Once again, Israel says it is preparing to lower the curtain on another military operation. He has already indicated "being satisfied with the objectives" that he began at dawn on Monday in the Yeni refugee camp, in the north of the occupied West Bank, where Beniamín Netanyahu told the press from a roadblock that his government is "completing the mission” against the local militias.
But as with every depiction of Israeli-Palestinian violence, the play is not over for Palestinian civilians, in this case the more than 14,000 residents of Jenin, whose home has been leveled by the largest Israeli attack since the second intifada. (2000-2005). And this is how the Hebrew prime minister himself advanced it: “I can say that our large-scale action in Jenin is not a one-time thing. We will continue to operate to eradicate terrorism."
For a year and a half, the raids by the Israeli army on the camp, a historic stronghold of the Palestinian armed “resistance”, have been a regular occurrence. But this operation called House and Garden has multiplied that hell, with unprecedented bombardments with drones and the deployment of a thousand soldiers, 150 armored vehicles and steamrollers, which have caused the death of twelve Palestinians and injured a hundred, of whom 20 are in serious condition, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent and Ministry of Health.
The accounts that Israel takes militarily are more than a thousand weapons seized, the dismantling of a well used as a weapons store and the destruction of explosive devices. “Over the past two years, Jenin has turned into a terror factory. In the last two days this has ended”, defined the Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Galant, on Tuesday afternoon. Last night the death of an Israeli soldier was reported in the military operation in the place.
However, the Palestinian vision on the ground given to the Turkish agency Anadolu by the mayor of Jenin, Nidal Al Obaidi, is the opposite: “The humanitarian situation in Jenin is catastrophic. What is happening is like an earthquake. It takes us to remember the days of the Naqba”. This "catastrophe", as the Naqba is translated in Arabic, has evoked for Palestinians the days in which more than 700,000 of them were forcibly transferred after the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. Because it is the image offered by the operation in Jenin: the repetition of entire families leaving the camp, passing in front of Israeli soldiers with their arms raised, to escape air strikes and ground clashes.
Suha Ali Hussein, a resident of the place, described to the Afp agency that "I was in the kitchen when a bomb exploded." After taking the best shelter possible “in an inner room”, the Red Crescent helped his family to move to a shelter.
The organization claims to have evacuated some 500 families, that is, 3,000 people, although Al Obaidi later stated that the number of displaced was "not less than 4,000". As assistance, some volunteers from Nablus, a neighboring city of Jenin, have been collecting water and food to alleviate the destruction of the electricity and water networks in the camp. The traumas carried by the civilians who have had to leave go back not only to 1948, but also to 2002, when Jenin was the scene of one of the bloodiest battles of the second intifada. On that occasion, the Israeli army declared the area a closed military area and ten days of fighting led to the deaths of at least 52 Palestinians (an estimated half were civilians) and 23 Israeli soldiers, with more than 400 houses destroyed.
Jihad Hasan, a 63-year-old refugee who at the time suffered leg injuries from rocket splinters, told Reuters that the difference is that today the Israeli forces have "stronger and heavier artillery." “Now they use drones, when before they used Apache (helicopters). But the Palestinian people are strong, Netanyahu will not overcome the Palestinian will and he will not gain anything."
Another aspect pushed to the limit by the Israeli operation has been health care. Local rescue workers have alleged difficulties in accessing the camp and caring for the wounded, allegations echoed by the World Health Organization, but denied by Israel. Jenin's hospitals have been overwhelmed and, as if that were not enough, the firing of tear gas by Israeli troops has sometimes interrupted emergency care, according to Doctors Without Borders.
In this scenario, violence begets violence. As reported by the Israeli army late on Tuesday, it "successfully" intercepted five rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, which set off the sirens in Sederot. Also yesterday, a 20-year-old Palestinian from the southern West Bank was involved in a hit-and-run attack in Tel Aviv. Identified as a member of Hamas, he wounded at least eight people, including a pregnant woman who lost his baby, before armed civilians killed him. A bloody attack that Hamas has described as "heroic revenge for the military operation in Jenin".
