September 4,
2024
On Aug. 28,
Israel launched “Operation Summer Camps,” the largest military invasion
witnessed in the northern West Bank in over two decades. In Jenin, Israeli
forces first moved into the city before imposing a full-blown siege on the
refugee camp within hours; the army simultaneously carried out operations in
Tubas, Nablus, Ramallah, and Tulkarem.
Israeli military forces seen during an operation in the West Bank city of Jenin, September 2, 2024. (Flash90)
Since 2021, the
Israeli military has repeatedly targeted Jenin refugee camp under the pretext
of fighting armed resistance groups. Most of the victims of these assaults have
been non-combatant Palestinian civilians and minors, according to the UN Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Local
Palestinian residents and journalists say that this current assault is the most
intense and violent in years, with at least 19 Palestinians killed in Jenin,
including minors. This comes amid a dramatic increase in Israeli military
operations and settler violence across the West Bank after October 7, which
have killed nearly 700 Palestinians in the territory — 185 in Jenin alone — in
brutal ways.
The army was
also recently reported to have shot 83-year-old Tawfiq Qandeel in the Jenin
camp on Sept. 30, leaving him on the street to die without access to medical
attention. A video circulated on social media two days later showing Israeli
military vehicles driving over Qandeel’s body.
Bombs,
bulldozers, bullets
While the
Israeli army claims to be fighting the Jenin Brigades and other Palestinian
resistance movements, the current operation has devastated large swathes of
civilian infrastructure in the refugee camp as a clear form of collective
punishment.
“They blew up
our home, they blew it up!” 72-year-old Khayriyeh Khrayneh told +972, just
moments after she was forced to flee her home near the eastern quarter of Jenin
refugee camp.
Four days into
the operation, the camp had largely become a ghost town, with Palestinians
forced to remain inside their homes as Israeli soldiers turned buildings into
military bases and dispatched snipers across various rooftops. Civilians,
including children, elderly, and chronically ill, have been denied access to
water, food, and medicine as part of the total siege on the camp.
“We were not
even allowed a glass of water,” Khrayneh cried, as they remained trapped
between bombs, bulldozers, and live bullets. Khrayneh and her young daughter
barely escaped their home at gunpoint, carrying nothing but a small black purse
with her ID cards and passports.
Her three sons
(the youngest of whom is 16 years old) and her husband were all taken by the
Israeli army — part of what eyewitnesses inside the camp describe as a campaign
of mass arrests targeting Jenin’s men and boys. Khrayneh’s husband has diabetes
and needs constant medical care; her eldest son, 41, is battling cancer.
“He had just
finished a chemotherapy session,” Khrayneh recalled, holding her tears back as
the smoke rose above the rubble of her home just a few meters away.
Although members
of the press were denied access to the camp, the sounds of explosions and
machine gunfire echoed throughout Jenin. Large numbers of Israeli D-9
bulldozers, armored personnel carriers, and armored jeeps moved through the
city’s streets. The skies of Jenin were buzzing with drones; it was unclear
whether these were surveillance drones or the lethal quadcopters, which Israel
has commonly deployed both in Gaza and the West Bank.
Some
Palestinians have managed to escape the camp — mostly women and children, often
driven out at gunpoint by Israeli soldiers who had invaded their homes and
detained the men and young boys in the families.
Those who fled
described the ferocity of Israel’s military tactics over the past week:
anti-tank rifle grenades that destroy civilian infrastructure; attack dogs
unleashed against families; Palestinian detainees used as human shields; and
live ammunition fired sporadically and recklessly.
Blocking
hospitals and ambulances
While the
military operation has raged inside the refugee camp, residents of the city and
its environs have not been spared from the effects of the siege. With the army
roaming the streets and shooting at cars, Palestinians in Jenin have been under
strict curfew, and access to the city from the outside has been highly
restricted.
“We’ve been
locked in our homes for days,” Saed Souki from the town of Al-Batal, just
outside Jenin city center, told +972. “We haven’t had access to the most basic
things, like flour and baby food, for days.” Any efforts to bypass the siege
have been met with brutal force: on Sept. 1, the Israeli military bombed and
killed three Palestinian children from Seela Harthiya, west of Jenin, as they
drove on their vespa after delivering bread to Jenin residents
Not even
ambulances have been able to cross the city to reach the refugee camp.
According to the head of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin, Mahmoud
Al-Saadi, “the ambulances were shot and paramedics were denied any entry into
Jenin, even to retrieve the bodies of the killed Palestinians, despite
acquiring permits in coordination with the Israeli army.”
At the start of
the operation, the military also imposed a full lockdown on Jenin Governmental
Hospital, the only public general hospital in the city. The Israeli Border
Police, or Magav, was tasked with maintaining control of entry and exit to the
hospital and declared the immediate surrounding area a “closed zone by military
order.”
The Governmental
Hospital has continued to receive patients through the ambulances, but only
after they are stopped and checked by Magav officers, who have on occasion
forced patients out to check their IDs.
From outside the
city, the route to Jenin is riddled with checkpoints and road closure imposed
by the army, stymying movement not only for Palestinians but also journalists
and medical personnel. And with Israeli operations expanding across the West
Bank, leaving Jenin is becoming as dangerous as staying in it.
“I have been
here for four days, and I haven’t been able to go home because of the ongoing
events,” Huda Badran, a nurse at Al-Amal Hospital, adjacent to Jenin refugee
camp, told +972. Badran, who is from Tulkarem — 60 km southwest of Jenin — said
that this is the first time in her 18 years of working at the clinic that she
couldn’t be home for nearly a week.
“You can’t tell
what will happen,” she explained, and given the simultaneous military operation
in Tulkarem, “I face risks not just leaving here, but also getting home.”
The Israeli army
says that Palestinian resistance groups have been the primary target of the
assault on Tulkarem; those killed in recent days include a co-founder of the
Tulkarem Brigade, Mohammad “Abu Shuja” Jaber, along with fighters Majd Daoud
and Dousom Srouji.
But like in
Jenin, residents of Nour Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps were placed under
siege, with no access for media or medical workers. Withdrawing from the camps
in Tulkarem on August 30, the Israeli military left behind a trail of
destruction, with at least three killed and dozens injured.
The army renewed
its assault on the two camps on Sept. 2, killing at least one minor,
15-year-old Mohammad Kanaan and injuring his father with a bullet to the waist.
This time the Israeli army not only obstructed journalist access, but directly
targeted media personnel.
‘It is another
Gaza’
It is still
unclear how long the Israeli military intends to continue Operation Summer
Camps. The governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu Al-Rub, reportedly tried to coordinate
a ceasefire with the army to allow urgent aid into the refugee camp, but his
efforts were denied.
After the Jenin
Brigades killed an Israeli soldier in a joint ambush on the fourth day of the
siege, the Israeli operations intensified. “We have no intention of letting
terrorism … raise its head,” IDF Chief Herzi Halevi said in a statement. “That
is why the initiative is to go from city to city, refugee camp to refugee
camp.”
Yet such Israeli
military assaults have only served to deepen resentment among the Palestinian
civilian population — who bear the brunt of the attacks — and drive recruitment
for the resistance groups.
“What do you
think they’re doing? They’re pushing for escalation so that they can fully
depopulate us,” said A., a 30-year-old resident of Jenin, who asked to speak
anonymously for fear of Israel’s mass arrest campaign.
“They’re making
life for us unbearable,” A. explained. “What this does is naturally push us
toward confrontation, and when we do, the Israeli military further intensifies
its abusive practices.”
By the time A.
spoke to +972, Israeli forces had set Jenin’s farmers market aflame, bulldozed
at least 70 percent of the streets within the camp and surrounding areas, and
cut off water access to the camp completely and 80 percent of Jenin. And with
Israel reportedly planning to designate the entire West Bank as a “combat
zone,” Israeli security officials are warning that “the Jenin operation is just
the beginning.”
“You know what
Jenin is? It is another Gaza, and Gaza is Palestine,” A. affirmed. “We cannot
keep separating them, because the perpetrator is targeting us as Palestinians,
and will use the same reasoning both here and there to keep pushing
Palestinians off their lands.”
The IDF did not
respond to +972’s requests for comment by the time of publication; their
statements will be added if received.
Fayha
Shalash
A dog walks towards a man in Jenin, occupied West Bank amid destruction
and excavations left by the Israeli army on 4 September, 2024 (Zain
Jaafar/AFP)
As
the Israeli military operation in Jenin and its environs in the occupied West
Bank enters its second week, the situation has only gotten bleaker for
Palestinians in the area.
The
Jenin municipality said on Sunday that the Israeli army has bulldozed 70
percent of the city’s streets and water has been cut off from 80 percent of
homes.
Additionally,
20 kilometres of water and sewage networks, communication and electricity
cables have been demolished.
Out
of the 33 Palestinians who have been killed since Israeli forces launched their
largest invasion of the West Bank since the Second Intifada, 19 were in Jenin,
the Palestinian health ministry says.
Seven
of those killed were children, including a 16-year-old Palestinian girl, Lujain
Musleh, who was shot dead by Israeli forces in the town of Kafr Dan in the
Jenin governorate on Tuesday.
'The
Israeli army killed her dreams'
Ibrahim
Musleh, a relative of Lujain’s, told Middle East Eye that Israeli snipers were
stationed in several buildings in the area after the army stormed Kafr Dan.
Lujain
was looking out her home’s window to see the soldiers when an Israeli sniper
shot her directly in the head the moment she pulled the curtain, Musleh said.
“Her
parents and sisters started screaming and crying while she lay motionless. It
seemed that she was killed instantly because the bullets were explosive and
destroyed her brain,” he added.
Musleh
said an ambulance dispatched to the Musleh house came under Israeli sniper fire
before eventually reaching the area 20 minutes later - a trip that would have
otherwise taken it two minutes to make.
“Lujain
is the third born among her six siblings,” Musleh said. “She was polite and
calm. She prayed dawn with her father that day and read the Quran.
"She
was praying to God all the time that this barbaric intrusion would end so that
she could return to school, but the bullets of the Israeli army killed her
dreams.”
On
Wednesday, Israeli media reported that the army decided to extend its
operations in Jenin, which it had originally planned to end on Tuesday.
The
army reportedly sent reinforcements to Jenin and Tulkarm amid continued clashes
with Palestinian fighters.
'Complete
paralysis of life'
Nidal
al-Obaidi, mayor of Jenin, told MEE that the Israeli operations have left the
city looking like the aftermath of an earthquake.
The
most affected areas are the eastern neighbourhoods, where Jenin’s refugee camp
is located.
Israeli
forces have been stationed there for several days, besieging the area while
carrying out bulldozing operations and demolitions.
“No
information has been received from the camp due to the tight siege and the
cutting off of electricity, water and communications,” Obeidi said.
“The
commercial square area, which is considered the heart of Jenin, has been
completely destroyed and shopping has completely stopped. Many shops have been
demolished, bulldozed and burned amid a severe shortage of food and medicine.”
Israeli
forces have “occupied many homes and expelled their owners,” the mayor added.
Soldiers
have also made holes in the walls to facilitate movement between them.
Municipality
crews and volunteers are trying to provide aid to residents, but some areas are
off-limits due to intense Israeli fire.
Obeidi’s
car came under fire a few days ago as he was trying to supervise municipal
workers.
While
he says they were able to bring water and electricity back to certain areas,
the situation remains difficult with even Jenin’s hospitals coming under siege.
The
Jenin Government Hospital had to stop operations in several departments due to
water and electricity shortages and a lack of medical supplies, Obeidi said,
adding that dialysis patients were transferred to Nablus to continue their
treatment.
“What
is happening in Jenin portends an environmental and food catastrophe and
complete paralysis of life,” he said.
“The
school year is just around the corner, and teachers were supposed to start
their work last Sunday, but they were unable to reach their schools.”
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