fetalThe withdrawal of the Israeli occupation forces from the city and camp of Jenin in the northern West Bank resulted in massive destruction of the infrastructure and public and private property in the city. It also revealed – on the other hand – a great and remarkable image of solidarity among the citizens and residents.
Since the first hours of the Israeli army withdrawing its vehicles from the city’s streets, groups on social media have been calling for people to head to Jenin and help the afflicted residents, amid calls from young people to help those whose homes were damaged and to restore life to the city and the camp.
On the ground, the city center was crowded with bulldozers, tractors, and trucks that had come from all over the governorate’s villages to begin work on repairing the streets and removing piles of rubble that had piled up in front of the doors of shops and on the sides of the roads.
Personal initiative
At the entrances to the city, vehicles belonging to citizens from the villages south and west of Jenin were forming crowded queues, waiting their turn to arrive and begin work in the city center and neighborhoods.
The initiative was met with widespread interaction and welcome in the Palestinian street, and social media sites were filled with pictures and videos of bulldozers providing “fazza” to Jenin, and some called it “the bulldozers’ fazza.”
Jaba’ was the first town to participate in the initiative, and a number of young men left with their own bulldozers. Rabah Abu Aoun, the initiative’s coordinator, said, “Since Friday morning, the town’s young men gathered with their vehicles, and we brought 5 bulldozers, 13 agricultural tractors, in addition to water tanks.”
Abu Aoun and his group began relief work at the Cinema Roundabout in the center of Jenin, one of the squares most exposed to Israeli destruction, while another part of the group moved inside the Jenin camp, which witnessed extensive battles, to try to move the rubble of the houses that the occupation had blown up, especially in the “Al-Hawashin” and “Al-Damj” neighborhoods.
Abu Aoun told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “The idea was an initiative from us, the owners of the bulldozers and trucks, out of personal motivation and with the aim of standing with the people of Jenin, because the damage was great. This is not the first time, as I went down during the previous raids with two of my friends, and we worked in the camp square and the Al-Zahraa neighbourhood adjacent to the camp entrance, with our own bulldozers, and without any coordination with any responsible party.”
He believes that the extent of the damage in this invasion was greater and required broader intervention, which led to people rushing to participate and provide logistical, moral and sometimes material assistance and support.
“For 10 days, the occupation bulldozers destroyed everything they passed, not to mention the bombing of homes and electricity poles. We saw what the occupation bulldozers were doing, and we felt real pain. This city has collected our memories from the different stages of our lives; its markets, streets, and shops, all of that concerns us,” says Abu Aoun.
He added, “During the invasion, the situation in my town (Jabaa) was very gloomy. People were in great distress and anxiety. In the end, we are one people, and the sons of one governorate, and everything that happens in the city affects us in one way or another.”
Obstacles to the expansion of panic
Participants in this “panic” say, “If the capabilities were available, we would have reached Tulkarm city as well, and bulldozers and trucks would have moved to remove the rubble from the Nur Shams and Tulkarm camps, and to repair its streets that were affected by what Jenin also suffered, but the security situation surrounding the northern West Bank governorates prevented the young initiators from reaching there.”
Abu Aoun says, “The occupation’s goal is to strike at popular cohesion and the incubator in all cities. They want to divide us and turn us into isolated areas, where each one of us thinks only of his own personal interest, but they will not succeed in doing so.”
As for the member of the Jaba’ Municipality, Abbas Ghanem, he said, “We saw the enthusiasm of the youth to participate in the field relief work, repairing the streets, and removing the rubble. We tried to coordinate the efforts, especially with the presence of a large number of volunteers, and in order to avoid congestion and conflict in the work, we spoke with the civil defense in the city and with the Jenin Municipality, and we informed them of the number of vehicles that moved from the town towards the city.”
Welcome from Jenin
Mohsen Hathnawi, a resident of the eastern neighborhood that was extensively destroyed by Israel, said he was surprised to see a bulldozer whose owner volunteered to remove the rubble around his house. He had come from the village of Yamoun, west of the governorate. The driver was a 22-year-old man. Hathnawi said that no one had asked him to come to the eastern neighborhood or to participate in removing the destruction from Jenin, and that he had come out of an internal motive.
As for the citizen Imad Zayed, he says that the scene of the crowding of bulldozers and volunteer machines coming from the villages and towns surrounding Jenin gave the people of the city and its camp the impression that the occupation had failed to achieve its goal of leaving Jenin destroyed and uninhabitable, and that Israel had failed to break it and left it in a difficult state.
The picture was very difficult in Jenin after the occupation withdrew, but it turned into a beautiful scene with hundreds of young men and boys gathering to participate themselves in removing the harm from it, and returning it to its previous state, full of life and movement.
Imad Zayed, a resident of Jenin, lived under siege for 10 days, and electricity was cut off from his home during the military invasion due to the destruction of the infrastructure. He believes that Jenin is different from other areas because the nature of the city is very close to the countryside, and its people are similar in their dialect and way of life. There is no sense of difference between the city and its surrounding villages and towns, “and this is what created the solidarity that we saw in this panic from the villages and countryside.”
Zayed stresses that “what we saw of the bulldozer lines in the street confirms to Israel that Jenin will not be broken by destruction and its goal of breaking the popular incubator of the resistance will not be achieved, which is what it is trying to do by turning Jenin into ruins.”
According to Jenin Municipality, the occupation destroyed 70% of the city’s streets during the most violent military campaign in the past ten days, where 20 kilometers of streets were bulldozed, and Israel completely burned 10 houses in the camp, as a result of targeting them with “Energa” shells.
The municipality confirmed, in a statement, that its crews alone cannot remove the rubble and repair what was destroyed by the occupation, which requires the assistance of the Civil Defense and the Ministry of Public Works.
