Israel pounds West Bank children and infrastructure

Israeli army forces close the entrance to Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank on 19 February.
Mohammed Nasser APA images

Israel is implementing in the occupied West Bank what it has done in historic Palestine since the state’s inception: forcibly removing Palestinians from their homes and barring them from returning.

Approximately 40,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from refugee camps in the occupied West Bank, with only 3,000 returned, amid what Israel is dubbing the “Iron Wall” military assault, which has entered its second month.

Israel’s defense minister Israel Katz is now indicating that their displacement is permanent, as he instructed the Israeli military to “not allow residents to return.”

The Palestinian fear that their displacement from the camps is an underlying goal of the operation now appears to be closer to reality, even as the Israeli army consistently claimed that there hasn’t been an official evacuation policy.

Over 50 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, including at least seven children, since the operation began on 21 January in the northern governorates of Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas.

The military assault has been focused on the Jenin refugee camp, Tulkarm refugee camp and Nur Shams refugee camp near Tulkarm, as well as Tubas, and is a coordinated effort involving Israel’s military, domestic spy agency Shin Bet and Israel’s Border Police.

Israeli troops invaded refugee camps and surrounding areas, deployed snipers, conducted home raids, arrested youth and carried out aerial strikes on Palestinians, which also killed Palestinian children.

Israeli bulldozers have torn up long stretches of roads under the guise of uprooting explosive devices planted underneath. In reality, it destroys critical infrastructure and Palestinians have interpreted these practices to be vengeful policies of collective punishment. Moreover, it’s not clear that this tactic is effective in curbing the threat of improvised explosive devices.

Israeli forces have severely damaged water and sanitation infrastructure, disrupting access for tens of thousands of Palestinians, UN monitoring group OCHA said.

In Jenin, over two miles of sewage networks and 13 miles of water pipelines are severely damaged, OCHA reported. In Tulkarm, over five miles of sewage and stormwater networks and nine miles of water pipes were also severely damaged by Israeli forces. Some 27,000 people’s access to safe water is disrupted by the Israel-caused damage.

Resembling Gaza

The Jenin refugee camp, a focus of the operation, is “now virtually empty,” Reuters reported, as Israeli forces “appear to be carving wide roadways through its once-crowded warren of alleyways.”

This resembles a tactic Israel used in Gaza: widening roads to facilitate the invading troops’ movement through the area, and to surveil and strike Palestinian fighters who can use the camp’s alleyways to escape Israeli reconnaissance.

Now, the Israeli military is preparing “for a long stay in the camps that were cleared, for the coming year,” Katz announced.

Those preparations are already materializing on the ground.

Israeli army engineering teams are bringing water tanks and generators to a specific area in Jenin, the size of one acre, according to Basheer Matahen, spokesperson for the Jenin municipality.

“Jenin is a repeat of what happened in Jabaliya,” Matahen told Reuters, referring to the devastated and largely destroyed northern Gaza city and its refugee camp, which the Israeli army repeatedly invaded throughout the genocide before laying a total, months-long siege.

Israeli tanks were deployed in the West Bank for the first time in approximately two decades, another sign of Israel’s escalation.

The military operation in the West Bank was launched days after the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was implemented. It was framed to Israel’s right-wing base as a continuation of the war to pacify their opposition to the ceasefire agreement.

Killings

Meanwhile, at least 16 Palestinian children have been killed in the occupied West Bank since the beginning of the year.

Half of them were killed by drone strikes.

An Israeli soldier in a heavily armored vehicle opened fire from a distance of about 50 meters on 21 February at a 13-year-old girl standing in the courtyard of her family home, shooting her in the back, according to a field investigation by Defense for Children International - Palestine.

Rimas Omar Ammouri’s family tried to approach her to help, but soldiers fired at them too.

The teenage girl’s mother was able to pull her inside the home. The family tried to apply bandages to her wound as they waited for an ambulance to arrive. That assistance took about 20 minutes to reach the family due to Israel’s movement restrictions.

Rimas was pronounced dead 10 minutes after she arrived at the hospital.

Since the end of January, Rimas is the third Palestinian child targeted by Israeli forces with live fire while inside her own home.

Israeli forces shot and killed 2-year-old Laila Ayman Khatib while she dined with her family on 25 January. Jannat Faisal Mutawar, 8, is now facing vision loss after Israeli forces shot her in the head on 11 February while inside her home.