The quarry of martyrs of the West Bank

2024-02-11 19:32:28

Sunday, February 11, 2024, 8:32 p.m.

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«Our morale is at the highest and people support us. We live for the people and for Allah. Our morale comes from that total support of the countryside and the destruction caused by Israel has not achieved its objective. The camp is with the resistance”, Jarebha (first name) appears out of nowhere and stands in the middle of the central route of the Jenin refugee camp with his finger on the submachine gun. What was an asphalt road is now a mudhole that workers from the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) are trying to make usable for the cars of the 14,000 residents of a settlement that Israel attacks with increasing frequency and harshness. . Its inhabitants are descendants of Palestinians expelled from their lands in 1948 and it is one of the most depressed places in the occupied territories due to unemployment and poverty.

Since the war broke out in Gaza, Israel has intensified its operations in refugee camps in the northern West Bank such as Jenin, with the aim of ending an armed resistance that it has not been able to quell in recent years. Palestinian factions have united under the umbrella of the Jenin Brigades, where fighters from Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Fatah share trenches. Militants like Jarebha, 22, who has been in hiding for the last two years. His eyes are bulging after a night of patrolling and he says they have lost “many fighters and loved ones.” “We know that they become martyrs and that makes us happy, but we share the pain with their families,” she says. There is no wall without the photo of a ‘martyr’. There is no family that does not have one. And those ‘martyrs’, whom Israel calls “terrorists”, are getting younger and younger.

The militiamen – few, highly motivated, but poorly prepared and poorly armed to face one of the best armies in the world – patrol at night and sleep during the day. Exactly the opposite cycle of the majority of neighbors, who while the sun shines are in their homes and at dusk they escape to the city due to the terror caused by the Hebrew incursions, some lasting several days.

Palestinian fighters know that each day that passes is one more day they gain in the race towards almost certain death. Israel controls every movement from the air and enters on the ground when it wants. Jenin is a kind of training ground for soldiers. Two weeks ago, a special forces commando entered the Ibn Sina hospital, next to the countryside, and executed three militiamen in their beds, one of them a paraplegic patient after injuries suffered three months ago in a drone attack. This operation carried out by men and women disguised as medical personnel was a message to all combatants.

There are no streets left in the refugee camp, only holes caused by the bombings. There the young militiamen patrol heavily armed while firearms are the protagonists of the children’s games. M. Ayestaran

Increase in violence

Violence has intensified in the occupied territories after the Hamas attacks on October 7, but before this date, in 2024, the Israelis had already killed 234 Palestinians, 52 of them in Jenin, according to UN data. The army enters by land, with bulldozers that destroy roads and streets, and bombs from the air, a strategy that it has not used since the Second Intifada and that it now executes on most occasions with drones.

Pride

«He chose to be a martyr and he achieved it. May Allah bless him!”, resigns a mother who lost her son

Ferial shows a medal with the photograph of his little Ashraf, killed in June by a drone. He was 14 years old and she was his youngest son. «He dreamed of growing up and getting married, and for me to be by his side. One day he said to me: Mother, would you be sad if I fell a martyr? And I answered: ‘Of course, because you are my son.’ She claimed that she wanted me to feel proud if I fell a martyr. I replied: ‘Why do you say this?’ and I expressed that it was my life.

A few days later, the Israeli operation arrived and Ashraf died after a drone attack against the car in which he was with two militiamen near the Jalameh checkpoint, north of Jenin. «He chose to be a martyr and he achieved it. May Allah bless him! The Israelis took his body and have held it ever since. Ferial hopes that it will be returned to him soon so that he can bury it and go to pray at his grave.

In M. Ayesta

New cemetery

The two cemeteries in the field are full and they have had to adapt a new surface to the doors of the main school. When the children leave school, the first thing they encounter are dozens of graves, most of them presided over by a photograph of the deceased with a submachine gun in his hand. The last graves are those of Mohamed Jalamneh, of Hamas, and the Ghazawi brothers, of Islamic Jihad, victims of the Israeli covert commando operation in the Ibn Sina hospital.

Momen Saadi, Art and Circus teacher, waits for the children who are part of the creative club. From the school it is just a few minutes walk to the Freedom Theater, one of the most emblematic places in the camp and which was destroyed by the Hebrews in the mythical Battle of Jenin in 2002. This time the soldiers have not reduced it to rubble, but they vandalized its walls with stars of David, searched the offices and arrested those responsible.

field teacher

“They know that at any moment it could be their turn, that they could be the next to be arrested, injured or killed”

Saadi is concerned about the impact on his students of the extreme violence that has reigned in the countryside since before October 7 and about the situation in Gaza. «All this has changed the psychology of the little ones, who think that at any moment it could be their turn. Children know that they could be next after Gaza or that they are at risk of being detained, injured or killed in an attack. All these ideas move around in their heads and when you ask them what they want to be when they grow up, the answer is a martyr.

Firas is 12 years old and does not go to the theater. When he leaves school he sits in front of his cousin’s grave and prays the Koran sitting on the ground. She does it every afternoon whenever there is no raid. She arrives when the sun is about to set, when the mosque calls for the Asr prayer. Her family is one of those who remain in the countryside. She doesn’t leave during the nights. Firas is a boy with a dark face, strong and of very few words. Once the operation is over he stands up and heads back to the field. He decides to ask the same question that Saadi asks his students and Firas does not hesitate for a second: “I want to be a martyr and protect the field from the enemy.”

In M. Ayesta

Without any respect to the memory of Shireen Abu Akleh

On May 11, 2022, the Israeli army killed journalist Shireen Abu Akleh with a shot to the head. The veteran Palestinian-American reporter for the Al-Jazeera channel was covering an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp, perfectly identified by her vest and helmet, when she was shot. Residents of the Jenin refugee camp and journalists from the West Bank painted a mural at the site of her death and planted a sign that was damaged by armored vehicles in one of Israel’s recent incursions.

«Since October 7, the soldiers have been more aggressive. Before that day, killing Shireen was seen as a great crime, but since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, dozens of colleagues have been killed and in the West Bank we have many detainees,” explains Shatah Hanaysha, a young reporter who was with Abu Akleh on day of his death. In Hanaysha’s opinion, “we now work in a war situation and it is very dangerous to report on incursions.”

According to data verified by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), “at least 85 journalists and media workers are among the more than 28,000 killed since the war began.” And the army informed large agencies such as Reuters or AFP that it cannot guarantee the safety of its local personnel in the Strip.

The security situation in the West Bank has also worsened, with reporters’ movements becoming more complicated due to countless Israeli checkpoints.

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