“Israel’s broad operation in Jenin is not a one-time event,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the troops began the withdrawal Tuesday night. “We will not allow Jenin to go back to being a city of refuge for terrorism.”
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday that Israel viewed what it described as the lack of civilian casualties as one of the mission’s successes.
“Just as we acted in Gaza two months ago in a precise operation against Islamic Jihad, so too did we act against all of the terror organizations in the Jenin refugee camp, and that is something that we know how to copy and paste everywhere else,” he said, referring to the May campaign of so-called “pinpoint” Israeli military airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, in which 10 civilians were also killed.
Camp residents, however, said that the attacks would only fuel more violence, and Israeli analysts, too, warned that, it would not be the last time.
“We could see similar activities even tomorrow,” said former deputy head of Israel’s national security council Itamar Yaar, adding that the operations were not intended to achieve deterrence against future attacks “but to limit the terrorists’ capabilities.”
Fathya al-Sadi, a 69-year-old widow, said that she spent all of Monday, the first day of the incursion, hiding at the back of her house with son, grandchildren and dozens of her neighbors, some of whom feared their houses were on Israel’s target list.
“The children were screaming, I had to hug them all the time,” she said, adding that finally at one point an Israeli soldier broadcast from the ruined streets and exhorted residents to leave.
“He said ‘get out, get out, get out! We will protect you,’” she recalled. She filled a few plastic bags and backpacks and made her way between soldiers and military vehicles to her brother’s apartment outside the camp in Jenin city itself, where she and her family slept on the floor until Wednesday morning.
Upon her return to the camp, she found that her home was still intact, but a neighbor’s was partially destroyed by an airstrike, its wall pockmarked with bullet holes. A charred appliance workshop nearby was surrounded by demolished cars.
Surveying his family home, partially destroyed by an Israeli shoulder-fire missile, and then used by Israeli soldiers as a firing position, Hussein Shibly cleaned spent shells from the floor.
“They targeted us because they said one of our youths was in the resistance,” he said, spreading his hands. “He is not and we had 50 people downstairs.”
Israel has claimed that all 12 of the Palestinian men killed were combatants. Amid the fighting, some 4,000 of the 12,000 residents of the camp fled on Monday night, according to Jenin mayor Nidal Al-Obeidi.
Israeli authorities have not addressed the estimated 100 injured Palestinians, many of whom were being treated. They needed to be evacuated a second time from the hospital on Tuesday afternoon, when a firefight broke out nearby and Israeli soldiers hit the hospital with bullets and the courtyard with tear gas.
The gas caused a stampede of Palestinians into the medical wards, said Gabriel Naumann, from the international aid group Doctors Without Borders, which assisted the hospital staff as they worked throughout the incursion.
“People were throwing up. Some became unconscious,” said Naumann, who also said he had vomited from the gas. “We had to close the ER for about an hour. We were treating patients on the floor back here.”
On Wednesday, the emergency room was still blanketed in debris, the aftermath of treating hundreds of patients and sheltering families who had fled their homes, some of whom were still sleeping in the courtyard after the Israeli withdrawal.
How much the fighting capabilities of Jenin’s militants had been affected were not immediately clear, said…
Read More: Jenin camp devastated after Israeli pullout, both sides vow more violence