ShareTULKARM, Palestine: Amid the warren of Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm, in the occupied West Bank, armed Palestinian militants wander around and greet passers-by from the ruins left by a Zionist raid. The city, home to two refugee camps, shows the scars of the increasing number of Zionist military operations in the West Bank targeting militant strongholds.
Zionist raids were not uncommon before the recent escalation in the decades-long occupation of Palestine, but the ongoing Zionist attack on Gaza has been accompanied by a marked intensification. The Zionist army says it is “conducting night-time counterterrorism operations to apprehend suspects, many of whom are members of the terrorist organization Hamas”, and that there have been “over 700 attempted attacks” in the West Bank since the start of the war.
But Said, a 23-year-old Palestinian militant in Nur Shams, said the operations were an attempt at “revenge” against Palestinians. “They can’t get over what happened on Oct 7, they didn’t anticipate it,” he told AFP, weapon in hand.
The young militant is a member of the “Tulkarm Brigade”, an armed Palestinian organization that brings together various militant factions. Since the start of the war in Gaza, Zionist forces have conducted eight raids in Tulkarm, including four in December, a militant in the camp told AFP on condition of anonymity.
On Oct 20, the Zionist army announced the death of a border guard after a confrontation with armed men in the camp. More than 330 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Zionist army or settlers since Oct 7, including at least 35 in Tulkarm, according to an AFP tally based on figures from the Palestinian health ministry. Tulkarm, in the northern West Bank, sits directly on the border with the Zionist entity.
‘Upside down’
At a bend in an alley, Assoum, a 26-year-old militant, was navigating his vehicle between piles of rubble. “Nothing will stop us,” he said, adding that support for the brigade was widespread. “The entire camp is a battalion.”
Said and Assoum are both former prisoners of the Zionist entity and said they wanted to “bring an end to the occupation”. On Dec 26, while demolishing the home of a Palestinian that Zionists claimed was a wanted individual, the Zionist army caused severe damage to the home of Yousef Zendiq, 50. “My house is uninhabitable” and “my clothes are in the car” said the father of four. With nowhere to live, he set up a tent.
A week ago, the Zionist army raided the home of one of his relatives, Sabhia Zendiq, 65, and arrested her along with her husband, before releasing them. When she returned home, she found her home turned upside down. Zionist soldiers “entered the house and came back with a bag of children’s toys, including some plastic guns, and declared ‘you are terrorists’”, she said. “They want revenge,” her husband said. “What they can’t do in Gaza they do here.”
‘A little Gaza’
Sitting amid the rubble, Tamim Khreis, a school principal, was sipping coffee with friends. The 42-year-old charged that the Zionists “want to destroy people, displace them and break their resilience”. Sitting with Khreis, his friend Abdelkader Hamdan interrupted to say: “Before, (the Zionists) drove them out,” referring to the Nakba, which is Arabic for catastrophe, of 1948 when the establishment of the Zionist entity forced 760,000 Palestinians from their homes. “Today they are pursuing them in the place where they were expelled to,” Hamdan said.
On Al-Manshiya street, all that remained of a two-story building that once housed a kindergarten and a wedding hall were children’s drawings on the outer walls and a stone plaque with the logo of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. Saleh, 10, was playing nearby with his friends. “It’s a nursery school, what do they want with it?” he asked. “Al-Manshiya is like a little Gaza.”
