The Palestinian capital of JENIN:
On Wednesday, after Israel finished an exceptionally harsh 48-hour raid, Palestinians returned to the scarred streets of Jenin to begin mending the 75-year-old refugee camp.
Residents, many of whom had hunkered down at home or evacuated as a precaution, walked grimly and purposefully across sodden gullies of rubble churned up by armoured bulldozers.
Israel sent hundreds of commandos into the refugee camp in Jenin on Monday, backed up by combat drones, after months of escalating confrontations with militants in the city. The goal of the “Home and Garden” operation, as stated by its commanders, was to destroy Palestinian “militant” infrastructure.
Thank God they were unsuccessful. Mutasem Estatia, a father of six, told Reuters that after two nights apart, including one night in Israeli captivity, “the youths are fine, the families are fine, and the camp is fine.”
There were twelve male Palestinians slain, including five who were determined to be combatants with Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Several hundred Palestinians were hurt. The army, which lost a member of its ranks in the fighting, claimed to have solely targeted active aggressors.
About 150 suspected militants were apprehended by Israeli forces, and the army claimed to have destroyed an armoury hidden beneath a mosque as well as a command centre and caches of weapons and roadside bombs.
Read Israel’s raids and airstrikes in Jenin have been roundly criticised by Pakistan.
As for the damage, “there are 12 martyrs and we are proud of them, but we expected more damage given the raid’s scale,” Estatia stated.
A return to Jenin and the rest of the occupied West Bank, where Palestinians hope to establish a state, seems imminent.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Monday that “I’ve made clear that this broad action in Jenin is not a one-off” to Channel 14 TV. “It will be the beginning of regular incursions and continuous control of the territory, and that’s why there’ll be no safe haven for terrorism.”
Overnight, while the forces were pulling out, Israel said it was hit by a barrage of missiles from the Gaza Strip, another Palestinian region. No deaths were reported after rockets were intercepted and Israeli aircraft hit Hamas sites in Gaza.
On Monday, a Palestinian slammed his car into pedestrians in Tel Aviv and proceeded on a stabbing rampage, wounded eight people before he was shot dead, a further example of violence spreading from Jenin. He was a member of Hamas, they said.
We warn our enemies that they can no longer act aggressively towards our people without suffering the consequences. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh issued a statement saying, “Today, Jenin is teaching you a lesson in resistance and steadfastness.”
In this tenement-style camp, many of Israel’s founding war refugees still reside. Support for resistance groups like Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which preach Israel’s destruction, has been fueled by poverty, unsuccessful peace diplomacy, and political drift.
