TEL AVIV (Dispatches) -- The top Israeli military official said Saturday the recent shooting attack in a crowded entertainment area of Tel Aviv has created fear among local people, who now dread walking the streets.
Zionist army chief of staff Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi acknowledged the failure of the occupying regime’s military apparatus in thwarting the shooting attack. He said the operation has fueled deep fear among people, suggesting that the Zionists are feeling increasingly vulnerable.
“We used to worry about getting on the bus, but now we are afraid to walk the street. There is a possibility that those who performed the operation will knock on our doors,” he said.
He said Israeli security forces, who were unable to control the situation, “suffered a defeat and the perpetrator escaped the scene easily.”
“The security of settlers has been damaged and this situation will continue for a long time,” he added.
The remarks came two days after a Palestinian man, a resident of the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, opened fire on Tel Aviv’s busy Dizengoff Street, killing three and injuring 16 others.
Palestinian resistance groups hailed the “heroic operation” as a “natural response” to Israeli crimes.
It was the fourth such incident in the occupied Palestinian territories in less than three weeks, exposing deep fault lines in the regime’s much-hyped security arrangements.
The resistance fighter was martyred following a massive manhunt by Israeli forces near a mosque on the first Friday of the holy month of Ramadan.
Hamas called the attack a “heroic operation” and vowed that “resistance” against the Zionist regime “is continuing and escalating.”
Following the heroic operation, Zionist premier Naftali Bennett granted “all security forces full freedom” of operations in a bid to give a sense of security to local people.
“There are not and will not be limits for this war,” he said. “We are granting full freedom of action to the army, the Shin Bet and all security forces” to attack Palestinians.
Israeli media on Saturday reported that the Palestinian man, who carried out the operation, did not have a work permit and had entered the occupied territories illegally.
Israeli military officials called for increasing the number of work permits for Palestinians from the West Bank to reduce their entry and monitor their movements.
Between 40,000 and 50,000 Palestinians without permits go to the occupied territories to work through holes in the controversial separation barrier, according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.
On Saturday, one Palestinian was martyred and 13 more wounded as a large Israeli force raided the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
The raid began at around 9:30am local time when Israeli special forces entered the camp and headed to the family home of Raad Hazem, a 28-year-old who carried out a shooting at a bar in Tel Aviv on Thursday, killing three Zionists.
Reinforcements followed, and Israeli troops raided the camp from all entrances, to be met by Palestinian fighters residing in the camp who began firing at troops in several locations.
A local source told Middle East Eye that Palestinian fighters also used an explosive device in the heavy street fights, which lasted for nearly three hours before Zionist forces withdrew from the city.
One Palestinian, identified as Ahmad al-Saadi, 23, was martyred in the gunfight, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Al-Quds Brigades (Saraya al-Quds), the military wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, said he was a commander in its Jenin unit.
At least 13 more Palestinians sustained bullet wounds, including a 19-year-old woman, with two in critical condition. Two more were wounded in the shoot-outs and detained by the Israeli army.
An eyewitness, who preferred to remain anonymous, told MEE that Israeli snipers stationed on rooftops during the raid were shooting at passers-by, including his friend, who was wounded by
a live bullet while walking on the street.
The occupying regime of Israel often demolishes family homes of those accused of carrying out attacks against Zionist targets, in a policy condemned by rights groups as a form of collective punishment.
Israeli forces also attempted to arrest Fathi Hazem, Raad’s father, but he refused to turn himself in and the troops left without detaining him, eyewitnesses.
The northern West Bank city, particularly its central refugee camp, is known as a stronghold for a reemerging Palestinian armed resistance movement.
Since late last year, Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have made several attempts to contain the growing number of armed fighters in the city.
In late December, Israeli armed forces chief of staff Aviv Kochavi said in an interview with Channel 12 that the occupying regime was on the cusp of launching a major operation in Jenin three months earlier, before they called the PA into action.
Last week, Zionist troops martyred three Palestinians in a pre-dawn ambush in Jenin as residents marked the 20th anniversary of a brutal Israeli assault on the city’s refugee camp that has become emblematic of Israel’s occupation.
The Saturday raid comes at a time of heightened tensions in occupied territories.
Fourteen Zionists have been killed in the past three weeks in shooting and stabbing attacks carried out by Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and inside Occupied Palestine.
At least six Palestinians have been martyred by Israeli fire in the same period in the West Bank, including one shot by a settler.
In occupied East Al-Quds, Israeli police have carried out a nightly crackdown on Palestinians celebrating Ramadan at Damascus Gate since the start of the holy month on 2 April.
More than 30 people were arrested, including minors, and dozens were wounded in the assaults.