The Israeli military arrested three members of the Hamas terror group during a raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank on Monday morning, marking the first overt entry of forces to the camp since a major operation was carried out in the area two months ago.In a joint statement, the Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet security agency, and Border Police said troops entered the camp and nabbed Abdullah Hassan Mohammed Sobeh, Ward Sharim, and Mus’ab Ja’aydah.The IDF said troops opened fire at the wanted gunmen as they attempted to flee a building when the forces arrived. One of the armed Palestinians shot in the leg and seriously wounded, and was taken by helicopter to Rambam Hospital in Haifa.An assault rifle belonging to one of the wanted Palestinians was seized, the IDF said.The IDF said troops also responded with live fire against Palestinian gunmen who opened fire at forces in the area, and Palestinian rioters hurling stones.A local wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group said its gunmen opened fire at Israeli forces on the outskirts of the camp.The Palestinian Authority health ministry said four people were lightly wounded by Israeli fire in the area and taken to nearby hospitals.No Israeli soldiers were wounded in the operation.
The IDF did injured the captured terrorists, and transported them by helicopter to a hospital.
Imagine the difficulty of such an operation.
The goal, as always, is to arrest terrorists - not to kill them. The IDF knows that it will be attacked from all directions in a crowded camp that is filled with booby-traps, IEDs and angry youth with stones, firebombs and automatic weapons.
And in the end, no one was killed on either side. The terrorists were captured alive.
This must have involved many, many hours of planning, intelligence and practice.
But this result is always what the IDF wants to see. It doesn't want to kill people, but when under fire, soldiers must return fire towards the source. Nearly every person killed in the past two years were involved in fighting or members of terror groups. For urban warfare, this is incredible, and military experts know this.
But the media ignores all of that. "Human rights groups" insist on perfection in a war zone and that the IDF use peacetime, law enforcement standards when the enemy is often a heavily armed military group. As much as they can, Israel tries to live up to those standards, and it showed that today, even if it is not at all clear that the more flexible laws of armed conflict wouldn't apply to Jenin today.
The world is so obsessed with demonizing Israel that it ignores how unique it is for an army to have so few civilian casualties in urban war zones.
Try to find stories where US or British troops entered a crowded town and extracted wanted men under constant fire without killing anyone. If it has ever happened, it is incredibly rare. Yet the IDF strives to do that each and every time - and its success today proves that.
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