September 3,
2024
The Israeli
military is now carrying out its seventh day of massive raids across the
occupied West Bank, including in Jenin, a city that houses nearly 50,000
people.
The largest
Israeli assault on the occupied territories since the second Intifada in the
early 2000s has left several dozen Palestinians killed, at a time when Israel
is also engaged in a devastating war on Gaza.
Palestinians in
the occupied territory are now struggling to secure basic necessities,
including food and water, in the wake of the widespread destruction by Israeli
forces in Jenin.
Let’s take a
look at each of the seven days of incursions:
August 28
Israel launched
the largest raids in the occupied West Bank in more than two decades, targeting
Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas in particular, killing at least 10 people.
The assaults,
which began in the early hours of Wednesday, involved hundreds of ground
soldiers advancing in bulldozers and armoured vehicles, supported by fighter
jets and drones that dropped bombs.
August 29
Access to
hospitals was blocked with dirt barriers by heavily armed Israeli forces, with
other medical facilities surrounded by troops.
The confirmed
death toll rose to at least 18, with eight Palestinians killed in the Jenin
governorate. Dozens more were wounded across the three major areas that came
under attack.
The Israeli
military called in reinforcements, and Palestinian sources reported that at
least 25 people were detained in the occupied areas in the preceding 24 hours.
August 30
The Israeli
military withdrew from Tulkarem and Tubas after leaving a trail of destruction,
but stepped up attacks on Jenin, with the death toll climbing to 21.
At least three
people were killed early on Friday after Israeli forces attacked a car in the
village of Zababdeh, south of Jenin.
The Palestinian
Ministry of Health in the occupied areas reported that the bodies of the three
were taken away by Israeli forces. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS)
reported that Israeli forces obstructed ambulances from reaching the scene of
the attack.
August 31
Israeli forces
blew up homes in the Jenin refugee camp’s al-Jabriyat neighbourhood, with
paramedics struggling to contact and reach casualties after telecommunications
were blocked.
Reporting from
Jenin on Saturday, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said, “Jenin is a ghost town. All of
the shops are closed. Nobody is leaving their homes.”
Israel’s army on
Saturday announced the first death of a soldier in clashes with Palestinian
fighters since the start of the raids.
September 1
Israeli forces
continued to forcibly evacuate Palestinian families from their homes, including
those living in the Abdullah Azzam neighbourhood in the Jenin camp. Families
from the neighbourhoods of ad-Damj, al-Suha, and al-Faluja were also forcibly
displaced, according to the Wafa news agency.
The agency
reported that in the camp’s main square, Israeli forces detained residents and
interrogated them in the field amid extensive raids, searches, and detentions.
The municipality
in Jenin provided a clearer picture of the large-scale destruction left by
Israeli forces, which had killed at least 24 Palestinians at that point and
displaced thousands.
According to the
municipality, the Israeli army:
- Bulldozed nearly 70 percent of the city’s streets.
- Destroyed 20km (12.4 miles) of its water and sewage networks.
- Left 80 percent of the Jenin refugee camp without water access.
September 2
A Palestinian
teenager was killed by live Israeli fire in the town of Kafr Dan west of Jenin,
according to the PRCS, which said emergency responders were denied access to
the 16-year-old girl for over half an hour as she bled to death. Another young
Palestinian was also wounded in the thigh by the Israeli forces’ live fire.
Israeli troops
handed the body of a Palestinian man who was arrested about an hour earlier in
Kafr Dan to Palestinian health authorities. The 58-year-old Ayman Rajeh Abed
was arrested at dawn, and his body came in handcuffed and bearing signs of
torture, according to Wissam Bakr, the director of Jenin Governmental Hospital.
Israeli forces
and bulldozers attacked a group of journalists while they were covering the
destruction of a roundabout and surrounding shops, and opened fire directly on
them, which resulted in multiple injuries.
Last night,
Israeli soldiers also detained an ambulance crew while transporting an
emergency medical case to Jenin Governmental Hospital and assaulted a number of
them.
September 3
Occupation
forces have continued to destroy the centre of Jenin city, with bulldozers
razing Cinema Street and large parts of Hospitals Street to the vicinity of
al-Shifa Hospital.
They have also
destroyed shops and roads in the Cinema Roundabout area and Post Street, which
had also been heavily targeted earlier in the raid.
Wafa said two of
its photojournalists were shot and wounded by Israeli soldiers in Kafr Dan.
At dawn on
Tuesday, Israeli forces stormed the village of Muthalath al-Shuhada, south of
Jenin. They reportedly deployed snipers on the roofs of several houses, raided
six homes, and detained a number of citizens before withdrawing from the town.
At least another
22 Palestinians were detained in the 24 hours leading up to 12pm (09:00 GMT) on
Tuesday, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society and the Commission of
Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs.
Melvin
Goodman
The
Biden administration’s decision to continue funding the notorious Netzah Yehuda
battalion, an ultra-Orthodox unit that operates on the West Bank, is the latest
indication that the United States is unwilling to take any steps to counter
Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinians. The funding of the battalion marks a major
defeat for the human rights experts in the Departments of State and Defense,
who argued that Netzah Yehuda should be barred from receiving U.S.
support. This marks one more decision by
Secretary of State Antony Blinken that ignores the need for accountability with
regard to the barbarous actions of the Israeli Defense Forces.
The
Netzah Yehuda battalion is particularly violent in dealing with the Palestinian
community. The battallion has killed unarmed civilians and suspects in custody
as well as committed sexual assault and torture. it has attracted many members of an extreme
religious-nationalist settler group infamous for establishing illegal outposts
on Palestinian land that have no legal basis in Israeli law. In recent years,
the Netzah Yehuda battalion has been involved in at least a half-dozen
controversial cases involving its soldiers, resulting in jail time, discharge,
or harsh criticism for assaulting or killing innocent Palestinians.
U.S.
funding of the battalion is a violation of the Leahy Law, passed in 1997, that
prohibits the Departments of State and Defense from providing military
assistance to foreign security force units that violate human rights. U.S. embassies and the appropriate regional
bureaus of the Department of State vet potential recipients of security
assistance. If a unit is found to have
been credibly implicated in a serious abuse of human rights, assistance is
denied until the host nation government takes effective steps to bring the
responsible persons within the unit to justice.
As a result, security forces and national defense units in Bangladesh,
Bolivia, Columbia, Guatemala, and Mexico have been denied assistance in the
past. The United States, of course,
plays by different rules when it comes to military support for Israel.
Even
before Blinken made his unfortunate decision regarding the battalion, Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu obnoxiously proclaimed that “if anyone thinks they
can impose sanctions on a unit of the
IDF—I will fight it with all my strength.”
U.S. presidents have been unwilling to stand up to Netanyahu who has led
six of the eleven different Israeli governments over the past 28 years. This funding decision is particularly
reprehensible because the battalion was responsible for the death of a
78-year-old American citizen whose stress-induced heart attack was brought on
by being bound, gagged, and left on the ground by Israeli forces. Netanyahu’s government prosecuted no one in
this case.
One
of the more feckless U.S. moves regarding the war in Gaza was President Biden’s
decision to deliver humanitarian aid to
the Palestinians via a floating military pier.
U.S. officials in the Departments of State and Defense argued that the
weather conditions in the Mediterranean would compromise any effort to make the
pier workable. The critics were right. They wanted the Biden administration to put
pressure on Israel to open land crossings for aid, but Biden refused to do
so. As a result, the pier was attached
to Gaza’s coast line in May and abandoned in July.
Israeli
officials maintain that they are allowing aid into Gaza, but the aid is going
in slowly and humanitarian conveys are still being attacked. A UN vehicle, clearly marked, was attacked
several days ago and Palestinian aid workers were killed. Meanwhile, more than 560 schools in Gaza have
been hit or destroyed, and numerous shelters have been attacked. This points to the moral squalor of Israeli
public declarations that deny the targeting of humanitarian missions.
In
order to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict (and perhaps appreciate U.S.
complicity), it helps to remember the first Israeli edicts against its
Palestinian population more than 75 years ago.
With the creation of the state of Israel, the Knesset adopted the
British Defense Regulations that enabled Israeli military authorities to close
off the Arab areas and restrict entry and exit only to those with permits. Every Arab inhabitant had to apply to the
military government office or to the police in his/her district to obtain a
permit to leave his/her village for whatever reason.
The
Knesset added its own restrictions to the British regulations. These enabled the Israelis to deport people
from their towns or villages and to summon any person to present himself at a
police station or to remain confined to his/her house. Any Arab could be placed under administrative
arrest for an unlimited time, without explanation and without trial. Violators were tried by military courts and
not civilian ones; this is still true today on the West Bank. Tom Segev, one of Israel’s most distinguished
historians, noted in his important book, “1949: The First Israelis,” that
“among the soldiers and officers sent to rule over the Arabs were ones who had
been found unfit for active service.”
They were vengeful, which is true today on the West Bank. Segev is associated with Israel’s New
Historians, a group challenging many of the country’s traditional narratives.
Another
distinguished Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, recorded in his book, “Ten Myths
About Israel,” that the discussion of the forced transfer of the Arab
population in Palestine began even before Israel received its independence in
1948. The discussions evolved into a
master plan for the massive expulsion of Palestinians, which was known as Plan
Delat. Pappe notes that the Israeli
Foreign Ministry created the myth that the Palestinians became refugees because
their leaders told them to leave Palestine before the “Arab armies invaded and
kicked out the Jews.”
The
continued violence in Gaza and the renewed violence on the West Bank points to
a dark future for the Middle East, particularly for Israel, Lebanon, and the
Palestinian community. Israel has become
increasingly isolated in the international community, and the ultra nationalism
of the right wing is increasingly dominating Israeli politics. For the past thirty years, the Israelis have
hidden behind false gestures of support for a two-state solution and now the
possibility of a cease fire in Gaza in order to maintain military and economic
support from the United States. Sadly,
it is working, and Israel shows no interest in pursuing any alternative to an
endless war.
September 1, 2024
The Israeli army launched its
biggest operation in the occupied West Bank in over two decades early on 28
August, raiding Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas with hundreds of troops and
launching airstrikes on the three cities, considered major hotbeds of resistance
in the territory.
The Israeli army announced in a
statement early on Wednesday that its forces “have now begun an operation to
counter terrorism” in Jenin and Tulkarem. Israeli forces are also operating in
the Faraa camp near Tubas.
Military sources told the Times of
Israel that the operation is expected to last several days.
“We need to deal with the threat
exactly as we deal with terror infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary
evacuation of Palestinian civilians and any other step needed. This is a war in
every sense,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said via social media.
“Iran is working to establish a
terror front against Israel in [the West Bank], according to the model it used
in Lebanon and Gaza, by funding and arming terrorists and smuggling advanced
weapons from Jordan,” he added.
Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth
said that Israel is planning the forced evacuation of West Bank neighborhoods
as part of the operation. “The process will likely be long,” the daily’s
correspondent, Yoav Zeyton, said.
Israel’s Kan channel reported that
the operation is the largest since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, which
took place in the occupied West Bank during the Second Intifada. It will
reportedly involve thousands of soldiers.
Tel Aviv has dubbed the operation
“Camps of Summer,” targeting the refugee camps in the occupied West Bank,
including Tulkarem’s Nour Shams camp, the Jenin camp, and the Faraa camp.
“Terrorists in the northern West
Bank – The gates of hell have opened. Either you surrender or you die,” said
the Hebrew Channel 14 military correspondent Hallel Bitt.
The operation was launched after a
blast in Tel Aviv last week, which was claimed by Hamas and the Palestinian
Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement.
At least 10 Palestinians have been
killed and several others injured.
At least three were killed in a
drone strike on a vehicle southeast of Jenin, and another four were killed in a
drone strike on the Faraa camp south of Tubas, according to WAFA news agency.
Others were killed by Israeli gunfire during clashes.
Israeli forces have bulldozed the
roads leading to several major hospitals in Jenin and Tulkarem and have
threatened to raid the Khalil Suleiman Governmental Hospital in Jenin.
“The occupation forces are imposing
a siege on medical institutions in the city, as they have blocked roads to Ibn
Sina Hospital with earth mounds, and besieged the Martyr Khalil Suleiman
Hospital and the headquarters of the Red Crescent,” said Jenin governor Kamal
Abu al-Rub.
Meanwhile, several Palestinian
resistance factions are confronting Israeli troops across the three cities
targeted by the massive Israeli raid.
“We have named the battle being
fought by the heroes of Saraya Al-Quds on the combat axes in the West Bank as
‘The Horror of the Camps,’ where the enemy has mobilized its forces in search
of an image of victory after its failure over the past 10 months in confronting
the fighters of our people in Gaza and the West Bank,” the PIJ’s Quds Brigades
said.
“With God’s help, our fighters are
ready and will make the enemy taste the horror of the camps, and their soldiers
will know the hell that awaits them,” it added.
The Tulkarem and Jenin branches of
the Quds Brigades said on Wednesday morning that their fighters were engaged in
fierce battles with the Israeli army in the two cities. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades also took part in confronting Israeli forces in Jenin.
“Our fighters are confronting the
invading occupation forces in Al-Faraa camp and are showering the enemy forces
and military vehicles in the Beirut axis with heavy volleys of bullets,” the
Quds Brigades’ Tubas Brigade said.
The Tulkarem Brigade said its
fighters “targeted the [Israeli] snipers’ positions entrenched inside a house
in Nour Shams Camp and showered them with bullets, achieving direct hits.”
No comments:
Post a Comment