same day that the Israeli chief of staff had this week put a divisional headquarters on standby for possible deployment to the West Bank, citing tension and the approaching Jewish holidays.
The camp the strike was named for has been largely emptied since Israel launched Operation Iron Wall in January 2025. UNRWA counted some 40,000 people forced out of the Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps, the longest displacement of Palestine refugees since 1967.
More than 33,000 of them were still displaced this month, nineteen months on, and the official Palestinian news agency WAFA has put the number of housing units destroyed in Jenin camp alone at around 600.
The Red Crescent said its crews were detained at the scene and sent away without the bodies.
Palestine Red Crescent Society, 28 August 2026
Israel returning to the air over the West Bank is a change of instrument, not of policy, and Katz framed it that way himself. For families in the three northern camps, the ground operation that began nineteen months ago has not ended; an airstrike has now been added on top of it.
