On Wednesday morning, Israeli occupation forces raided Jenin refugee camp, in the northern West Bank, killing 4 and injuring 44 others. In shocking fashion, the Israeli forces used an anti-tank missile to attack a home and were caught up in gunfights with Palestinian armed militias.
Israel’s military raided Jenin refugee camp again, this Wednesday, with the reported goal of pursuing Palestinian resistance fighters that it described as “wanted terrorists”. Israeli forces surrounded the family home of Raad Hazem, a 29 year old Palestinian man that carried out an attack in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff street, killing 3 Israelis and injuring 6, back in April. By targeting this home, in the densely populated refugee camp, Israel has attempted to portray their offensive operation as defensive in nature.
In reality, Raad Hazem, who carried out the Tel Aviv shooting attack, was killed the following day by Israeli gunfire, in the occupied Palestinian city of Jaffa. Israel has murdered around 160 Palestinians since the beginning of this year, including women, children, journalists, and the elderly, most of them having been killed as the result of Israeli gunfire in the West Bank.
In Jenin refugee camp, since late last year, groups of young men have come together in the camp to form ‘the Jenin Brigades’. Although Israel makes it out as if they are a fully fledged “terrorist” force, the Jenin Brigades are young men with guns that are carrying out random shooting attacks in an attempt to oppose Israel’s brutal military occupation. The young people belonging to the Jenin brigades, most of them 18-25, do not have any formal military training for the most part and have no coherent command-and-control structure. This means that as a defensive force, due to lack of experience, leadership structure, planning, and access to weapons, the Jenin brigades are essentially brave young men that amount to sitting ducks when faced with Israel’s US-backed sophisticated military machine.
During the most recent raid of Jenin refugee camp, the Israeli military fired an anti-tank missile into a building where it believed resistance fighters to have been located. The Israeli forces were backed up by dozens of militarized vehicles, drones, highly trained special forces units and managed to kill four Palestinian fighters, injuring 44 others, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. An explosion was filmed from a distance, during the raid, which seemed to indicate that an airstrike or bomb had exploded in the camp. Israel’s military claimed that Palestinians detonated an explosive device, however, the video the Israeli army released seemed to indicate that their firing of an anti-tank munition may have caused a secondary explosion, rather than Palestinians detonating an explosive device.
The most horrifying element to this Israeli raid was not only the deaths of the four Palestinians, but rather the mutilation of one of their bodies. Images began to emerge from Jenin that show one of the fighters killed, bearing Hebrew markings, seemingly carved into the dead Palestinian’s abdomen. The letters written have been widely translated from Hebrew to read “The End“. Such an act requires an investigation as mutilation of a body in this manner could constitute a war crime.
قام جنود جيش العدو الصهيوني بتشويه جثث الشهداء الفلسطينيين ونحت عليهم كلمة “النهاية” بالعبرية. pic.twitter.com/U3mZgkeXmr
— موقع Now Lebanon 🇱🇧 (@NowLebanon3) September 28, 2022
Palestinian Authority (PA) Spokesperson, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, commented on the attack by stating that “the Israeli occupation is continuing to tamper with security and stability. Israel and the US have lost their credibility.” PA Prime Minister, Mohammed Shtayyeh, condemned the attack as a war crime and claimed that the raid was conducted with the intent to bolster the image of Israeli leaders prior to the election campaign.
Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), two of the most popular Palestinian political parties, both called for retaliation and for the adoption of a “new Intifada”. Various groups, including PIJ, the PFLP, DFLP, and others, vowed to avenge the murders that took place in Jenin. Hamas, meanwhile, added to the growing pressure on the West Bank based PA, to cut security coordination ties with Israel, by asserting that the PA has lost the support of the Palestinian people.
Despite the mountains of propaganda, Israel’s military did not need to carry out such a raid for its so-called security interests. It claims that the four Palestinian resistance fighters that it killed were plotting imminent attacks, however, most of the shootings seemed relatively arbitrary from the evidence currently available. Although there may well have been targets in mind, there is no evidence whatsoever that the Israeli military has uncovered any attack plan. It is clear from the nature of the armed groups that their attacks are sporadic, and not only are they normally poorly organized but they also fail in their execution of the mission, if there is any specific mission in the first place.
The attacks that Israeli occupation forces face at checkpoints and shooting towards settlements, are largely random and so must be thwarted at the time they occur. Major attacks in places like Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, however, can be tracked and thwarted, as Israel’s security apparatus has proven several times. Instead of preventing such attacks, Tel Aviv’s decision to launch such an offensive in Jenin is clearly going to encourage further attacks in revenge for what just occurred. What is the Israeli plan to confront any Palestinian retaliation? More violence. There is nothing they can do other than launch further reprisal raids if Palestinians retaliate.
