JENIN, Occupied West Bank (Dispatches) -- Israeli forces pulled out of Jenin after a 10-day onslaught, but the Zionist military denied it was ending its invasion of the occupied West Bank.
The onslaught, which has so far left at least 39 Palestinians martyred, saw troops backed by armored vehicles and bulldozers targeting the city and its adjacent refugee camp, forcing the flight of many of the residents.
Tensions in the West Bank were raised even further on Friday when a U.S. citizen was reportedly shot dead by Israeli troops near Nablus.
Palestinians started returning to their Jenin homes on Friday, while those who had been trapped by the invasion were able to venture outside for the first time in more than a week.
One resident of the refugee camp said the Zionists left early in the morning.
“We didn’t leave the house for 10 days during this operation, myself, my children, and my husband’s family,” she told Middle East Eye.
The onslaught on the camp left them without electricity or water for days.
When they finally went outside on Friday, the resident said it looked as though “a big bomb had fallen”.
“Many houses are destroyed, and there are other houses they used as military bases, but they destroyed the furniture and created destruction in the houses,” she said.
“We heard explosions day and night all 10 days, and we couldn’t know where they were coming from - we didn’t have internet or communication so we couldn’t check where it was coming from.”
Israeli began its invasion on August 28, targeting cities and towns across the West Bank.
A 16-year-old girl was among those shot dead in the invasion, after Zionist forces surrounded a neighboring house on Tuesday just outside Jenin.
Israel said on Friday that it would continue its operation in Jenin until its “objectives are achieved”.
On Friday, Palestinian media said a 13-year-old named Bana Amjad Bakr died after being shot in the chest by Israeli forces in Qaryut village, south of Nablus.
Israel’s actions in the West Bank, happening concurrently with the ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip, have provoked criticism from some of its traditional allies.
During a visit to Occupied Palestine on Friday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock criticized hawkish statements by Israeli officials about the West Bank. 
Her comments referred to calls from a number of Israeli officials for the West Bank to face a similar fate to Gaza.
Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s far-right security minister, said in a post on X on Friday that he had asked Netanyahu to make the defeat of Hamas and other organizations in the West Bank one of the aims of the war in Gaza.
A report in Israel Hayom on Tuesday suggested the military was currently treating the occupied West Bank as “the second most critical front” after its war on Gaza.
Since October 7, attacks by the Israeli military and settlers in the West Bank have left 691 Palestinians martyred.
The report by Israel Hayom suggested that a further series of raids was imminent and the onslaughts were set to continue for “the foreseeable future”. 
Baerbock warned that “anyone who attacks people, drives them out of their homes or even kills them must be held accountable and severely punished”.
She also warned the Zionists against continued illegal settlement construction in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967 and where more than 700,000 Jewish settlers now live.
Israeli troops on Thursday martyred six people in the town of Tubas and in a nearby refugee camp in the West Bank in a drone strike.
The military invasion of the West Bank has involved hundreds of Zionist troops, police and intelligence officers backed by helicopters, drones and armored vehicles.
Ten people have been martyred over the past week in Tubas, a city in the northern Jordan Valley.
Hamas has called for the “expansion of resistance” in the West Bank, which is governed 

by the Palestinian Authority that is dominated by Fatah.
“Our people … across the West Bank should work on strengthening and engaging with the resistance because the occupation’s plan is to target every house, every village, and every street,” senior Hamas official Abdulrahman Shadid said.
It is an “ethical, national, and religious obligation”, he said, adding that the Palestinian people will not “give in to the enemy”.
Refugee camps across the West Bank largely house Palestinians driven out of their homes in the 1948 Nakba that saw the creation of Israel, as well as their descendants
The Jenin camp resident, whose family were expelled from the coastal city of Jaffa in 1948, said that she had lived through many repeated Israeli invasions and knew mothers who had lost three or four children, but would remain undeterred.
“I will never leave the refugee camp. I know that one of the aims of the [Israeli military] is to push people to leave, to emigrate,” she said.
“They make it unlivable for us so we leave. But we won’t leave our lands and our homes... how do they expect that people can simply be transferred from their lands and forget about it?”