JENIN — Adam al-Ghoul lived in a home on a side street of this city’s al-Basateen neighborhood. The house, his family believed, was a relatively safe place for children, far from the ongoing military operation being carried out by the Israeli occupation forces in the city and its camp.
One day earlier this month, the eight-year-old was sitting with his cousins and friends in front of the house’s yard when gunfire erupted. Right away, from inside the home, Adam’s mother screamed.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
“They opened fire on the children,” she recalled. Adam fell in front of the car parked in front of the home, and a 14-year-old named Basil fell on the other side.
“Then the military jeep stopped, and photographed the scene,” the Palestinian mother recalled.
Adam’s mother rushed outside after the Israeli jeep left the scene to find her worst nightmare confirmed. “The bullet hit him in the head,” she said. “Adam was killed in cold blood.”
It was November 29 when the Israeli occupation forces stormed the city of Jenin and its massive refugee camp. They carried out a massive campaign of arrests and sabotage of infrastructure and bombed a house by a drone.
About a week after Adam’s killing, the family was still grieving, as the Israeli military campaign continues against Jenin and other areas in the West Bank. Settlers’ violence has also escalated to unprecedented levels.
Jenin at the core
Though it comes in the midst of the war in Gaza, the latest assault by Israeli forces is really just the latest in a long series of repressions. On July 3, Israeli forces raided Jenin camp for 40 hours, an invasion that left 12 people dead and 100 wounded. It also caused massive destruction of infrastructure and homes.
This July raid came after a series of operations that began in 2021 following the announcement of the formation of a militant group, the Jenin Brigade. The group is the military wing of the Islamic Jihad movement and is based in the Jenin refugee camp.
The group launched a series of attacks, notably an assault dubbed the “Freedom Tunnel” operation, in which six Palestinian prisoners escaped Gilboa prison. The prisoners were rearrested later.
Since the attacks of October 7 and the Gaza war, the Israeli occupation authorities have escalated their raids on Jenin, its camp, and most areas of the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian estimates indicate that the Israeli military has killed 273 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7. Eleven others were killed by settlers.
Since the beginning of the year, the death toll in the West Bank stands at more than 470 Palestinians, the majority of whom are minors – under 19.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, which advocates on behalf of former and current Palestinian prisoners, said that since October 7, the Israeli army has arrested 3,630 Palestinians in the West Bank, half of whom were transferred to administrative detention amid Israeli abuse against the prisoners.
Occupation and bulldozers
Jenin, located in the north of the West Bank, was under the British Mandate until 1948, before eventually being integrated with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan along with the rest of the West Bank, until its occupation by Israel during the 1967 Middle East war. Its administration was handed over the Palestinian Authority in 1994 under the Gaza-Jericho Agreement, which was part of the Oslo Accords.
The city’s population of some 40,000 includes 14,000 people who live in the Jenin refugee camp, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for the Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA. Many camp residents work in the agricultural sector in the areas surrounding Jenin, though there is an extremely high rate of unemployment.
Nidal Obeidi, Jenin mayor, said there have always been deaths from the occupation, but the situation escalated after Oct. 7. In the latest raid, Obeidi said Israeli military artillery and vehicles destroyed infrastructure, bulldozed roads, and damaged water and sewage networks across the governorate.
“There were streets that were rebuilt four or five times in less than two years,” he said. “The Israeli occupation is pursuing a systematic process of destruction.”
Forced exile
Farha Abu Al-Hija, a member of the Popular Authority for Jenin Camp Services, said the Israeli military’s raids and detentions in Jenin have reached unprecedented levels in the past two months, aiming to force the Palestinian families to leave the camp.
“They have created a state of terror among the children and women in the camp, especially with the occupation’s night raids which have been doubled,” she said. “It (the Israeli military) cut off electricity and assaulted women and children.”
She described the situation in the camp as unbearable, and touches everyone. “They detain the children for long hours,” she said. “There is no home without a prisoner, wounded, or martyr in Jenin camp.”
Palestinian Red Crescent spokesman Ahmed Jibril said that most of the casualties currently are from live bullets.
“The Israeli army does not use warning methods such as gas bombs or rubber bullets,” he said.
Jibril also accused Israel of attacking ambulance crews and preventing medics from transferring the wounded to hospitals.
Same conditions
Writer and political analyst Marwan al-Aqraa said the raids and detentions are “an unprecedented Israeli escalation” which have left the West Bank with an “unknown future.”
He said Jenin refugee camp has become a “little Gaza”
“Citizens of the West Bank and Gaza Strip suffer from the same conditions,” he said. “The horrific massacres taking place now in the Strip have caused a state of shock in the West Bank.”
He said Jenin refugee camp has become a “little Gaza,” as the camp is now out of control of the security coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. And like in Gaza, Israel wants to destroy any challenge that symbolizes the Palestinian struggle.
