Israeli Drone Strike Kills 3 in Jenin as Defense Minister Declares Camp 'Permanently' Occupied

On Friday, August 28, 2026, an Israeli drone struck a car in Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, killing three Palestinians — Israel's first strike in the West Bank since February 2025. The military identified one of the dead as Qais Bitawi, described as a Hamas operative planning attacks, along with two others it called his accomplices; Palestinian Islamic Jihad said Bitawi was in fact a senior operative of its own armed wing, not Hamas. The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli troops detained medics at the scene and prevented casualties from being transported to hospital. Hours after the strike, Defense Minister Israel Katz declared that the Jenin refugee camp — emptied of its roughly 15,000 residents during the IDF's Operation Iron Wall invasion in early 2025 — is now 'permanently stationed' by Israeli forces, 'like other terrorist camps' in the West Bank, marking the first explicit Israeli declaration of indefinite military occupation of a depopulated West Bank refugee camp.