IAF aircraft targeted armed terrorists in three separate strikes on Thursday, eliminating seven terrorists, including the son of the terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi, Muhammad.
The IDF also said that the air force had logged a full 300 flight hours of drones over the last two weeks of the current intense operation.
This would seem to be an unprecedented amount of air force focus on the West Bank, given that from 2005-2006 until mid-2023, the air force almost never carried out attacks in the West Bank.
Additionally, on Thursday, the IDF's large operation in Jenin, Tukaram, Tubas, and elsewhere led to the killing of 36 terrorists, the arresting of 46, and the seizing of a relatively small number of weapons.
Eliminating a key terrorist in the area
The IDF said that Muhammad had been a key terrorist in the Jenin area, both in planning and taking part in a range of terror attacks.
His father, Zakaria, was an arch-terrorist, planning and carrying out terror attacks, including suicide bombings, in Jenin and elsewhere until he was arrested in 2019.
In 2021, he escaped Gilboa Prison for a period of time before being caught in a massive manhunt.
Zakaria Muhammad Abd al-Rahman al-Zubeidi was born in 1976 in Jenin to a family of nine.
From a young age, Zubeidi was involved in conflicts with the Israeli military, including being shot by soldiers after throwing stones at civilian vehicles, which he claimed caused him a lasting limp.
At 14, he was imprisoned for six months and later sentenced to four and a half years for throwing a Molotov cocktail. While serving his first sentence, he was recruited by Fatah. After his release, he joined the Palestinian police, worked as a builder in Tel Aviv, and drove a truck in Jenin.
Following the death of his mother by IDF gunfire and his brother's death during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, he turned to terrorism, joining Fatah's terrorist groups and fighting against the Israeli army during the operation.
Eventually, he joined the Al-Aqsa Brigades, the special arm of the Palestinian terror organization.
He was then responsible for a series of terrorist attacks, including many in the Samaria region, such as shooting at Israeli vehicles and, eventually, a suicide bombing at a Likud branch in Beit Shean, where six people were killed.