Jenin Invasion Day 2: Israeli forces attack hospitals

Adam Horowitz
Mondoweiss
Tue, 04 Jul 2023 18:15 UTC

© Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images

Israeli forces fired tear gas inside of a hospital in the West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday, July 4, 2023, that injured 125 people as a two-day raid on the city continued, Doctors Without Borders said.

More than 36 hours after it began, Israeli troops are still besieging the camp and have reportedly attacked nearby hospitals.

Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp entered their second day of Israeli invasion on Tuesday, July 4. More than 36 hours after the invasion began, Israeli troops are still besieging the camp, enforcing closures on entrances and exits around the refugee camp, which lies in the heart of Jenin city in the northern West Bank.

According to local sources, at around 7:40 pm local time (5:40 pm GMT) Israeli forces attacked the area around the Ibn Sina hospital near the camp, where a number of injured Palestinians are being treated, and where locals from the camp have evacuated. Video footage showed Israeli military trucks entering the vicinity of the hospital, while the Ministry of Health said that troops stormed the hospital.

In a second hospital in Jenin, at the governmental hospital, the health ministry said Israeli troops also stormed the hospital and began firing towards people, causing three injuries, two of which were reported to be serious.

"This aggression is a violation of all international laws and norms, Dr. Mai al-Kailah, the minister of health said in a statement. She added that since Israel's invasion of the camp began early Monday, its troops have attacked three Palestinian hospitals in Jenin.

Meanwhile, inside the refugee camp, local journalist Mohammad Abed told Mondoweiss that "confrontations are persisting between Israeli forces and armed youth inside the camp," adding that confrontations are also taking place near the entrance to the camp, and near the "cinema" circle in Jenin city.

In addition to engaging in gunfights with Israeli forces, resistance groups in the camp have also heavily employed the use of homemade bombs and explosives to target Israeli military convoys raiding the camp. Abed added that youth have also been throwing homemade explosives toward Israeli troops surrounding the camp.

As of Tuesday evening local time, the death toll in Jenin rose to 11 Palestinians, which, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, included at least four minors. The health ministry added that it has treated 120 people for injuries as a result of the raid, 20 of whom are in serious and critical condition.

The most recent casualty was announced at 6:40pm local time (4:40 pm GMT), when the 11th Palestinian succumbed to wounds sustained in the head by Israeli fire. The identity of the person had not yet been revealed by the ministry.

The other 10 Palestinians who have been killed in Jenin since Monday have been identified as:

• Samih Faris Abu Aloufa, 20
• Hussam Mohammad Abu Dhiba, 18
• Ows Hani Hanoun, 19
• Nour al-Din Hussam Marshoud, 16
• Mohammad Muhannad al-Shami, 23
• Ahmad Mohammad Amer, 21
• Majdi Younis Ararawi, 17
• Ali Hani al-Ghoul, 17
• Mustafa Emad Qasem, 16
• Odai Ibrahim Khamayseh, 22

Outside of Jenin, two Palestinians have been killed. On Monday morning, July 3rd, Israeli forces shot and killed a young Palestinian man near the town of al-Bireh in the Ramallah area while protesting Israel's invasion of Jenin.

On Tuesday afternoon, a Palestinian was shot and killed after allegedly carrying out a car ramming and stabbing in Tel Aviv. Israeli media identified him as Hassan Khalila, 23, from al-Samu' in Hebron. Seven Israelis were injured in the attack, though no deaths were reported. Hamas claimed Khalila as one of its members, saying that he carried out the car-ramming and stabbing in response to the Israeli invasion of Jenin.

© Mamoun Wazwaz/APAimages

Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli forces following a demonstration in the West Bank city of Hebron protesting the second day of the military operation in Jenin, on July 4, 2023.

Protests against the Israeli invasion in Jenin have broken out across Gaza and the West Bank, with demonstrations reported in Gaza City, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Hebron, Jericho, and Nablus.

In the West Bank, Israeli forces suppressed Palestinian protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition. On Monday evening, Israeli forces fired tear gas heavily into the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem following protests in the camp. Israeli forces also suppressed protests on the main road of Bethlehem on Monday and Tuesday. According to local reports, at least two Palestinians were injured with lie ammunition during protests in the al-Bireh area of Ramallah on Tuesday.

Exodus from the camp

Since the Israeli invasion began early Monday morning at around 1 a.m., Israeli forces have carried out several airstrikes on the camp, in addition to the ground invasion being conducted by over a thousand Israeli troops and hundreds of armored military vehicles.

On Monday night at around 9:00 pm local time (7:00 pm GMT), videos began surfacing of Palestinians fleeing the camp on foot in large numbers. Some videos showed Israeli jeeps calling out over the loudspeakers for the civilians to raise their hands in the air as they exited the camp.

Some reports claimed that Israeli forces ordered Palestinians in the camp to leave, giving them a two-hour window before renewed airstrikes. Other reports indicated that many of the families were fleeing simply out of fear for their lives after witnessing the level of destruction wreaked on the camp on Monday.

According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, more than 3,000 Palestinians have evacuated the camp over the past two days. The Red Crescent estimated the number to be around 500 families. For reference, the Jenin refugee camp is home to around 15,000 Palestinian refugees, according to camp activists.

© Sarah Wilkinson/Twitter

Videos circulating on social media showed the Palestinian refugees who fled their homes gathering at local hospitals to seek refuge. Other videos that went viral showed Israeli forces firing tear gas at men, women, and children as they were evacuating the camp.

Palestinians described the scenes coming out of the camp as reminiscent of the Nakba in 1948, when Palestinian refugees - including the forefathers of those in the Jenin camp - were forced out of their homelands in historic Palestine by Zionist militias.

Israel claims near victory in Jenin, Netanyahu says not a 'one-time thing'

On Tuesday evening local time, Israeli officials were releasing statements to the media that seemed to indicate that the end of the operation in Jenin could be near. When the operation began, it was intentionally described by Israeli officials as an "open-ended" operation, with the goal of destroying "terrorist infrastructure" in the camp.

At around 6:30 pm local time (4:30 pm GMT), the Times of Israel reported Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as saying "in the past two years it had become a factory for terror. In the past two days, this ended."

"We cut off the weapons manufacturing process, captured thousands of bombs, destroyed dozens of production sites, workshops and explosives labs," he continued. "We will reach a situation where we can move everywhere... with a squad and not an entire brigade."

Around the same time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israeli forces were "completing the mission" in Jenin, adding that "our wide scale action in Jenin is not a one-time thing."

"We will continue [to operate] as necessary to root out terrorism. We will not allow Jenin to go back to being a hotbed of terror," he said.

© Getty

Residents of the Jenin refugee camp evacuate under threat of Israeli bombing, June 3, 2023.

Comment:

Once again, the U.S. gives Israel its unqualified support. From Al Jazeera:

The United States' unwavering support for Israel has enabled and emboldened the right-wing Israeli government's escalating violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, analysts say.

As Israeli forces targeted the densely populated Jenin refugee camp with air attacks and ground raids involving hundreds of troops on Monday, the White House again underscored what it called Israel's "right to defend" itself.

"We support Israel's security and right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups," the White House National Security Council said in a brief statement.

Experts say that response reflects US President Joe Biden's unwillingness to rein in his country's top ally in the Middle East despite a pledge to centre human rights in US foreign policy - and as concerns around the scale of the Israeli attack in Jenin are mounting.

"I think we will continue to see - as has happened in the past - the US administration run cover for the Israelis and let them get away with doing whatever they want," Daniel Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project think tank, told Al Jazeera in a television interview on Monday.

The Biden administration doesn't want the situation in the West Bank to blow up, but it won't risk its relationship with Israel, Levy said. "And that's why in particular things have gotten so bad."

[...]

Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a US policy fellow at Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, said the US policy on the conflict keeps getting worse.

"The Biden administration has leaned into its role as a complicit enabler of the Israeli occupation to the point it has all but abandoned even symbolic talking points of 'supporting a two-state solution'; or calls for calm," Kenney-Shawa told Al Jazeera in an email.

"The US has shown, implicitly and explicitly, that it fully endorses Israel's actions no matter the consequences and that it holds Israel on a pedestal that exempts it from the same human rights norms and international standards that Washington holds the rest of the world to."