Deadly Israeli raids leave Palestinians in West Bank camp reeling

JENIN, Palestinian Territories — Palestinian Mawaheb Marei is mourning a double tragedy, her relatives suffering and dying in Gaza, and the killing of her teenage son, a victim of Israel’s frequent raids in the occupied West Bank.

“I wish I could wrap him in a coat”, Marei told AFP, like she had done every winter to keep her son, Eid, warm.

The 15-year-old was killed on October 25 in an Israeli raid on Jenin refugee camp where the family live in the northern West Bank, said the mother.

“Now, it doesn’t matter if I live or die in the raids.”

Marei said she had also lost six relatives in the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, sparked by a deadly attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants on October 7.

The Israeli forces carries out regular raids on the Jenin camp and adjacent city, often triggering gun battles between troops and Palestinian militants.

The army says it is targeting “terrorists” in its raids, but the Palestinian health ministry says many civilians are among the dead.

When Marei heard that her son had been hit, she frantically searched local hospitals, and eventually found him intubated and dying from shrapnel wounds.

“So many innocent children have been killed,” she said.

The camp, a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups, was originally built to house Palestinians displaced during the Arab-Israeli war that coincided with Israel’s creation in 1948. It is now home to more than 23,000 people.

AFP correspondents in Jenin saw houses in the camp sprayed with bullets, and children’s clothes lying strewn in the wreckage.

Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank have killed more than 300 Palestinians since the Israeli war on Gaza erupted, Palestinian health officials say. 

Standing in a bombed-out Jenin mosque strewn with shattered tiles, Hani Al-Damaj, an elderly Palestinian who lived next door, said he and his relatives were lucky to escape alive when it was hit.

An Israeli air strike tore through the Al Ansar mosque in October, leaving the lower floors a skeleton. Staircases rise into the sky, leading nowhere. 

 ‘Our future in Israeli hands’ 

The Palestinian health ministry said the strike had killed two men, while the Israeli army said it targeted and killed “terror operatives” who used the mosque’s basement as a command centre.

In Damaj’s bedroom, within touching distance of the mosque, chunks of concrete ripped through the wall, showering the mattress with rubble.

Other camp residents told AFP that some people had been killed in their beds by stray bullets during Israeli operations.

In a multi-day raid earlier this month, Israeli forces killed 11 people and a sick 13-year-old boy died after he had been prevented from reaching hospital, Palestinian health authorities said.

Among the wounded was a 27-year-old woman shot in the chest, said the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.

The military said at the time that troops had seized dozens of weapons and dismantled multiple bomb-making laboratories.

Last month, the Israeli army killed 14 people in the deadliest single raid in the West Bank since 2005, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Earlier this month footage showed Israeli soldiers inside another mosque in the camp reciting a Jewish prayer through the loudspeakers, in what the Palestinian presidency called a “shameful desecration”. The army said the soldiers had been taken off duty.

Soldiers were also accused of breaking into the nearby Freedom Theatre, where an AFP correspondent saw a trail of damage.

“What is this kind of behaviour from a soldier?” said the theatre’s artistic director Ahmed Tobasi.

“Our life, our future, our sleeping, our breathing, it’s in Israeli hands.”