Five Palestinian terrorists were injured during a gunbattle with the IDF who were securing Israelis visiting Joseph’s Tomb overnight between Wednesday and Thursday.
Four of the terrorists were shot by IDF sharpshooters and other soldiers.
A fifth Palestinian terrorist was injured by a misthrow of his own improvised explosive that he was trying to toss at IDF forces.
Around 40 buses of Israelis successfully visited Joseph’s Tomb and the gun battle did not occur during the vast majority of their visit. Rather, the gun battle occurred as IDF forces were starting to seek to withdraw from the area.
The IDF emphasized that despite the incident, the vast majority of tens of thousands of Israeli visits all around sites in the West Bank had gone forward with very little in terms of violent incidents.
IDF shuts down command center in Balata refugee camp
Following the Joseph’s Tomb gun battle, IDF forces raided the nearby Balata refugee camp.
During the raid, the IDF arrested a wanted terrorist, seized various weapons, but most importantly succeeded in shutting down a Palestinian command center.
The upshot on shutting down the command center was that the IDF not only confiscated significant volumes of explosives, but also blinded Palestinian terrorists’ surveillance and intelligence collection apparatus in the area.
Palestinians had erected a sophisticated series of video surveillance cameras to track IDF forces and to better ambush any IDF forces that might enter Balata to arrest terrorists.
In the last several months, the IDF has encountered more sophisticated intelligence and surveillance operations by West Bank Palestinians, and it shut down an extensive series of command centers in Jenin in early July.
Although the Palestinians usually eventually rebuild some of these surveillance apparatuses, it can take months or longer to restore them and where the IDF and the Palestinian Authority become more assertive, it is harder to restore them fully.
The IDF also undertook many other operations overnight throughout the West Bank as part of the ongoing Israeli efforts to manage an approximate 18-month-long wave of terror dating back to March 2022.