Tamara Nassar
The Electronic Intifada / July 6, 2022
During the past week, a Palestinian child and an Islamic Jihad fighter were killed in the Jenin area.
Kamel Abdullah Kamel Alawneh (17) died from his wounds Sunday after being shot by Israeli forces a day earlier.
On 2 July, five Israeli military vehicles were deployed at the entrance of Jaba, a village southwest of Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
They erected a checkpoint, provoking confrontations with Palestinian residents of the village.
Israeli forces opened fire on Alawneh as he stood 20 meters away, according to a field investigation by Defense for Children International-Palestine.
The teen was shot with live bullets in the elbow, and then again in the abdomen as he tried to flee. He managed to walk 20 more meters, before he collapsed and was taken to hospital where he underwent surgery.
Kamel died the next day, bringing the number of Palestinian children killed by Israel since the start of the year to 16.
Resistance member killed
Meanwhile last week, Israeli occupation forces killed Muhammad Maher Marei during an invasion of the Jenin refugee camp.
The 23-year-old was shot during confrontations with Israeli occupation forces who had invaded the camp in the early hours of 29 June.
He succumbed to his wounds later that day. He was a member of the Jenin brigade of the Islamic Jihad resistance group.
The next day, Israeli occupation forces escorted hundreds of Israeli settlers to Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, another major Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank.
Joseph’s Tomb is an archeological site located in the heart of the city, and is considered sacred by Muslims, Christians and Jews.
Militant Israeli settlers frequently visit the site under heavy escort from the Israeli army, which sometimes shoot at Palestinians, injuring them with live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas.
The army imposes curfews and military closures on the city, disrupting the lives of the residents.
Palestinian resistance fighters in the camp opened fire on the Israelis on 30 June, wounding three, including a senior officer. Israel’s state broadcaster Kann published video showing settlers inside the site as gunshots ring out:
The injured officer was Roy Zweig, deputy commander of the Israeli army’s so-called Samaria Regional Brigade. The two other injured were civilians.
Notably, Zweig made headlines last month for saying that the Israeli military and the settlement movement were “one and the same.”
While the army and settlers go to Joseph’s Tomb under the pretext of religious observance, their real goal is territorial conquest and control.
“We won’t relinquish our grip on Joseph’s Tomb,” Yossi Dagan, the head of the Samaria Regional Council, a settler municipal body, stated.
Saraya al-Quds, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad resistance group, claimed responsibility for shooting at the soldiers and settlers in retaliation for Marei’s killing.
Tamara Nassar is an assistant editor at The Electronic Intifada
