Author: ISM Media - Page 27 - International Solidarity Movement

The Israeli occupation commits new massacres in Jenin Camp, killing 15 Palestinians

A Palestinian woman walking down a small street in Jenin

10 November 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | Jenin

By Diana Khwaelid

On Thursday morning Nov. 10th 2023, the Israeli occupation forces stormed the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.

A military operation that lasted 24 hours was carried out by the Israeli Occupation Forces in the Jenin camp with the aim of arresting some Palestinian militants. Huge military vehicles stormed the camp in the early hours of Thursday morning, around 9:30 AM.

Israeli occupation vehicles, including D9 bulldozers, bulldozed the main streets of the camp, destroyed the camp’s infrastructure, and caused very serious material and human damage.

A child leaning on destroyed pieces of furniture and infrastructure on a street in Jenin. — A child leaning on destroyed pieces of furniture on a damaged street in Jenin

It is noteworthy that during the aggression on Jenin and its camp, the occupation forces detained 4,500 school and kindergarten students in their schools, until the evening hours. They fired shots at Red Crescent ambulances, which led to a paramedic being injured by a bullet in the back. They raided the emergency department at the Jenin Government Hospital, arresting the wounded Mohammed Abu Saraya from inside an ambulance, and destroyed the infrastructure of streets, water, and electricity, in addition to the Martyrs Monument.

15 Palestinians were killed in Jenin during the Storming of the camp, including the child, Mohammed Zayed, 15 years.

The Israeli occupation forces also bombed three Palestinian houses with drones. One of the houses had only women inside. In another house, 8 Palestinians were inside, five of them died and four of them are in a serious health condition.

Burnt pieces of paper and photos in the street

The funeral ceremony of the martyrs began in front of the Jenin government hospital, with a funeral attended by tens of thousands of citizens. The bodies of the martyrs were lifted on the shoulders, while the mourners toured the streets of the city and its camp to their family homes, before praying for them and their health in the mosque of the Jenin camp.

The participants in the funeral chanted slogans condemning the crimes of the occupation and the massacres committed by it in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as some calling for national unity. They also called on the international community to intervene and stand by the defenceless people who are being subjected to constant Israeli aggression, violence, executions and massacres.

A crowd of people in Jenin carrying the body of a martyr

They delivered several speeches condemning the crimes of the occupation and its continuous aggression against the people of Jenin, its camp, villages and towns of the governorate, while stressing that these massacres and terrorism will not dissuade the Palestinian people from resisting and confronting the occupation and the colonialists.

Two attacks in less than 24 hours in Tulkarem Camp

08 November 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | Tulkarm

By Diana Khwaelid

The Israeli occupation is not only committing crimes in Gaza, it continues to commit crimes in the West Bank.

A quick military operation was carried out by Israeli special forces in broad daylight, as they planned an ambush for three young men from the Tulkarm refugee camp, near the eastern neighborhood – the roundabout of the slaughterhouse in the city of Tulkarm.

On Monday evening (6th of October), around 4: 38 PM, Israeli special forces assassinated 3 Palestinian youths inside their car in the eastern neighborhood of Tulkarm city. Another Palestinian was killed later, bringing the number to 4 Palestinians who were in the area.
At least 70-80 live bullets were fired.

The Israeli special forces opened fire at point-blank range on the three young men, and continued firing on the corpses even after the three Palestinians had been killed. 5 other Palestinian civilians who were in the area were also shot, including a 14-year-old boy, whose injury was described as serious.

The Israeli occupation forces were not satisfied with this brutal assassination, and on Tuesday night (7th of November) at 03.00 AM the occupation forces invaded and stormed the Tulkarem refugee camp, with the presence of huge military vehicles, including a D9 type crawler, to bulldoze and sabotage the main roads and streets in the camp, especially in the Balawneh neighborhood.

During a difficult night in the shadow of tension and fear, the occupation forces vandalized the camp’s infrastructure, the main streets and roads leading to the camp, and also targeted the power transformer and the electricity grid. The Israeli occupation forces and its military vehicles shelled two Palestinian homes, the first belonging to the Al-Banna family, and the other belonging to the martyr Azzedine Awad, one of the young men who was assassinated inside by the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces) the day before.

Two shops belonging to family members of the martyr Azzedine Awad were destroyed, and his mother was hit by an Israeli bullet in the face area, although her wound was described as superficial.

Hundreds of Palestinians in Tulkarm camp and the city mourned the four martyrs to their final resting place: Jihad Shehada, 24 years old; Ezzedine Awad, 27 years old; Mo’min Belaoui, 20 years old; Qasem Rogby, 20 years old.

Their parents, friends, and camp residents took a last farewell look at them, and chanted words of anger and national unity as they transported the corpeses of the martyrs to the Al-Salam mosque in the camp to pray for them, and later to the the Nabi cemetery, on the other side of Tulkarm camp. A state of sadness prevails in the Tulkarm refugee camp after the killing of 4 of its young men.

The occupation forces continue to brutally kill Palestinian youth, in the West Bank and Gaza.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of health, 29 Palestinians have been killed in the city of Tulkarem since October 7th, while in the whole of the West Bank there have been more than 160 martyrs during the same period.

Israeli occupation forces arrest Ahed Tamimi

6 November 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | International Women’s Peace Service

Prominent Palestinian activist, Ahed Tamimi, was arrested in her home in the village of Nabi Saleh near Ramallah, in the early hours of today, November 6.

Following the 22-year-old’s arrest, right-wing Israeli media allied with occupation forces and Israeli far-right politicians issued violent calls for her to be punished and her home demolished.

According to initial reports, she was arrested for incitement after her phone was hacked. Her house was ransacked during the arrest, and it is alleged that the soldiers threatened to come back and arrest the rest of her family.

Ahed’s father Bassem was arrested over a week ago at the checkpoint between Ramallah and Nabi Saleh while he was returning home from work. The grounds for his arrest and his location are still not known.

Israel’s far-right Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, posted on Twitter this morning praising the soldiers who carried out the arrest. He accused Ahed of having published a social media post supporting the Nazis, sparking a deluge of hateful calls for her assassination and torture.

Ahed’s mother has denied that her daughter wrote the post she is accused of writing. The soldiers who invaded her home, shared a photo of Ahed as she was taken from her bed, accompanied by deriding comments.

Ahed became well known in 2017 after she was detained for slapping a soldier in a video that went viral. The then 16-year-old said she had hit the soldier after seeing her young cousin shot in the head with a rubber coated steel bullet earlier that day. Ahed was freed in July 2018 after serving eight months in Israeli jail.

Nabi Saleh is a small village of about 600 inhabitants, who have become famous for their peaceful weekly protests against the usurpation of springs on their land by the nearby illegal Halamish settlers.

The protests started in 2010 and were banned by the occupation military in 2016. International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS) teams regularly attended and reported from Nabi Saleh protests over the years together with other international and Israeli activists.

Nabi Saleh is to this day a symbol of brave and uncompromising resistance to the occupation and they have paid a heavy price for that. Six of their young men had their lives cut short by the Israeli occupiers including a two-year-old Mohammad Tamimi (picture below) who was killed in June this year by the spray of Israeli soldiers’ bullets, which also injured his father.

What happened this morning in Nabi Saleh is a part of Israel’s brutal campaign against Palestinians, including a genocidal attack on the population of Gaza and the reign of terror across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Since 7 October, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 150 Palestinians, made daily arrests of around 100 people and put the West Bank into a near-total lockdown, severely restricting peoples’ movements.

Waiting for the sunrise in Susiya: messages from Masafer Yatta

This is a story based on texts exchanged over recent days with an international activist part of a group staying in Masafer Yatta, in occupied Palestine.

They arrived recently in Susiya and they are staying in a homestead which is some distance away from other families living in the area.

About 40 families with 100 people in total live in Susiya spread out over an area of 3km2 (3000 dunum).

I asked her what was going on and she wrote: ‘In Susiya nobody is now able to go out and get food because the roads are closed and if people leave, the settlers will attack. So the Israeli activists have started bringing food parcels.’

As in other villages, inhabitants cannot take animals to pasture and extra food has to be brought in to feed the flock. She sent me a picture of a woman form the host family doing exactly that, as we spoke.

‘Can’t take the sheep out because army and settlers restrict the people to a small area and the settlements are too near. It is not a ‘formal rule’ but the settlers have taken law into their own hands and if people take their sheep outside the narrow area around their homes, settlers will attack. They have done it here. They have beaten our host and his brother who came to visit from Yatta. Army comes while the setters are attacking but they just stand around and do nothing.’

‘We are very close to a dangerous settler road, it is 200 -300 meters away’, she said. I asked her to send me a picture of the road and she responded with the smiley and ‘Do you want me to get killed?’. She sent me a picture and explained ‘We were asked not to go on the road. There are two soldiers watching, so I better not go any closer. Palestinians are now not allowed on this road at all and again, that is the rule the settlers have created and they are enforcing it by beating up people. ’

I asked if settlers were coming to their hosts’ homestead and she responded that both settlers and the soldiers go nearby constantly.

They don’t seem to come on the property when foreign or Israeli activists are around, but one can never be sure.

This morning my friend wrote at 5am and I asked what she was doing up that early. ‘Watching sun rising above Susiya’, she said with a smiley. ‘A woman we are staying with looks at me with haggard face and swollen eyes and says “I haven’t slept since the war started”, so we decided to stay awake overnight in shifts so that the family could get some sleep.’

The family sent their two little girls to stay with relatives in Yatta to keep them safe.

This morning my friend was just finishing her ‘night guard shift’ and was looking forward to a hot taboon bread the hostess was to make and the food brought by the Israeli activists. She sent me the picture of the woman carrying a tray with dough to the taboon oven.

‘The night was OK, I think… a guy checked the place out from a distance at 3am and there were no problems. Haven’t heard bad news from other international teams. From across the valley, they kept an eye on us, to ensure we didn’t stray out of the patch of ground they have decreed is all the pasture this family is entitled to’, and she added ‘I think there are more watchers than sheep’.

Eradicating people from Gaza

The damages after a convoy of ambulances was hit at the entrance of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. From: Palestinian media

The onslaught on Gaza is non-stopping and gaining pace. In the last few days, the attacks from the air, ground and sea have claimed hundreds of lives.

The majority of dead and wounded are women and children. As of November 4, the number of those killed was 9,485 of which 3,900 were children and so were 7,000 of more than 24,000 injured.

It is not hard to imagine that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that many more are buried under the mountains of rubbles of destroyed homes.

Recently the world has witnessed a mass slaughter of people in Jabaliya refugee camp whose ruins continue to be pounded causing more death and injury. On Nov 4, a UN school in Jabaliya camp was bombed, where hundreds were taking shelter hoping to find some safety.

The lack of staff, equipment, medicines and basics like fuel (which Israel is banning from entering the strip), electricity and water, which Israel has disabled and damaged, has led to closure of 16 of 35 Gaza hospitals. In this time of extraordinary demand for medical services, those hospitals which are still operating are on the brink of collapse.

The Nov 4 bombing of the outside areas of Al Quds and Al Naser Children’s’ hospitals will certainly speed up the process of eliminating medical services. On Nov 3 we had a major carnage and bombing of people and ambulances at the gates of the largest Gaza’s hospital Al Shifa, as well as bombings near Al-Quds Hospital and the Indonesian Hospital in Gaza City and North Gaza governorates.

The Israeli occupation is also starving and denying water to the population of Gaza, an action murderous no less than dropping bombs. The lack of fuel also means lack of communication as people cannot charge their phones.

The Israeli government is carrying out a genocide, as many experts and organisations have called (see Raz Segal intervention, JVP appeal), sometimes under the pretext of destroying Hamas, when it is clear that the aim is to destroy the community and “clear” Gaza from its inhabitants (as the calls to nuke Gaza, and the leaked plan to expel all Palestinians from Gaza have proven).

There is no lack of outcries and reminders that attacking schools and hospitals is a war crime but those who have power to stop them and make them account for their deeds, have so far failed to do so.