On Thursday 3rd October, in the evening, the Israeli military bombed the Tulkarm refugee camp, in the North-East of the West Bank, killing at least 18 Palestinians in a single blast. The attack targeted a popular local café in the al-Hamam neighbourhood, also destroying the apartments above it and murdering the family of four that lived there, including two young children.
The bombing was carried out by an F16 jet, a war plane able to fly extremely quickly and take its target by surprise – which also meant the military was able to use a large missile, instantly wrecking the area and burying victims under heavy rubble, as well as dismembering the bodies.
Rescuers from the Civil Defense Team and Palestinian medical crews reported struggling to look for survivors under the wreckage, and finding many unidentifiable body parts that were transferred in boxes to the hospital.
In just a few days, Palestinians were already planning to commemorate the massacre
of the Nour Shams refugee camp that occurred in Tulkarem on October 22 last year, in which 12 Palestinians were killed, but they did not know that the Israeli occupation would commit a new massacre with such horror just before.
One American activist currently working in the West Bank commented: “The scenes were reminiscent of the genocide still raging in Gaza. In one video posted immediately after the bombing, you see a man’s lifeless body hanging from the building. My group was supposed to be going to Nour Shams tomorrow [Saturday] to distribute aid to the camp but now we can’t because the situation is too unsafe for us. This attack has been devastating.”
While attacks from both the Israeli military and Israeli settlers have been constant in the area since last year and before, this massacre marks a worrying turn as it is the first bombing carried out by a fighter jet in the West Bank since the Second Intifada that lasted from 2002-2005, as well as the deadliest single attack there in over twenty years.
This comes after months of Israeli harassment targeting the Tulkarem refugee camp with raids, strikes and sieges, particularly intensifying in the month of August, which saw a large-scale military operation targeting both Tulkarem and Jenin. Strikes on Tulkarm tend to be particularly murderous, as this camp is home to 25,000 Palestinian refugees.
F16 jets are central to the genocide Israel is leading in Gaza, where scenes like the one seen in Tulkarem on Thursday are daily occurrences. In Gaza, as in the West Bank, refugee camps are the prime targets of Israeli raids where the primary objective is annihilating Palestinians and rendering their land inhabitable. The Israeli strategy remains one of total destruction as a preamble to colonial expansion on stolen land.
There have already been at least 701 Palestinian casualties in the West Bank since October 7th 2023, mostly caused by the Israeli army – the rest by settlers who are often assisted and directly protected by them. If Israel continues to escalate in these areas, this number is likely to go up exponentially in the next few months, furthering the total genocide of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank.
