Dispatch from Jenin: Resistance Swells after Israel’s Brutal Invasion

PALESTINE - ISRAEL, 16 Sep 2024

Mariam Barghouti | Drop Site – TRANSCEND Media Service

9 Sep 2024 – The perils of reporting in Palestine have never been greater. Ramallah-based Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti traveled to Jenin twice during the Israeli invasion last week to cover Israel’s assault on the city and refugee camp. As she describes it, even getting to Jenin is fraught with danger. Route 60, the only road leading to Jenin city, is mostly empty, save for Israeli military checkpoints erected along the way cutting off Palestinian districts from each other. Mariam says soldiers often delay and harass journalists traveling on the road. Armed settlers also roam the area and are a constant source of danger.

But it is inside places like Jenin, where the Israeli military concentrates its military assaults, that the risks are much higher. “The roads [were] riddled with Israeli snipers stationed on the rooftops of civilian buildings, making movement dangerous,” Mariam said. She described to Drop Site News how Israeli troops frequently intimidate journalists trying to do their jobs and have shot and injured reporters in the field. While Jenin is a stronghold of militant resistance, journalists only feel threatened by Israeli soldiers, not armed Palestinian combatants.

Mariam shared some of this in a heartfelt post on social media this week:

“In our profession as war journalists we are required to wear bullet-proof vests with the PRESS insignia on them, and our cars are all also marked with ‘PRESS/TV.’ 

It’s to be visible to armed groups, whether it’s the Israeli military or Palestinian resistance groups, that we are PRESS. With that, they’re all supposed to ensure our safety & not target us.

But in Palestine, being press means being a target. The gear which is meant to protect us has become a marker to attack us.

When the Israeli army is not around -even if I’m around Palestinian fighters- I actually don’t need my gear at all. 

In fact, fighters are eager to speak with us- often commending our “bravery” to dare go by them because the Israeli military does not want their stories out. 

It is only when Israeli army jets, drones, & soldiers are in the skies/ground do I find us- local and internationals- wearing our gear. 

The flack jacket can’t protect me from a drone strike, a bullet to the neck, to the thigh, to the shoulder.”

Mariam filed the following story about the assault on Jenin and its aftermath, speaking to residents and armed fighters, who say the escalating Israeli attacks are only swelling the ranks of militant resistance groups, despite being vastly outgunned.

Mourners in Jenin hold a funeral procession for a slain resistance fighter. 6 Sep 2024. Photo by Salman Alkhatib.

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JENIN REFUGEE CAMP – Palestinians were able to walk freely in Jenin on Friday, returning to the streets after a brutal nine-day invasion by the Israeli military. As the troops—backed by armed vehicles, tanks, and bulldozers—withdrew Friday morning, Palestinians found large swathes of the city and refugee camp laid to waste, houses that had been occupied by soldiers trashed, and roads and civilian infrastructure torn up and reduced to rubble.

Bands of men and boys carried the bodies of nine residents from Jenin refugee camp through the streets to the city center and back to the camp for burial. Members of the Jenin Brigades—a local armed resistance group—began to gather in small clusters near Khalil Suleiman hospital, where the bodies were being prepared for burial. The all-male funeral procession was infused with a combination of mourning—some of the men in tears—and collective anger.

On the outskirts of the city, members of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces emerged for the first time after retreating inside their headquarters in Jenin, a few meters from the camp, for the entirety of the large-scale offensive. Israeli troops had encircled the security headquarters and bulldozed the streets around it, only allowing food and supplies inside after coordination with the PA. It was only after the Israelis finally withdrew from the city did the PA security forces once again station themselves in Jenin’s streets, carrying their M-16s. These are the same forces who choose not to confront the Israelis and did not intervene in any way to come to the aid of the civilian population under attack during the latest assault.

For Palestinians in the West Bank, the PA is seen as an accomplice to Israel, not only unwilling to provide any real protection for Palestinian civilians against the Israeli military, but also frequently doing Israel’s bidding by detaining wanted resistance fighters and subjecting them to abuse and torture and conducting assassination attempts.

Throughout the funeral procession, members of the Jenin Brigade fired live ammunition in the air, both as a form of tribute to the slain, but also as a show of force—to dissuade the Israeli military from entering and to deter undercover Israeli special forces, who are typically the first to enter Palestinian cities and refugee camps at the forefront of larger military raids. Although the fighters were clearly tired, they also seemed even more determined to carry on. I had interviewed some of them before, including two that were killed, Arafat Amer, 27, and Maysara Masharqa, 33. Masharqa told me in October 2023, just two weeks into Israel’s assault on Gaza: “When Israel is done with Gaza, they will come to the West Bank to do the same exact thing.”

While the Israeli military intentionally targeted civil infrastructure in order to curb support for militant groups, the inability of the PA to provide any form of protection, coupled with escalating Israeli settler attacks and expansion, and an ongoing genocide in Gaza, is only pushing more Palestinians toward armed resistance, with more young recruits joining or wanting to join the ranks of groups like the Jenin Brigade.

“They call us the terrorists,” Abu Salam, a senior combatant and friend of the slain Masharqa, told Drop Site as the funeral procession began. “But they don’t tell you they’re the ones coming into our homes, attacking us, destroying and razing through the city, attacking women and children.”

Frustrated, and also grieving, he continued: “That’s all they’ll tell you, we’re terrorists, but look around you and you’ll find the trail of their terrorism.” While the Israeli military claimed to be targeting combatants inside the camp, several fighters they did manage to assassinate were actually killed in areas outside the camp, in neighboring villages.

“You need to understand that the whole world has conducted acts of terrorism against us, only to call us terrorists,” Mahmoud Abu Talal, a local resident, told Drop Site as he slowly made his way toward the cemetery. “What do they want from us? To keep allowing the theft of our lands and the slaughter of our people? Is that fair?”

The cemetery’s walls had been partially destroyed by the Israeli military, while the road was bulldozed. The spokesperson for the brigades, Ahmad Abu Ameireh, addressed members of the press while the rest of the fighters stood aside to mourn those killed and take in a moment of respite after nine consecutive days of a vicious assault.

While the Palestinian civilian population suffered profound losses during the Israeli attack, the resistance fighters also attempted to incur a cost for the Israeli military. “We were harmed by them, and they were harmed by us. We admit our losses, but the Israeli army doesn’t,” Abu Ameireh told Drop Site. “In the end, despite the destruction, our people are our people and they will not abandon us despite Israeli practices.”

In the face of such brutality, for many Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, confrontation—in all of its forms—is not only inevitable, but necessary. “You know, even if I was feeling down, when I look at the fighters I feel better. They’re all we have to confront this occupation,” said Abu Talal, whose nephew, Mohammad Harboush, was killed in the Israeli assault along with Amjad Al-Kaneireh, who had both conducted an ambush in the Damaj neighborhood of Jenin on the fourth day of the siege, killing one Israeli soldier and injuring several others.

“Freedom is from the river to the sea, and resistance will continue until we liberate these lands,” Abu Ameireh said, his M-16 slung across his chest as men from his battalion surrounded him, all of them wanted by Israel and targeted for assassination. Then, as quickly as they had emerged to bury their comrades and community members, the fighters disappeared from sight. While some fighters may reside in the camps, their locations are often unknown, with many going weeks or months underground, cutting off all communication with family members, in an attempt to avoid Israeli extrajudicial execution.

A boy in Cinema Square, Jenin sets tires on fire to obscure the view of invading Israeli troops 5 Sep 2024. Photo by Salman Alkhatib.

Week-Long Raid

Between August 28, when the Israeli military officially declared “Operation Summer Camps”—a large-scale military invasion of the West Bank—and September 6, Palestinians in the northern districts of Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas faced either partial or full lockdowns.

Although the Israeli military has conducted dozens of invasions and raids on both the city of Jenin and the refugee camp within it over the past two years, this month’s operation was by far the largest and most wide-spread across the district of Jenin and offers a microcosm of how Israel is not only capable, but willing to widen its genocidal practices against Palestinians in Gaza to the West Bank.

On the evening of August 28, the Israeli military began its operations in the neighboring towns before creeping toward the Jenin refugee camp. According to local journalists who were on the scene from the start of the invasion, the Israeli military entered Jenin with bulldozers, military carriers, and drones. Upon entry on August 28, Israeli forces killed two Palestinians, Qassam Jabareen, 24, and pushed through toward Ibn Sina hospital, shooting and killing Asem Dabaya, 39, a member of the Palestinian Authority security forces. Four other Palestinians, two of whom were minors, were also killed in Tubas, southeast of Jenin, while 64-year-old Ayed Abu Al-Heijeh was killed in Tulkarem, southwest of Jenin.

In the process, the military forced numerous Palestinian families from their homes at gunpoint. The families kicked out of their homes, including children and minors, were not even allowed to pack bags, only some bare essentials before being displaced with no idea when they could return. Some went to stay with neighbors, others to extended family in the villages around Jenin.

“They entered our building, first refusing to let us out and wanting to shove all the families in the 15 apartments into a single apartment,” Ahmad Hamdan, 41, told Drop Site. “We stayed like that, in one place, until early evening and then we were allowed to leave.”

“I was on the third floor of our building and all I saw was soldiers with their faces covered in black ski masks coming towards me,” Ashraf, Hamdan’s 13-year-old son, told Drop Site News. “The commander told me, go downstairs to your house and you cannot go out.”

Throughout the nine-day siege of Jenin refugee camp, not only were civilians in Jenin locked inside their homes, but water and electricity was cut off.

Most families were left without access to the basic necessities and had to endure the majority of the invasion with what little they had, all while the army fired live ammunition, brought attack dogs, and used anti-tank rifle grenades to bomb their way into houses. Inside the camp, residents struggled for food as random gunfire punctuated the air and explosions raged around them.

“Whatever food we did have began to rot as electricity was cut from the camp so the fridges weren’t working,” Umm Ahmad told Drop Site. Living deep near the center of the camp, Umm Ahmad was forced to leave her home in the Dahab quarter and stay with a friend at the Zahra quarter near the edges of the camp.

For the entire duration of the siege, the Israeli military had turned civilian buildings—such as the Rayyan building just outside the western entrance to Jenin refugee camp—into makeshift military bases, positioning soldiers and snipers inside residential apartments and family homes.

The aggressions on Tulkarem and Tubas lasted a few days, while the siege on Jenin expanded and extended.

Even hospitals became militarized zones, with access to medical care restricted and ambulances prevented from reaching the civilian population in the district of Jenin. “You see that house across the street,” Umm Lutfi Dababneh, 66, told Drop Site almost a week into the aggression. “There my neighbor is old and has to do chemotherapy, while his wife had to be hospitalized last week.” Dababneh continued, “She and I managed to go towards the city to get some bread a few days into the invasion, and we shared whatever we got, now we’re out of food.”

Dababneh stood near the gate to try and usher the Red Cross to bring some nutritional aid for her to no avail. With her home just outside Jenin refugee camp, a few meters from the besieged Jenin Government Hospital, for nine days all she saw moving were Israeli military vehicles, soldiers, and D-9 bulldozers which razed through the city, destroying its infrastructure.

During the lockdown even essentials such as food and water were prevented from entering Jenin. Whatever aid and goods did make it through was not enough to support the population and only came after rigorous negotiations between the Red Cross, the Red Crescent, and the Israeli district coordination office. This means that even infants and children weren’t able to receive basic necessities, neither were the chronically ill and elderly.

“In my 50 years of living here, this is the harshest invasion in two decades,” Dababneh explained. “They would invade the camp before, but this time it’s all destruction everywhere.”

The Aftermath

“I’ve been here since 6:00 a.m. just cleaning one trash bag after the other,” Salam Hamdan, 40, told Drop Site on September 6, the morning that the Israeli military officially withdrew from Jenin.

Hamdan’s apartment, just outside the camp—where she lived with her three children and husband—had been turned into a military base. When she returned she found it largely destroyed and a stench so unbearable she recommended we wear masks. The couches were mangled, electronics ripped apart, the fridge and doors had drawings on them in Hebrew, while the bedrooms were upturned. The soldiers appeared to have also used the mattresses and beds and left behind trash in big piles around the house.

“We can’t return and live here,” Hamdan said. “It’s going to take a lot of repairing and cleaning to make this place livable again.” As Hamdan cleaned, her children arrived at the apartment—they weren’t allowed to come to their home until the afternoon, out of concern for their health.

Hamdan’s 13-year-old son, Ashraf, went through his room and cried that his Playstation had been stolen, along with his games. This was the first time he had returned home after the men with guns and ski masks had come to his building nine days before. His younger brother, Aboud, emerged with a large smile as he carried a small blue backpack with a Superman print on the front. “Look, my bag is okay, it’s okay!” he beamed, ecstatic that despite his bed being destroyed and his clothes ransacked, his bag was untouched.

Stranded for days, families situated in the camp returned home to clean the trash of the soldiers and remove rubble from inside their houses. Male members of their families had been detained, including minors. Only boys younger than 14 were allowed to leave with their mothers. When I asked families in the camp if they plan on rebuilding their homes, most would respond with “Why? They’ll likely just return and destroy it again.” Their feelings are not without warrant. As the Israeli military withdrew from Jenin and other areas, they returned just days later to raid the city of Tulkarem and the Balata refugee camp in Nablus as the military offensive continued.

The latest Israeli operations have killed at least 39 Palestinians, including eight children and minors, and two elderly; since Friday, they have expanded to other areas of the West Bank, including Ramallah and Jericho in the center and Hebron in the south.

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Mariam Barghouti is a writer and a journalist based in the West Bank. She is a member of the Marie Colvin Journalist Network.

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