Jenin, occupied the West Bank – A crowd of people gathered to look at two massive armored bulldozers scolded in Jenin’s refugee camp, tearing the asphalt to open a path for three Israeli tanks.
“This is the first time that I have seen a reservoir with my own eyes,” said a young man, his voice a mixture of fear and disbelief, while the sun was sleeping on one of the camp entries on Sunday .
Before him, two massive bulldozers rumbled forward, destroying more road below. The refugee camp, almost emptied after weeks of implacable attacks, was preparing for another military foray.
Ahmed, born in Jenin in 2003 at the height of the second intifada, had already attended military incursions. But Israeli tanks had not been seen in the streets of Jenin since 2002, when this uprising began, and it seems that the Israelis plan to linger.
Ahmed stood among a group of young men and boys on Haifa Street, near one of the camp entries.
“It will not be easy for them to stay,” he mumbled, while the heavy machinery continued his work.
For more than an hour, journalists, the inhabitants and a neighboring Israeli military Jeep observed in silence while the bulldozers dismantled the roundabout on Haifa Street. Then, while the last pieces of debris were dismissed, the engines of the Merkava tanks rumbled and the armored vehicles began their advance in the city.
A young man standing nearby, when asked if he expected immediate resistance, shook his head. “I don’t think so. There is no one left in the camp, not even the fighters.”
Reservoirs and stones
Nevertheless, while the tanks pressed towards the refugee camp, a familiar scene took place.
Groups of Palestinian young people and children, armed with stones, launched them in the tanks that were approaching. In response, the operator of one of the tanks directly targeted his cannon and his turret to the crowd of journalists and spectators. A few moments later, the air filled with tear gas, dispersing the young men and children who had gathered.
Israel has carried out almost daily raids in the occupied West Bank since 2022; Its indicated objective being the weakening of armed Palestinian resistance groups which are carried out there. Since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, Israel has increased the deadly force it has used in the West Bank, using helicopters, drones and now tanks.
This last intensification of violence in Jenin began on January 21, but Israeli forces also attacked elsewhere, including Qabatiya and Tulkarem. On Sunday, the Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that he had asked soldiers to prepare for a long stay in the camps released for the coming years, preventing residents from returning and preventing terrorism to repel ”.
Among those who watch the tanks disappear in the camp, there was a young man who had been moved a few weeks earlier. He stood in silence, his face tense with uncertainty. “Again, we don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “I have a house in which stay at the moment, but many people have nowhere to sleep tonight.”
Salvage of personal effects
According to the United Nations Agency for Relief and Works for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), more than 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly moved to their houses in the West Bank, and Israeli forces refuse to allow them to come back.
The blockade at the Jenin camp follows weeks of siege, during which the forces of initial Palestinian authority, then the Israeli army imposed serious restrictions on the movement, the water and electricity cup at the camp .
Many families have been forced to flee suddenly, leaving their personal effects, including a group of women sailing on the streets destroyed and filled with Jenin mud.
Gathered at one of the entrances to the camp, they planned to return home and grasp part of what they had been forced to leave.
Tired faces, muddy shoes and surrounded by the bags they were going to use to collect their personal effects, they waited to let pass.
But they failed. The Israeli soldiers who had forced them to flee their houses prevented them from going through control points that they had put in place using the rubble they had created by destroying the streets of the camp.
“The officer told us yesterday that we could come back today, but now he refuses to let ourselves come in,” said one of the women, the obvious frustration in his voice.
The women did not want to abandon and start to descend another access road, overshadowed by the rubble and the destruction that filled the narrow and muddy streets. They were warned by trying again, with a disturbing word: “Snipers!”
Just the clothes on her back
“We will come back one day,” said Halima Zawahidi, his contrasting smile with tired eyes and a slow and mixed approach caused by her lung cancer.
Halima was born in Jenin’s refugee camp and lived all her life there, but she was forced to leave her home by Israeli soldiers on January 22. She fled violence, with nothing more than clothes on her back.
The 63-year-old man can very well recall jets flying over his head while the noise of the shot filled the air, balls flying over their heads.
Israeli forces killed 10 people that day, giving the tone for the coming weeks.
Now, Halima, his brothers, sisters and nephews – eight people in total – are all piled up in a room of an educational center for the deaf, which has become a refuge for some 16 families expelled with force of the refuge camp.
Other families have been forced to disperse through the city of Jenin, to stay with the family or in the other spaces they were able to find.
But, Halima said, it is the most important and vicious Israeli attack she has lived in a camp that has seen more than enough Israeli raids in recent decades.
The Israelis will remain, she added, because she believes she wants to expel all those who live in the camp, as is obvious of all destruction.
Halima hopes that his house is still partially standing; The windows and doors were exploded and several walls were seriously damaged or fell.
In addition to the regular Israeli raids that residents of the refugee camp have undergone for years, “we were besieged for 45 days,” said Halima.
“There was no electricity, no water, no roads, shots. We lived in the dark in the camp, “she added, referring to a raid by the forces of the Palestinian authority who besieged the Palestinians in the camp before the Israeli invasion.
Halima has no idea of his return home, just like none of the others moved to Jenin.
Israel continues to violate what would have previously been considered red lines, but with little railing and an administration from the United States which seems to actively support its actions, it faces immediate consequences.
Many observers believe that Israel’s ultimate objective is to depopulate the West Bank of its Palestinian population, but in Gaza, where Israel has triggered all the strength of its soldiers for 15 months, a similar objective has so far failed.
But even without strategy, the military force of Israel directed towards the people of Jenin has turned the lives of thousands, endless in sight.
“What are they going to do?” Asked a resident, Jameela. “Destroy the whole camp?” Do they want to make a hole in the country and put us in it?
