TULKARM: Amid the warren of Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarm, in the occupied West Bank, armed fighters wander around and greet passersby from the ruins left by an Israeli raid.
The city, home to two refugee camps, shows the scars of the increasing number of Israeli military operations in the West Bank targeting militant strongholds.
Israeli raids were not uncommon before the war triggered by Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, but the conflict has caused a marked intensification.
The Israeli army says it is “conducting night-time counterterrorism operations to apprehend suspects, many of whom are members of the terrorist organization Hamas,” and that there have been “over 700 attempted attacks” in the West Bank since the start of the war.
But Said, a 23-year-old Palestinian in Nur Shams, said the operations were an attempt at “revenge” against Palestinians.
“They can’t get over what happened on Oct. 7, they didn’t anticipate it,” he said.
HIGHLIGHT
The Israeli army says it is ‘conducting night-time counterterrorism operations to apprehend suspects, many of whom are members of the terrorist organization Hamas.’
The young Palestinian is a member of the “Tulkarm Brigade,” an organization that brings together various factions.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Israeli forces have conducted eight raids in Tulkarm, including four
in December, an activist in the camp said On Oct. 20, the Israeli army announced the death of a border guard after a confrontation with armed men in the camp.
More than 330 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli army or settlers since Oct. 7, including at least 35 in Tulkarm, according to a tally based on figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Tulkarm sits directly on the border with Israel in the northern West Bank.
At a bend in an alley, Assoum, a 26-year-old militant, was navigating his vehicle between piles of rubble.
“Nothing will stop us,” he said, adding widespread support for the brigade. “The entire camp is a battalion.”
Said and Assoum are both former prisoners of Israel and said they wanted to “bring an end to the occupation.”
On Dec. 26, while demolishing the home of a wanted individual, the Israeli army caused severe damage to the home of Yousef Zendiq, 50. “My house is uninhabitable,” and “my clothes are in the car,” said the father of four.
With nowhere to live, he set up a tent.
A week ago, the Israeli army raided the home of one of his relatives, Sabhia Zendiq, 65, and arrested her along with her husband before releasing them. When she returned home, she found her home turned upside down.
Israeli soldiers “entered the house and came back with a bag of children’s toys, including some plastic guns, and declared ‘you are terrorists,’” she said.
“They want revenge,” her husband said. “What they can’t do in Gaza, they do here.”
Sitting amid the rubble, Tamim Khreis, a school principal, was sipping coffee with friends.
The 42-year-old charged that the Israelis “want to destroy people, displace them and break their resilience.”
Sitting with Khreis, his friend Abdelkader Hamdan interrupted to say: “Before,(the Israelis) drove them out,” referring to what Arabs call the Nakba of 1948 when the establishment of the State of Israel forced 760,000 Palestinians from their homes.
“Today, they are pursuing them in the place where they were expelled to,” Hamdan said.
On Al-Manshiya Street, all that remained of a two-story building that once housed a kindergarten and a wedding hall were children’s drawings on the outer walls and a stone plaque with the logo of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
Saleh, 10, was playing nearby with his friends. “It’s a nursery school; what do they want with it?” he asked.
“Al-Manshiya is like a little Gaza.”
