ShareJENIN: The Zionist army on Wednesday declared the end of a large-scale military operation in the occupied West Bank that killed 12 Palestinians and one Zionist soldier over the previous two days. The raid, involving hundreds of forces, drone strikes and armored bulldozers, targeted the northern West Bank city of Jenin, a center for multiple armed Palestinian groups. Thousands of Palestinian mourners joined a Jenin funeral procession for those killed, where militants fired gunshots into the air and the crowd chanted “With our souls and blood, we will sacrifice for you, martyr!”
Amid the days of violence, a Palestinian in Tel Aviv on Tuesday wounded seven Zionists in a car ramming and stabbing attack before an armed civilian shot him dead. Overnight, the Zionist entity carried out air strikes on targets inside the blockaded Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian coastal enclave, with no deaths reported. As the army pulled out of Jenin, much of the city’s crowded refugee camp was left charred and in rubble from the incursion which displaced at least 3,000 residents.
“All this bloodshed is considered a sacrifice for the homeland and for our cause. All this destruction can be fixed, God willing,” a resident from Jenin camp told AFP as crowds of people holding Palestinian and militant flags marched through the city for the funerals. The camp, a small urban area home to about 18,000 people, has long been a stronghold of militant groups including Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Among the dead Palestinians was 16-year-old Abdulrahman Hassan Ahmed Hardan, who was shot in the head by Zionist forces while unarmed on Tuesday, according to the non-government group Defense for Children International.
Islamic Jihad praised its fighters Wednesday for what it labelled a “heroic” victory and vowed that, for the Zionist entity, “Jenin and its camp will remain a terror that haunts you”. Jenin residents inspected the widespread destruction in the camp, where gaping holes were torn into buildings, cars were crushed and the ground was littered with bullet casings and broken glass. The Palestinians labelled the escalation an act of “open war against the people of Jenin”. The Zionist entity has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War and built many settlements, considered illegal under international law, in the area Palestinians regard as the core of the independent state they are seeking.
Excluding annexed east Jerusalem, the territory is home to about 490,000 Zionist living in settlements — a number that hard-right nationalist groups within Netanyahu’s coalition government are working to increase. The Palestinians want the Zionist entity to withdraw from all land seized in 1967 and to dismantle all settlements. The Jenin clashes sparked renewed international concern, and the United Nations decried the violence in both Tel Aviv and Jenin. “The killing, maiming and the destruction of property must stop,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said on Tuesday.
Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, called the Tel Aviv attack “an initial response to crimes against our people in the Jenin camp”. Medical charity Doctors Without Borders condemned Zionist forces for firing tear gas inside Jenin’s Khalil Suleiman hospital. Palestinian health minister Mai al-Kaila accused the army of shooting at Palestinians in the Jenin public hospital courtyard, saying this had marked a moment when “(the Zionist entity’s) aggression reached its climax”. – AFP
