“My son Jihad had Israeli citizenship,” Zandik Niaz, 40, laments between hugs and signs of respect during the funeral. The boy turned 15 on Saturday, the day a shot by Israel’s occupation troops ended his life, according to his father’s story. “He is already in paradise,” he comments, clinging to his faith as a way of accepting that “Allah wanted to take him away.” Jihad is one of the 14 dead that the Israeli army left as a result of its incursion into the Palestinian refugee camp of Nur Shams (Tulkarem), which began late Thursday and lasted for 48 hours. Nur Shams has been devastated.
It is the operation with the most fatalities carried out by the Jewish State in the West Bank since the current war began on October 7. Thousands of men dressed in black said goodbye this Sunday in a great funeral, amidst shots in the air, to those they consider martyrs of the Palestinian cause. For the Israeli authorities, they are terrorists.
Among the 14 victims is not the head of the well-known Tulkarem Brigades, the armed resistance against the occupation. Mohamed Jaber, nicknamed Abu Shujaa, despite the fact that he has been reported dead this weekend by different media outlets. He is one of the most wanted men in the West Bank by Israel, which has tried several times to assassinate him.
But he dared to appear in Nur Shams during the funeral services, where he was hailed as a hero and carried on shoulders while surrounded by armed men. “We are Abu Shajaa’s men!” hundreds of people shouted while several bodies were transported, as Morning Express has verified. They also asked those who fired into the air to save their ammunition to confront the Israelis.
The scene after the withdrawal of the troops is reminiscent of an earthquake. Or to the images of Gaza. Buildings of up to three floors collapsed. Raised and unpaved streets. Mountains of rubble removed by excavators. Downed power lines. Sanitation and burst pipes. There is no water supply, electricity or internet. Army vehicles and hundreds of soldiers have destroyed houses, premises and everything in their path during the two days. They have also left numerous walls riddled with bullets. In addition to Jihad, there is at least one other teenager among the dead. This is Qais Fathi Nasrallah, 16 years old, who was shot in the head when he was riding his scooter along a street.
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The operation has coincided with the United States Government’s plans to sanction the Netzah Yehuda battalion of the Israeli army, made up of ultra-Orthodox and one of those deployed in the West Bank, for the abuses they commit, according to information revealed by the media Axios. “If anyone thinks they can impose sanctions on a unit of the Israeli army, I will fight them with all my strength,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised in a statement this Sunday.
Among the alleys of Nur Shams there are scenes of families of the dead sitting on the street, women on one side, men on the other. Nearly a hundred people console the relatives of Jafar Amar, 20 years old. Two Hamas flags are displayed there, but his aunt Hana, 40, does not want to join factions or armed groups. “Jafar is Palestinian. The other thing, once dead, doesn’t matter.” Her husband, Moawya Amar, 50, accuses Israel of inflicting “collective punishment” on the entire refugee camp. He believes they have the ability to individually intercept those he wants to kill. He refers specifically to Abu Shujaa.
Triggered violence
In parallel to the war in Gaza, violence has skyrocketed in the West Bank, where Israeli security forces have detained more than 8,000 people and killed more than 1,100 during the current conflict. A medic who was volunteering with the Red Crescent was killed on Saturday as he went to assist the wounded during an attack by Jewish settlers in the south of Nablus. Two more Palestinians died this Sunday. Israel accuses them of having tried to attack its troops deployed near Hebron. All this, on the same day that the war continues its pace in the Strip, where Palestinian emergency services have found a mass grave with dozens of bodies in the courtyard of the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, which was attacked weeks ago by the Israeli army.
Zandik Niaz was detained during the military raid on Nur Shams, which began at dusk on Thursday. He was still in Israeli hands when the military killed his son Jihad. The family, Arabs with Israeli nationality and residing in Taybeh, had gone to the West Bank to spend the weekend in the refugee camp, where the grandfather resides. Zandik, who has two other sons and three daughters, shows his Jewish state driver’s license to corroborate his claim that Israel has killed one of his citizens, even though they consider themselves Palestinians. Like the Zandik family, there are about two million Israeli Arabs, making up 20% of a population of 10 million.
“The Israelis don’t care, all Arabs deserve death,” Zandik complains as he bursts into tears with the arrival of his son’s group of friends, whom he embraces through tears. “I pay my taxes with which Israel maintains its army,” he adds while he shows the bumps and bruises on his chest and hip on the left side, a reminder of the time he was detained during the military operation. “I don’t care,” he says the officer to whom he showed his Israeli papers after being arrested responded.
The West Bank hosts around twenty refugee camps, descendants of the Palestinians expelled from their places of origin when Israel was born as a State in 1948. In Nur Shams, founded with citizens originally from Haifa, on the Israeli Mediterranean coast, some 13,500 people live, according to 2022 data from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). These camps, which over the years now house construction homes where there were once tents, are frequent targets of raids by the Israeli military. Adam Boulokos, head of that institution in the West Bank, believes that these attacks and raids are part of a “new strategy” of the Israeli Armed Forces to raze the infrastructure of the refugee camps, homes, roads, streets or sanitation, under the current war situation.
Several employees help Yusef Gul organize and dust in his pharmacy. He shows remains of projectiles collected among the medicine shelves. “They know that this pharmacy serves the entire countryside,” he laments without losing his calm. Like the vast majority of those roaming around Nur Shams, he seems immune to the horror that surrounds him. It is as if the Palestinians in the West Bank have already gotten used to it and are repairing all the damage, knowing that sooner or later the Israeli army will return.
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