28 December 2023 | International Solidarity Movement | West Bank
Early this morning, between 1:00 am and 6:00 am, Israeli Occupation Forces invaded several cities across the West Bank. Seven of the eleven Palestinian governorates in the West Bank were invaded in a coordinated attack, the largest since October 7. Clashes were documented in Jenin, Hebron, Qalqilya, and Ramallah, with reports of invasions in Tulkarem, Nablus, and Jericho. Invasion forces stormed the cities, targeting money transfer stations, stating that funds were being funneled from these major cities to Hamas. Many eyewitness reports observed soldiers breaking open safes and, according to The New Arab, stealing at least $2.8 million from these targeted locations after classifying them as having involvement with “terrorism”.
IOF Soldiers in Ramallah steal millions (source: FajerTV)IOF in Qadura Refugee Camp
On the ground ISM members in Ramallah report dozens of army tanks storming and patrolling the streets before direct clashes with Palestinian youth resistance in Al Manara square and in the Qadura refugee camp. Youth were preparing to resist by smashing large rocks to break them up while tanks loaded steel bullets into their assault rifles (steel bullets, as opposed to copper, are intended to be able to penetrate helmets, concrete, and other industrial materials).
Israeli military shell casings vs Palestinian defense weapon
Palestinians fiercely resisted the military invasion for hours, throwing rocks, metal pieces and molotov cocktails at the indestructible tanks. Invasion forces responded with live fire, rubber tipped steel bullets, tear gas, sound grenades, and other explosive devices. This bombardment withstood for several hours, mostly concentrated between 2 and 5 am, resulting in one IOF soldier shot, 14 Palestinians injured, at least 4 of which were with live ammunition, and one Palestinian, named Hazim Al-Qatawi (23), shot and killed.
⭕ Hazem Al-Qatawi ascended to martyrdom as a result of being shot by Ziomist forces during violent confrontations in the center of Ramallah.
Along with bodily harm, this extension of the ongoing occupation has resulted in storefront destruction, shattered car windows, and the street littered with remnants of destruction.
Community cleans up after shop destroyed near Al Manara squareCab in Al Manara
In an age of disinformation, spectacle, and erasure, remembrance is revolutionary. Palestine has a rich 20,000 year history. Amid an ongoing catastrophe in the Holy Land that rivals the nakba in 1948, people in Nablus are keepers of memory.
One such project is the The Cultural Center of the Palestinian Narrative which raises awareness about Palestinian history, including mapping what Palestine was like pre-1948, and archiving witness testimony of ethnic cleansing.
Interactive Palestinian history archive from The Cultural Center of the Palestinian Narrative
Tanweer, another cultural center in Nablus, in addition to current efforts to introduce art, joy, and more freedom into the public sphere, has chosen to uncover the ancient names of the springs in the Old City of Nablus and surrounding areas. After rediscovering the names, they create and install signs to connect the present with the past and remind people what has been and what will be. In Arabic, the word for spring also means way or path. Names of words and places, like names of people, are often repositories of ancient wisdom.
Spring sign in Nablus (photo credit: ISM)
Fitra is an Arabic word meaning “original disposition” or “innate nature”. It is common belief in Palestine and throughout the Arab and Muslim world that every person is born innocent with innate goodness, and only through social conditioning are people led to oppression and injustice. And so the inner work that must be done isn’t achieving something far removed from one’s self, but rediscovering, reconnecting with, and remembering one’s original nature.
Some of the people honored by Palestinians at the Tanweer Center include ISM activists killed while doing solidarity work (photo credit ISM)
Just as Jewish people throughout the United States, Europe, and the Middle East remember the horrors of their past and honor those who maintained their humanity amid the inhumanity around them, Palestinians remember the horrors of their past (and present), honor those who maintain their humanity amid the inhumanity around them, try to make a way where there is no way, and hope that the people of the world will not watch from afar their extermination, but instead, choose to remember their essential, original, buried under the rubble humanity.
A new Israeli incursion into the Nour Shams refugee camp northeast of the city of Tulkarm in the northern West Bank.
Israeli incursion:
Tuesday evening, December 26th the Israeli occupying forces stormed the Nour Shams camp in Tulkarm, accompanied by military vehicles, including D9 bulldozers, unmanned aerial vehicles, and troop carriers. The Israeli incursion lasted 7 continuous hours from Tuesday until the next morning. The Israeli occupation forces were stationed in more than one area in the city and the vicinity of Nour Shams camp and in some areas belonging to the camp.
Photo Credit: Diana Khwaelid
Destruction:
The Israeli occupation did not stop with the destruction of streets, houses, and walls of houses in the penultimate storming, but returned to complete its work the destruction of streets and roads again.
Photo Credit: Diana Khwaelid
The Israeli occupation forces managed the secondary streets leading to the camp destroyed the infrastructure and the water and sewage network in more than one area of the camp, and some walls of houses and some cars belonging to citizens from inside the camp were destroyed.
Photo Credit: Diana Khwaelid
7 Palestinians wounded 6 killed
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 6 Palestinians were killed during the Israeli incursion into the Camp, 7 others were injured of them in moderate condition and 1 in serious condition .
Photo Credit: Diana Khwaelid
The Israeli occupying forces targeted 7 Palestinians with a drone from the air while they were in the quarry area near the Al-Nasr mosque. 7 Palestinians injured. 2 of them in moderate condition and another Palestinian in serious condition.
Photo Credit: Diana Khwaelid
According to the head of the Palestinian doctors in the city of Tulkarm, he said that the Israeli occupation soldiers obstructed the movement of ambulances while they were working to transport the injured Palestinians from the camp to the hospital.
Photo Credit: Diana Khwaelid
He added that the occupation soldiers stopped an ambulance with an injured person inside on the way to the hospital, the occupation forces stormed the ambulance, one of the occupation soldiers stabbed the injured in the neck area while he was inside the car on his way to the hospital. The six martyrs are Fares Fahmawi, Khalil al-Tabal, Ahmed Hamarsha, Yazan Fahmawi, Ahmed Abu Issa and Wahid Fahmawi. 4 of them are from the same family.
Photo Credit: Diana Khwaelid
Hundreds of Palestinians mourned the bodies of the six Palestinian martyrs, and their families took a last farewell look at them. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the death toll of the martyrs of the West Bank has reached more than 300 martyrs since October 7.
Mourners gather for the funeral of the martyrs. Photo credit: Diana Khwaelid
We witness an unbreakable will in the Nour Shams refugee camp, located north-east in the city of
Tulkarem, despite being subjected to more than 10 incursions, killings, arrests,
destruction of roads and other infrastructure, shelling, and burning of houses and shops.
Storming the Nour Shams camp
On the evening of Monday December 25th, the Israeli occupation forces stormed
the Nur Shams refugee camp northeast of the city of Tulkarem in the north of the West
Bank.
Dozens of Israeli military vehicles accompanied by troop carriers and 4 D9 bulldozers were used by the occupation forces to destroy infrastructure in preparation for the entry of occupation soldiers on foot.
This Israeli military operation launched by the occupation forces on the camp lasted for more than 9 continuous hours.
Confronting the occupation forces and defending the camp.
Palestinian resistance fighters defended the camp and its residents and confronted the Israeli occupation forces who stormed the camp without warning. Armed clashes occurred between Palestinian gunmen who tried to defend the camp and the Israeli occupation forces who targeted residents and houses with live ammunition.
Destruction of infrastructure and roads.
The main and secondary roads were largely destroyed and neighborhoods of Nour Shams camp, mostly concentrated in the Al Damj neighborhood and Manshiyeh neighborhood. The Israeli occupation forces
destroyed the main roads by using military vehicles to bulldoze land and streets with military-type D9 bulldozers. Agricultural land with farming of crops was also destroyed.
Bombing of a house and burning of another.
The Israeli occupation forces targeted two Palestinian houses, one of which was
destroyed by aerial bombardment, and another one that was burned. Everything within it was destroyed from clothes to furniture. Other homes nearby suffered partial damage, such as glass being broken, doors being ripped off. The first house belongs to the citizen Youssef Zandiq one of the camp residents. the second house that was burned belongs to the family of the young man Musa
al-Azeb. The family of the young man Youssef Zandiq said:
“We evacuated the house before it was bombed as no one was inside. Thank God for
everything, we are lucky that there were no human losses.”
Some Palestinian homes were also stormed during the incursion, including the house of the Dahrouki family.
Israeli occupation forces also painted the logo of the star of the state of Israel, as a sign signalling that it will be bombed in the next incursion.
Despite all the violence and destruction carried out by the Israeli occupying forces during the past weeks and months, despite the human and material losses caused by the destruction of houses, roads, agricultural land andshops, the residents of Nur Shams camp still have a strong and unbroken will.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza are at risk of famine and preventable death from disease as the world’s observant retreat into family and faith to mark the birth of another Palestinian child. In a lightless, treeless Bethlehem, haunting displays capture the specter of a collective grief. Christ lies in the rubble. And just over 70 kilometers away in Gaza, many thousands of Palestinians are entombed in the very same reality.
Christmas falls quiet on Bethlehem. Photo Credit, ISM
Through the doorway of a thousand checkpoints, the children of the West Bank avoid the binding of their hands and the breaking of their bones as occupation forces have leapt in tandem with the perpetrators of the Gaza genocide, exacting spasms of violence on their own long descent from humanity. To the immediate west of the place of Christ’s birth, a Palestinian child’s life was stolen by the bullets of the occupation just days ago. Mahmoud Mohammad Zaaoul lay murdered in the village of Husan. In occupied East Jerusalem, faithful Muslims endured beatings and pursuit on horseback by occupation soldiers energized by their greenlit domination of the indigenous population, arbitrarily blocking prayers from being spoken in Al Aqsa Mosque by Palestinian worshippers.
It is Christmas in Palestine.
16 year old Mahmoud Mohammad Zaaoul was killed on 12/20 west of Bethlehem by occupation forces. Photo Credit: WAFA
According to a UNICEF press release dated December 22nd, the latest statistics “warn that acute food insecurity puts all children under five in the Gaza Strip—335,000—at high risk of severe malnutrition and preventable death.” As a traumatized population of genocide-displaced, the people of Gaza have been forced between districts with bombs and drones biting at their heels. Public health and sanitation conditions are non-existent.
Frigid wind and rain have exacerbated illness and flooded small handmade structures that displaced Gazans are existing within as their homes lie in ruins. The World Health Organization has been sounding the alarm about the dangerous prevalence of diarrhea in children; the swelling statistic of instances is nearing 60,000 affected. This is further worsening the already horrific sanitation conditions and rising dehydration with many spending endless days searching for water, albeit contaminated and fueling illness.
Gaza is being ravaged by not only bloody diarrhea, but a host of other illnesses which are tearing through the traumatized population. Hepatitis A, jaundice, meningitis and respiratory infections as dangerous smoke from the burning of found materials to stay warm wafts across densely packed makeshift shelters peppering the gouged landscape.
Pre-existing medical conditions did not cease to be a battle impacted Palestinians were fighting prior to the gears of genocide thrusting towards them through the joint American-Israeli operation. Dialysis and cancer patients, diabetics in need of regular insulin and the means with which to maintain and monitor their blood glucose levels, disabled Palestinians needing around the clock care, stroke and cardiac patients reliant on medication to sustain life- every normal function of their medical support system lies broken among the wreckage.
In the occupied West Bank, flashes of violence strike across heavily targeted communities from Jenin to Nablus. From Tulkarm to al Khalil. The violent raids have been ramping up with the world viewing the horror through both the careful and courageous documentation of Palestinians on the ground as well as through countless antagonistic and cruel tiktok videos shared by occupation forces, mocking and dehumanizing Palestinians as they raid and desecrate a Mosque while using its amplification for prayer to sing Jewish songs. As they sit smoking on the couches of a Palestinian family home laughing and filming bound and blindfolded Palestinians gathered on the ground before them.
Running from the terror of flying rockets, earth shattering explosions and buildings collapsing around them, 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza are among those fighting to survive. Over 180 births are taking place each day in genocide-torn Gaza. They are taking place in the rubble, in packed lobbies of shelters, in makeshift tent structures. The conditions are beyond horrific with only a fraction of hospital beds available from before October 7th across all Gaza’s districts. This says nothing of Palestinians ability to access one of the few medical facilities left in the devastated Gaza Strip.
The situation swells to new heights of crisis as the observant mark the day that Mary, having nowhere to stay in the town, utilized a makeshift crib to lay down her infant as angels sang the birth of the Christ lying in a Bethlehem manger.
Like so many children in Gaza, in today’s Bethlehem, Christ lies in the rubble.
