Trapped at home in tears and fear- families in Jenin camp plead for protection amid an escalation in violence and a lack of prospect.
By Adam Bouloukos and Juliette Touma*
“There is nothing more painful than doing this almost daily trip to the graveyard to burry young men”, Majed-chain smoking- in an open style kitchen says. His son, a paramedic helped the injured during a recent Israeli Forces’ raid to the Jenin camp in the north of the West Bank.
While the numbers of those killed in the raid vary, at least three were civilians. Some were caught in the line of fire or simply while looking outside their window at the wrong time like Majeda, a 61-year-old grandmother.
Up a narrow staircase, on the third floor, a tiny apartment. Mohammad, in his late 20s, receives us with a smile. He then dumps the contents of a trash bag on the coffee table. There were hundreds of empty bullet casings he collected from his house, turned military base.
Mohammad says that at least eight Israeli soldiers barged into his house in the early hours of 26 January. They tied his hands and locked him up in the bathroom. Meanwhile, his wife and their two toddlers were kept in another room where the soldiers set up camp from his living room and started a shooting match with armed individuals in Jenin, an area experiencing a vacuum in legitimate security forces.
Mohammad could hear his babies crying. He feared for their lives. Hours later, the soldiers released him from the bathroom to join the family only to find them in tears, and shock, terrified of what the coming minutes would bring. “I thought that’s it, we are all going to die now”, he says.
The soldiers eventually left Mohammad’s house. “It was like a war zone, everything turned upside down”. In their bedroom, the ceiling is black from smoke from the blast back of the significant weaponry used by the Israeli soldiers.
Outside, heavy rain kept falling as if to wash away the misery and loss. We continued walking around the narrow streets with homes stacked one on top of another, a labyrinth of poverty and poor planning a common feature of Palestine refugee camps across the region. A sofa on the rubble of a flattened house, a bullet holed water tank, a shoe, ruins of what was once a house, a home, a sanctuary.
Hiba, the mother of the paramedic, speaks of her frustration with her three young sons. “They sleep the whole day, they don’t have jobs, they don’t have much hope”. This year alone more than 40 Palestinians were killed across the West Bank, many were in the Jenin Camp during the recent escalation. Young people are growing up in grinding poverty, amid piles of trash, an abundance of arms, bullet riddled homes and facilities. They are exposed to a many decades-long crisis with peace an elusive notion. In Jenin, they live a life of exponential misery, a lack of prospect for a better tomorrow, a job or a sense of purpose.
“All we are asking for is protection, for our children to live a normal life, and to be secure, for our young people to find jobs and live in dignity”.
Jamal is six years old. He wanders around the camp in his tracksuit and sandals as the temperatures dropped below 5c. “School is closed. I miss my friends”, he says. UNRWA runs four schools in the camp with at some 1,700 boys and girls. While UNRWA staff responded to the mayhem in the camp following the raid, it was far from enough.
“Ambulances were not allowed in the camp to take the wounded to the hospital, a three-minute drive” a nurse tells us. The story was familiar. More than 20 years ago, our colleague Iain Hook was killed in Jenin Camp. Severely wounded, he was denied medical care.
Leaving the camp, a tree would forever bear witness. The site of the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, shot last May. Posters, murals and dry flowers in tribute to one of the best journalists in this region.
Driving out of Jenin, one cannot escape the feelings of pain, grief, anger at the impunity and injustice. We crossed the checkpoint and reached a rich, green valley fresh from the recent rain. A contrast, a beautiful scene against all odds, a scene and a land that should be enjoyed by all.
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*Adam Bouloukos is the Director of UNRWA Affairs in the West Bank. Juliette Touma is the UNRWA Director of Communications across all areas of operation. They recently visited Jenin camp.
** Names changed.
