Israel uses a rare West Bank airstrike to kill Qais Bitawi in Jenin

An Israeli drone strike in Jenin on Friday killed three Palestinians, among them Qais Bitawi, whom the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet described as the man responsible for Hamas activity in the Jenin refugee camp. The military said the other two men were accomplices and that a weapon was found in their vehicle. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz both praised the operation.

Air power is uncommon in the West Bank. Most Israeli raids in Jenin are ground operations by the IDF, the Border Police or the Yamam unit. Friday's sequence, as the military told it, mixed all three. Shin Bet information put Bitawi at a site on the western edge of the city. Troops and Yamam moved in. When Bitawi and two others left a car beside a structure, an air force drone fired. A military official said the three were identified as armed before the shot.

Palestinian accounts described a house under construction in Harash al-Saada, west of Jenin city. Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency, said the three were killed at once. The Palestine Red Crescent said Israeli ground forces then entered the site, briefly detained medics and stopped them from moving the wounded or the dead to hospital.

Who claimed him

The name is spelled Bitawi and Bitwani in different Israeli statements. Reuters and Al Jazeera used Bitawi. The Jerusalem Post used Bitwani. All pointed to the same man and to the same family link. The military said he was a relative of Noor Bitawi, a former commander of the Jenin network who was killed in May 2025.

Hamas confirmed that the man Israel named was one of its members and condemned the strike. Palestinian Islamic Jihad issued its own statement calling him a senior operative of its armed wing. Dual claims of this kind are not rare in Jenin, where cells have drawn from more than one faction since the camp was broken up in the Iron Wall operation that Israel says dismantled the old network.

The Israeli statement said Bitawi directed, funded and carried out attacks on Israeli civilians and security forces and kept ties with Hamas in Gaza and abroad. The Jerusalem Post, citing security officials, said he was involved in the July 2024 bombing at the Gilboa seam that wounded two Defence Ministry employees. The same officials said dozens of people who had been in contact with him were arrested and questioned before the strike.

What the strike does not settle

Jenin camp has been the target of repeated Israeli raids for three years. Each operation produces a list of mid-level names and a claim that the network is dismantled. Each subsequent strike produces another name from the same families and the same streets. Friday's use of a drone is the tactical change. It lets the air force hit a car or a half-built house without a long firefight in the alley. It also puts a munition into a dense West Bank city, which is why Reuters called the method rare and why the Red Crescent's account of detained medics will travel as far as the military's claim of a clean hit.

Netanyahu's public congratulations arrived the same afternoon. They sit beside a separate American file: 45 Senate Democrats wrote this week asking Israel to halt E1 settlement tenders and to finish inquiries into killings of Americans. The Jenin strike is not that letter. It is a reminder that the West Bank campaign has not been paused while those letters circulate.

The verifiable record on Friday night is short. Three men are dead. Israel has named one of them as a Hamas commander in Jenin. Two Palestinian factions have claimed him. Medics say they were held at the scene. The rest of the network, if it still exists, is the next raid, not this statement.