[News] Lethal Israeli assault destroys 70 percent of Jenin’s streets

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/lethal-israeli-assault-destroys-70-percent-jenins-streets>
Lethal Israeli assault destroys 70 percent of Jenin’s streets
Mohammed Nasser
September 4, 2024
------------------------------

Israeli military bulldozers have ripped up 70 percent of Jenin’s streets,
destroying more than 12 miles of the city’s water and sewage grid, 31
August.
APA images

An Israeli military assault in the occupied West Bank entered its seventh
day on Tuesday, destroying the vast majority of the Jenin refugee camp’s
road infrastructure in its wake.

The Israeli attack has killed at least 33 Palestinians, including seven
children, and injured nearly 130 since 28 August, the Palestinian
Authority’s health ministry reported
<https://www.facebook.com/mohps/posts/pfbid0KiRSzc2pRLDJGPG6msRyZYdjX3N3q2np3UvnREZmBZu25gEK1o4PjLC8XHVEKjDzl>,
when Israeli troops launched
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israels-intensifying-killing-cant-defeat-west-bank-resistance>
a deadly wide-scale assault on the Jenin refugee camp, Nur Shams refugee
camp east of Tulkarem and the al-Faraa refugee camp in the foothills of the
Jordan Valley, south of Tubas.

Hundreds of soldiers, armed with military jeeps, bulldozers and drones,
have sealed off cities and refugee camps and inflicted widespread
devastation to infrastructure, roads and water networks.

The army has also cut off power.

The raids are under the direction of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic spying and
torture agency.

At least 19 Palestinians have been slaughtered by Israeli forces in the
Jenin governorate, four in Tubas, seven in Tulkarem and three in the
southern Hebron area, the health ministry reported.

Israel’s assault is said to be the largest since the second intifada more
than 20 years ago.

The killings since last Wednesday bring to more than 650 the number of
Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation forces and settlers in the
occupied West Bank since 7 October. Thousands more have been injured in a
surge of Israeli violence dwarfed only by the scale of the slaughter in
Gaza.

At least 156 of those killed in the occupied West Bank were children, two
of them US citizens.
Attack on Jenin

Despite reports of the informal withdrawal of Israeli troops from the
Tulkarem and Tubas areas, they continue to operate in Tulkarem, where they
have caused extensive destruction.

Muhammad Abdullah Kanaan, 14, was visiting
<https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_fatally_shoot_two_palestinian_children_in_the_head_in_the_northern_occupied_west_bank>
his older brother alongside his father when Israeli forces launched the
assault on the northern occupied West Bank on 28 August. This prevented
them from returning to their home in the Tulkarem refugee camp.

When Israeli forces seemed to informally withdraw from the area, Muhammad
and his father tried to return home to the camp.

An Israeli sniper stationed in a residential home at the entrance of the
camp fired at the boy and his father, striking Muhammad with a bullet in
the head from a distance of 250 meters (820 feet) away. The father was
injured in his waist.

Israeli forces invaded Tulkarem and its refugee camp with military
bulldozers around dawn on 2 September, surrounding hospitals, patrolling
the streets and attacking Palestinian residents.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces intensified their attack on Jenin refugee camp,
besieging it and leaving it without food, water or electricity.

Israeli forces blew up homes in the camp, which houses 20,000 Palestinians.

Soldiers demolished commercial stores, bulldozed roads and detained and
interrogated residents.

Israel’s ongoing assault forced 85 percent of camp residents to flee, the
Israeli military estimates
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-longest-west-bank-raid-in-20-years-idf-aims-to-set-stage-for-future-smaller-ops/>,
largely to Jenin city.

Those who remained are staying put in their homes, though 80 percent of the
camp has no access to water, the Jenin municipality said
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/1/lack-of-food-and-water-ambulances-blocked-as-israel-lays-siege-to-jenin>
.

Israel issued an evacuation order to a public hospital in Jenin currently
treating 150 patients.

Some restaurants and stores in the area announced
<https://x.com/qudsn/status/1831042671416316299> that they would be
distributing free bread, vegetables and food supplies to residents as
Israel’s attacks escalate.

Palestinians flee their homes in Jenin refugee camp amid an Israeli
military assault, 31 August.
Mohammed Nasser APA images

Israeli forces besieged and fired at the home of a “wanted” Palestinian man
on Tuesday, targeting it with shells and live ammunition.

Lujain Osama Musleh, a 16-year-old girl, was in her family home around 50
meters (164 feet) away from the home when an Israeli sniper shot her in the
head through a window, Defense for Children International-Palestine reported
<https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_fatally_shoot_two_palestinian_children_in_the_head_in_the_northern_occupied_west_bank>
.

Israeli forces then blocked an ambulance from reaching Lujain for about 10
minutes. When she was finally transferred to the Jenin public hospital, she
was announced dead on arrival.

On 1 September, Israeli forces chased and shot at two children riding a
motorcycle near the entrance of Kafr Dan village west of Jenin.

Abdullah Abdulnaser Masoud, 17, and his 12-year-old cousin Muhammad Mahmoud
Masoud were riding on the back of a motorcycle with Abdullah’s 23-year-old
brother Amir on Saturday afternoon.

They had just returned from Jenin, which is besieged with no food access,
“after delivering bags of bread,” according
<https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_kill_three_palestinian_boys_in_jenin_september_2>
to a field investigation by DCIP.

Three Israeli military vehicles chased them as they were heading back to
their village.

Amir, who was driving the motorcycle, lost control of it and the two
children fell to the ground, got up, and continued to run toward the
entrance of their village.

About five Israeli soldiers then exited their military vehicles and fired
live rounds at the boys from a distance of 40 meters (131 feet). The
Israeli bullets struck the 17-year-old in the head, and 12-year-old
Muhammad twice in his back, one of the bullets exiting through his chest,
killing them both.

Israeli soldiers then prevented ambulances from reaching the boys for 40
minutes, according to DCIP’s investigation.

When the boys reached the hospital, they were both announced dead on
arrival.

After killing the two children, Israeli forces then arrested Amir.

Later that same night, Israeli vehicles invaded the village of Silat
al-Harithiya, northwest of Jenin, prompting Palestinian residents to
confront soldiers in defense of their village.

Two Palestinian children allegedly threw homemade explosive devices toward
the vehicles.

Around 40 minutes later, an Israeli drone-fired missile targeted the two
children, killing 16-year-old Laith Marwan Shawahneh and severely injuring
the other child, who was hospitalized in critical condition, DCIP reported.
Most streets destroyed

Israeli military bulldozers ripped up nearly 70 percent of Jenin’s streets,
destroying more than 12 miles of the city’s water and sewage grid, Jenin’s
municipality said
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/3/timeline-israels-deadly-seven-day-raid-in-occupied-west-banks-jenin>
.

Footage circulated on social media shows bulldozers uprooting roads and
destroying storefronts:
The Israeli army says this is done to deter the planting of explosive
devices underneath roads by resistance groups.

Palestinians can remotely detonate the explosive devices, which have killed
and injured
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-targets-palestinians-land-and-air-west-bank>
a number of Israeli soldiers in recent months.

These devices have been more widely used by the armed resistance in the
northern areas to resist Israeli invasions into their refugee camps and
neighborhoods.

Improvised explosive devices “are the primary method of defense of the
camps,” says Jon Elmer, contributing editor of The Electronic Intifada.

Israeli bulldozers ravage through the streets, destroying civil
infrastructure, commercial stores and residential areas. The enormous
vehicles also damage water and sewage networks and impede movement,
including ambulances trying to reach the injured.

Though this destruction of critical infrastructure is carried out under the
guise of uprooting explosive devices from roads, Palestinians have
interpreted these practices to be vengeful policies of collective
punishment.

Palestinians inspect damage of streets torn up by Israeli bulldozers after
an Israeli raid in the eastern neighborhood of Jenin city in the occupied
West Bank on 1 September.
Mohammed Nasser APA images

Moreover, it’s not clear that this tactic is effective in curbing the
threat of improvised explosive devices, which have improved
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-09-03/ty-article/.premium/as-israels-west-bank-offensive-intensifies-improvised-explosives-become-major-challenge/00000191-b6c0-dffe-abf9-bfff4a150000>
in recent months.

“By turning the roads into dirt, it makes it easier and quicker to bury the
explosives in the ground because there’s no asphalt over it, and then they
can be concealed underneath the dug-up dirt,” says Elmer.

“The Israelis say that this gives them freedom to operate, but in reality,
it makes it easier to bury the weapons themselves – so it’s really just a
punitive measure,” Elmer added.

“It’s a penalty for the camps for their method of defending themselves.”

A *Times of Israel* journalist asked
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-longest-west-bank-raid-in-20-years-idf-aims-to-set-stage-for-future-smaller-ops/>
an Israeli engineering officer if this makes it more challenging to locate
new bombs planted in bombed out roads in the future, to which he said it
was indeed “a dilemma.”

One Israeli soldier was killed
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/fierce-clashes-in-jenin-as-idf-continues-major-west-bank-operation/>
on 27 August during confrontations between Israeli troops and armed
resistance fighters in Jenin, who have been defending the refugee camp
during the ongoing assault.
“Mini-Gaza”

Calls by Israeli leaders to turn the West Bank into “mini-Gaza” are
“translating into military operations,” the United Nations human rights
office warned
<https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/09/apartheid-israel-targeting-gaza-and-west-bank-simultaneously-says-expert>
on Monday.

“Israel’s genocidal violence risks leaking out of Gaza and into the
occupied Palestinian territory as a whole,” stated Francesca Albanese, the
UN special rapporteur on the West Bank and Gaza.

“There is mounting evidence that no Palestinian is safe under Israel’s
unfettered control.”

Albanese warned that “apartheid Israel is targeting Gaza and the West Bank
simultaneously, as part of an overall process of elimination, replacement
and territorial expansion.”

“The long-standing impunity granted to Israel is enabling the
de-Palestinization of the occupied territory, leaving Palestinians at the
mercy of the forces pursuing their elimination as a national group.”
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