A crowd of people gathered to watch two massive armoured bulldozers rumble into the Jenin refugee camp, tearing apart the asphalt to clear a path for three Israeli tanks, Al Jazeera reported.
“This is the first time I’ve seen a tank with my own eyes,” a young man said, his voice a mixture of awe and disbelief, as the sun set over one of the entrances to the camp.
Before him, two massive bulldozers rumbled forward, destroying more of the road underneath them. The refugee camp, nearly emptied after weeks of relentless attacks, was bracing for yet another military incursion.
Ahmed, born in Jenin in 2003 at the height of the second Intifada, had witnessed military incursions before. But Israeli tanks had not been seen on the streets of Jenin since 2002, when that uprising began, and it looks like the Israelis are planning to linger.
He stood among a group of young men and boys on Haifa Street, near one of the camp’s entrances.
“It won’t be easy for them to stay,” he muttered, as the heavy machinery continued its work.
For more than an hour, journalists, locals, and a nearby Israeli military jeep observed in silence as the bulldozers dismantled the roundabout on Haifa Street. Then, as the last pieces of debris were pushed aside, the engines of the Merkava tanks rumbled, and the armoured vehicles began their advance into the city.
A young man standing nearby, when asked whether he expected immediate resistance, shook his head. “I don’t think so. There’s no one left in the camp, not even the fighters.”
Israel has been conducting near-daily raids in the occupied West Bank since 2022; its stated aim being the weakening of armed Palestinian resistance groups operating there.
Since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, Israel has increased the deadly force it uses in the West Bank, using helicopters, drones and now tanks.
This latest intensification of violence in Jenin began on January 21, but Israeli forces have also attacked elsewhere, including in Qabatiya and Tulkarem. On Sunday, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said that he had instructed the military “to prepare for a long stay in the cleared camps for the coming years, preventing residents from returning and stopping terrorism from regrowing”.
bd-pratidin/GR
