Palestinians cut ties after Israeli troops kill 10 in West Bank

JENIN REFUGEE CAMP, WEST BANK — Israeli forces killed at least nine Palestinians and wounded several others in a large-scale raid Thursday in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials said. The deadliest single operation in the territory in two decades prompted Palestinian leaders to cut security ties with Israel.

The Israeli military also fatally shot a 22-year-old Palestinian later in a separate incident.

The raid in the refugee camp increases risk of a major flare-up in Israeli-palestinian fighting, poses a test for Israel’s new hard-line government and casts a shadow on U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s expected trip to the region next week. Raising the stakes, the Palestinian Authority said it would cut security ties with Israel, raising fears that attacks by Islamist militant groups might not be prevented. Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, threatened revenge. Violent escalations in the West Bank have previously triggered retaliatory rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces went on heightened alert as protesters poured into streets across the territory.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman

for the Palestinian Authority, said Palestinian leaders ordered a halt to ties that Palestinian security forces maintain with Israel in a shared effort to contain Islamic militants. Previous Palestinian moves to suspend this coordination were short-lived, in part because of the benefits it enjoys from the relationship and also due to U.S. and Israeli pressure to maintain it. He also said the Palestinians planned to file complaints with the U.N. Security Council, International Criminal Court and other international bodies.

The PA last cut security coordination with Israel in 2020, over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s drive to annex the occupied West Bank, which would render a future Palestinian state unviable. Six months later, the PA resumed cooperation.

Thursday’s gun battle erupted when the Israeli military conducted a rare daytime operation in the refugee camp that it said was meant to prevent an imminent attack against Israelis. The camp, where the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group has a major foothold, has been a focus of nearnightly Israeli arrest raids. At least one of the dead was identified by Palestinians as a militant, but it was not clear how many others were affiliated with armed groups.

MAJDI MOHAMMED/ASSOCIATED PRESS Mourners carry the bodies of Palestinians killed during a raid by Israelis, some draped in the flag of the Islamic Jihad militant group, during a funeral Thursday in the West Bank city of Jenin.