In a West Bank refugee camp, Israel’s raids fuel the militancy it tries to stamp out

By JACK JEFFERY and JALAL BWAITEL
Associated Press

NUR SHAMS REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank (AP) — An Israeli army raid in April set off a near three-day gunbattle with Palestinian militants. By the time it was over, homes had been blasted to rubble and many residents had fled. The raid wasn’t in Gaza, where Israel is at war with Hamas, but more than 60 miles away in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the West Bank — a territory that has been under Israeli military rule for over a half-century. The persistence of Palestinian militancy in the West Bank and its surge since the war in Gaza began show the limits of Israel’s military might as the decades-old conflict grinds on with little prospect of a political settlement.