Israeli Security Minister Yisrael Katz announced today, Sunday, the expansion of Israeli military operations in the northern West Bank, where the occupation army began carrying out operations in the town of Qabatiya, in conjunction with the reinforcement of Israeli forces with armored units and additional forces.

Katz confirmed that 40,000 Palestinians were forced to leave the Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams refugee camps, which are now "completely empty of residents," as he put it. He also pointed to the disruption of the work of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) inside these camps.

The Israeli Minister of Security added that the army will remain in these areas for at least a year to prevent the return of the residents, stressing that the occupation forces "will not allow the return of the residents and the return of terrorism to grow," referring to the infrastructure of the Palestinian resistance.

Katz stressed that military operations will continue to include other Palestinian camps and centers, as part of a strategy aimed at dismantling the resistance battalions and destroying their military infrastructure, noting that these measures come within what he described as the "war on extremist Islamic terrorism."

Katz stressed that Israel will continue what he described as "cleansing" the refugee camps and what he described as "other centers of terrorism," with the aim of "dismantling the battalions and terrorist infrastructure of radical Islam that were built, armed, financed and trained by the evil Iranian axis."

He claimed that this comes "in an attempt to establish an eastern terrorist front against the settlements in Samaria (the biblical name for the northern occupied West Bank), the seam line and the major population centers in Israel."

Katz concluded his statement by stressing that the occupation "will not return to the status quo ante," and that military operations will continue until "terrorism is completely eliminated," in reference to the continuation of the policy of displacement and the consolidation of the Israeli military presence in the northern West Bank.

In a statement issued earlier today, the Israeli army announced the expansion of its military operations in the northern West Bank, where forces from the Nahal Brigade, the Duvdevan Unit and a tank platoon began operating in additional villages around Jenin.

The occupation army said that a tank platoon is operating inside Jenin as part of the offensive operation, as part of the ongoing military escalation. Israeli forces, with the participation of units from the Shin Bet and the "Border Guard", continue to carry out operations in Jenin and Tulkarm.