<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-top-anchor"></div>
<div id="gmail-toolbar" class="gmail-toolbar-container">
</div><div class="gmail-container" lang="en" dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail-header gmail-reader-header gmail-reader-show-element">
<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/lethal-israeli-assault-destroys-70-percent-jenins-streets">electronicintifada.net</a>
<div class="gmail-domain-border"></div>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Lethal Israeli assault destroys 70 percent of Jenin’s streets</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Mohammed Nasser</div>
<div class="gmail-meta-data">
<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">September 4, 2024<br></div>
</div>
</div>
<hr>
<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div>
<span>
<img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2024-09/240903_-_jenin1.jpg?itok=YgVTZFt9×tamp=1725406330" width="408" height="272" alt="" title="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
</span>
<p>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.</p><small>
<span>APA images</span></small>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mohps/posts/pfbid0KiRSzc2pRLDJGPG6msRyZYdjX3N3q2np3UvnREZmBZu25gEK1o4PjLC8XHVEKjDzl">reported</a>, when Israeli troops <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israels-intensifying-killing-cant-defeat-west-bank-resistance">launched</a>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The army has also cut off power.</p>
<p>The raids are under the direction of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic spying and torture agency.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Israel’s assault is said to be the largest since the second intifada more than 20 years ago.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>At least 156 of those killed in the occupied West Bank were children, two of them US citizens.</p>
<h2>Attack on Jenin</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Muhammad Abdullah Kanaan, 14, was <a href="https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_fatally_shoot_two_palestinian_children_in_the_head_in_the_northern_occupied_west_bank">visiting</a>
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.</p>
<p>When Israeli forces seemed to informally withdraw from the area, Muhammad and his father tried to return home to the camp.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Israeli forces intensified their attack on Jenin refugee
camp, besieging it and leaving it without food, water or electricity.</p>
<p>Israeli forces blew up homes in the camp, which houses 20,000 Palestinians.</p>
<p>Soldiers demolished commercial stores, bulldozed roads and detained and interrogated residents.</p>
<p>Israel’s ongoing assault forced 85 percent of camp residents to flee, the Israeli military <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-longest-west-bank-raid-in-20-years-idf-aims-to-set-stage-for-future-smaller-ops/">estimates</a>, largely to Jenin city.</p>
<p>Those who remained are staying put in their homes, though 80 percent of the camp has no access to water, the Jenin municipality <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/1/lack-of-food-and-water-ambulances-blocked-as-israel-lays-siege-to-jenin">said</a>.</p>
<p>Israel issued an evacuation order to a public hospital in Jenin currently treating 150 patients.</p>
<p>Some restaurants and stores in the area <a href="https://x.com/qudsn/status/1831042671416316299">announced</a> that they would be distributing free bread, vegetables and food supplies to residents as Israel’s attacks escalate.</p>
<span>
<img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2024-09/240903_-_jenin2.jpg?itok=ZDbVMNSw×tamp=1725406330" width="408" height="272" alt="" title="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
</span>
<p>Palestinians flee their homes in Jenin refugee camp amid an Israeli military assault, 31 August.</p><small>
<span>Mohammed Nasser</span>
<span>APA images</span></small>
<p>Israeli forces besieged and fired at the home of a “wanted”
Palestinian man on Tuesday, targeting it with shells and live
ammunition.</p>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_fatally_shoot_two_palestinian_children_in_the_head_in_the_northern_occupied_west_bank">reported</a>.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>On 1 September, Israeli forces chased and shot at two children riding
a motorcycle near the entrance of Kafr Dan village west of Jenin.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>They had just returned from Jenin, which is besieged with no food access, “after delivering bags of bread,” <a href="https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_forces_kill_three_palestinian_boys_in_jenin_september_2">according</a> to a field investigation by DCIP.</p>
<p>Three Israeli military vehicles chased them as they were heading back to their village.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Israeli soldiers then prevented ambulances from reaching the boys for 40 minutes, according to DCIP’s investigation.</p>
<p>When the boys reached the hospital, they were both announced dead on arrival.</p>
<p>After killing the two children, Israeli forces then arrested Amir.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Two Palestinian children allegedly threw homemade explosive devices toward the vehicles.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<h2>Most streets destroyed</h2>
<p>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 <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/3/timeline-israels-deadly-seven-day-raid-in-occupied-west-banks-jenin">said</a>.</p>
<p>Footage circulated on social media shows bulldozers uprooting roads and destroying storefronts:
</p>
The Israeli army says this is done to deter the planting of explosive devices underneath roads by resistance groups.
<p>Palestinians can remotely detonate the explosive devices, <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-targets-palestinians-land-and-air-west-bank">which have killed and injured</a> a number of Israeli soldiers in recent months.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Improvised explosive devices “are the primary method of defense of
the camps,” says Jon Elmer, contributing editor of The Electronic
Intifada.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<span>
<img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2024-09/240903_-_jenin3.jpg?itok=JdB1hUSZ×tamp=1725406330" width="408" height="272" alt="" title="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
</span>
<p>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.</p><small>
<span>Mohammed Nasser</span>
<span>APA images</span></small>
<p>Moreover, it’s not clear that this tactic is effective in curbing the threat of improvised explosive devices, which have <a href="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">improved</a> in recent months.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“It’s a penalty for the camps for their method of defending themselves.”</p>
<p>A <em>Times of Israel</em> journalist <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-longest-west-bank-raid-in-20-years-idf-aims-to-set-stage-for-future-smaller-ops/">asked</a>
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.”</p>
<p>One Israeli soldier was <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/fierce-clashes-in-jenin-as-idf-continues-major-west-bank-operation/">killed</a>
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.</p>
<h2>“Mini-Gaza”</h2>
<p>Calls by Israeli leaders to turn the West Bank into “mini-Gaza” are
“translating into military operations,” the United Nations human rights
office <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/09/apartheid-israel-targeting-gaza-and-west-bank-simultaneously-says-expert">warned</a> on Monday.</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>“There is mounting evidence that no Palestinian is safe under Israel’s unfettered control.”</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p>“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.”</p><br>
</div></div></div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div></div>
</div>
</div>