by Malik Miah and Barry Shepard, published on Socialist Action, September 3, 2024
The Israeli genocide in Gaza continues and intensifies with the outbreak of polio — once thought to be eradicated worldwide — among Palestinian children.
The Israeli aim of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has reached a new stage in the West Bank.
Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News wrote on August 30:
Israel is in the midst of its largest scale assault of the occupied West Bank since 2002.
Beginning in the predawn hours hundreds of Israeli forces in columns of armored vehicles and bulldozers backed by drones and helicopters stormed into refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas. Israel also carried out drone strikes and snipers have reportedly been firing on people inside Jenin.
Internet and cell phone service, as well as water and sewage systems, were shut down in parts of the West Bank as Israeli forces conducted house raids. Local residents have reported widespread demolitions of their homes and streets and the blocking of ambulances and medical workers attempting to reach wounded people. Israeli forces surrounded the main hospital in Jenin and have reportedly been searching people entering and exiting the facility.
“This is an incredible scaling up of the violence of the preceding months and in particular weeks,” said Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, “with a full military assault, destroying hospitals, destroying roads, destroying vital infrastructure which had already been severely damaged during the preceding months, and Voila!, telling the Palestinians to go, ordering mass evacuations.”
From a report by CNN:
Video obtained by CNN showed bulldozers tearing up a street in a built-up area of Tulkarem, and also moving in convoy through Jenin. Additional footage released by Israel’s military showed what it said was a strike on a militant operations room in Nur Shams, a refugee camp near Tulkarem.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the operation had been staged to “thwart Islamic-Iranian terrorist infrastructure,” claiming that Iran was working to establish an “eastern front” against Israel.
“We must deal with the threat just as we deal with the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever steps are required,” he wrote on social media. “This is a war for all intents and purposes, and we must win it.”
The Biden administration and the Democratic Party’s new candidate Kamala Harris support the Israeli operation in the West Bank as part of their support to the whole Israeli genocidal war. Biden is Genocide Joe, while Harris is Genocide Jane.
In a CNN interview on August 29, she repeated that Israel has a right to “self-defense” against the people of the occupied territories. She intends to keep open the military weaponry spigot to Israel with no pressure to change its genocidal policies.
Transcript of Democracy Now! Report from Jenin
The Palestine view of Israeli state terrorism is rarely seen on US television or covered by national media. The main exception is Democracy Now! Amy Goodman and co-host Nermeen Sheikh interviewed a local leader in Jenin:
AMY GOODMAN: In Jenin, Israeli forces have surrounded the city, blocking exit and entry points and access to hospitals, and ripping up infrastructure in the Jenin refugee camp. Jenin has been the target of frequent raids by Israeli forces, but this latest military operation is the largest since the Second Intifada two decades ago, when Jenin witnessed some of the worst violence of that period after Israeli forces invaded it in 2002, laid siege to the refugee camp, killing dozens of civilians, destroying hundreds of homes, leaving a quarter of the population homeless.
We go now to Jenin, where we’re joined by Ahmed Tobasi, artistic director at the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Ahmed. Describe the scene in Jenin right now.
AHMED TOBASI: Thank you, Amy, for having me.
I mean, the scene, it’s the same again and again. But as I said before, the Israelis keeping surprising us even the way they do the invasions. To be honest, I am calling my sisters around, some friends, and they are very scared. We, all of us, very scared. We know there is something different in this invasion. The way they start the invasion, the way they’re doing it now, it’s really scary. People don’t know what’s going to happen.
It looked like it’s going to be a bit more longer invasion than others. We are surprised of the number of the soldiers, the vehicles that keep coming to the city. The camp now having sometimes electricity, sometimes not. For sure, the internet is not there. We try to use the 3Gs, and not totally always good. But yeah, it’s a fear atmosphere where everybody is waiting.
And, you know, the scenes from Gaza, what happened to Gaza, the people in the camp are really afraid that’s going to happen to them, because it’s obvious that Israel is punishing the people, punishing the civilians…. The camp is surrounded with army. All of the entrances are closed. They already bulldozed all the streets, all the alleyways in the camp. And even the bulldozing is really deep. That means no cars, no ambulances can go inside.
And many people tried to evacuate the camp. But, for sure, it’s very dangerous, because if you are a man above 15 or 14, you could be shot if you are moving or try to sneak out from the camp. Only maybe kids or some women, if they are courageous enough to leave, to know what’s going on outside the house, to leave the camp. But no one is allowed to move.
People are afraid of having no food now for one week, because, you know, they didn’t prepare themselves for the invasion. They didn’t know which kind of the invasion is this. And, you know, the Israelis do not announce what they’re going to do exactly. So, many people are really afraid for the kids having no food.
So, yes, you hear the drones very close, the vehicles all around, the bombing by time to time. It’s, again, the scene repeating itself again and again. And we don’t know, like, what is the end, how long, what we should do. And it’s, obviously, the Israelis want to tell the communities, the civilians of these areas, “You have only two choices: You die here, or you leave, are displaced to other country.” And that’s what is — we’re still waiting what’s going to happen in the next days.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Ahmed, if you could put this latest military operation in the context of the ongoing assault on Gaza, on the one hand, and also the situation that’s been developing in the West Bank, both with the increasing violence over the last 10 months since the Israeli assault on Gaza, as well as the exponential increase in the number of Israeli settlements there?
AHMED TOBASI: Yes, I mean, also, at the same time, I hope American language and American, let’s say, journalism starts using the definition in a right way. It is not violence. It’s a genocide from the Israeli army against the Palestinian people. It’s not a conflict. It’s a genocide, a war, ethnic cleansing, from the Israeli military to the Palestinian civilians.
And yes, it’s, to be honest, from 100,000 of settlers to 850,000 in the West Bank. West Bank is not anymore West Bank. It’s a little fragment, from Palestinian communities living there and there, and all the connection, all the network, the streets, all controlled by the settlers.
I promise you, I experienced a death threat. One time, I went out trying to go back from Ramallah to Jenin. It’s not even late. It’s the evening. And suddenly we find ourselves surrounded by settlers who really clearly want to kill you. And the last second, we just run with the car. And if we just stopped, they are ready to kill you. They are attacking everywhere. They are putting fire in the houses of the people. They’re shooting. Now they have guns, officially permitted guns from the Israeli government being given to the settlers to shoot Palestinians in very easy cold blood.
So, we’re not facing only army. We’re facing crazy settlers, groups of crazy people who just want to kill more and more. And the idea is clear. They want to empty West Bank from Palestinians. Guys, what is happening in Gaza, what is happening in West Bank, we say it again and again, this was planned from 80 years, and the Israelis have the time to work on it slowly to displace Palestinians in Palestine. They want Palestine empty from Palestinians, and that’s the only plan. And they will not relax. They will not stop until this happens, or, inshallah [God willing], it would be a victory for Palestinians, and they will get defeated.
AMY GOODMAN: Ahmed Tobasi, there have been more than 10,000 Palestinians on the West Bank arrested since October 7th. We have brought out reports from CNN to Human Rights Watch to Haaretz to Addameer of prisoners who haven’t been charged being sexually abused, being tortured. I’m wondering if you can talk about the effect of this level of imprisonment. And particularly this past December, the Israeli forces raided the offices of your theater, of the Jenin Freedom Theatre. Producer Mustafa Sheta was detained and sentenced to six months. Have you heard from him? Has he seen a lawyer? Has he been accused?
AHMED TOBASI: Exactly that’s what I’m talking about, Amy. I had an interview with your program in December, last December, and it’s the same and even more crazy, Mustafa still in prison, no information, not allowed even for lawyers to visit or have any information. As we said before, even kids in the Freedom Theatre have been shot where they were playing….
I am saying, from your window, from your program, I’m calling to the American people, to the American artists, to the American activists, to the American people, please, you are the one who have to move now and stop this craziness. You have to stop supporting sending bombs to Israel. Enough military support. This military support goes for killing artists, children, destroying theaters, killing people, killing women. They do nothing more than this.
The reports by CNN and major outlets like the BBC, does not happen from Gaza where Western reporters are denied access by Israel. Their “independent” reports are reviewed and vetted by Israel before publication.
Dozens of Al Jazeera Palestinian reporters and their family members have been murdered in Gaza by the IDF.
Western reporters are still allowed in the occupied West Bank where the Palestinian Authority (PA) has formal control but no real powers.
Israel says it’s attack is to root out “terrorists” in the camps. There are resistance fighters to Israel’s genocide in both Gaza and the West Bank since the people seek freedom and self-determination. Israel and its U.S. backers twist this around to say that Israel is only “defending itself” from them.
The Islamic Jihad militant group condemned the Israeli military’s “comprehensive aggression” on areas of the occupied West Bank, referring to it as an “open and undeclared war.”
In a separate statement, the group’s military wing, the Al-Quds Brigades, said it targeted and shot down an Israeli drone near Jenin. The group said its fighters are targeting Israeli forces with “heavy volleys of direct bullets.”
Hamas called for a “general mobilization… against the occupation and its settlers everywhere on our occupied land.” The group said the Israeli operation was “extensive” and accused the Israeli military of “deliberate destruction of infrastructure using large military forces accompanied by aerial bombardment from drones and warplanes.”
The Palestinian health ministry reported on August 30 that 652 Palestinians, including 150 children, have been killed in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem since October 7, with over 5,400 others injured.
As well as raids by the Israeli military, armed Jewish settlers have also launched murderous assault on Palestinian towns. On August 15, more than 70 armed settlers attacked the village of Jit, firing live bullets at residents and setting several homes, cars, and other property on fire, according to the head of the village council, Nasser Sedda. These assaults were protected by the police and IDF, all before the latest massive raids.
What is clear is the policy of the US rulers does not or will not change whoever is the president. Both ruling class parties support the Zionist state’s war.
The armed and popular resistance in Gaza and the West Bank, and solidarity from around the world is the only force to stop the US and Israel in its terrorism and war crimes.
*Featured Image: Israeli army armoured vehicles move along an excavated section of a road in the centre of Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Thursday amid ongoing military operations in the Palestinian territories. Zain Jaafar/AFP/Getty Images