Mat Nashed
Al-Jazeera / August 22, 2024
Experts say Israel is conducting near-daily raids on the coastal city in the occupied West Bank to uproot and scare its population.
Israel killed three Palestinians in a drone strike on Thursday in Tulkarem, a city and refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
That was during an Israeli raid – a near-daily occurrence in the West Bank – on the Tulkarem refugee camp, during which Israeli troops clashed with fighters from the Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, according to fighters in the city.
What happened during the raid ?
News reports say Israeli soldiers were deployed on rooftops and sent bulldozers into the camp to destroy large residential areas.
Israel also reportedly set fire to people’s homes and prevented local relief workers from putting the fires out.
Experts say Israel’s tactics during its raids appear to be part of a broader doctrine to collectively punish the population, ostensibly because pockets of armed resistance are fighting back against Israel’s ever-entrenching occupation.
Why is Israel attacking people in a refugee camp ?
Israel claims that it is conducting “counter-terrorism” operations.
Are there ‘terrorists’ in the camps ?
Activists and experts have previously told Al-Jazeera that Israel is playing up the threat of “terrorism” to justify the mass displacement of Palestinians and the expansion of illegal settlements.
Refugee camps across the West Bank tend to harbour Palestinian fighters loosely affiliated with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) or Fatah.
The fighters say they are protecting their camps and cities from Israeli raids that aim to uproot civilians from their homes and lands.
But Israel says the raids are to arrest individuals only?
Shadi Abdullah, an activist documenting abuses by Israel in Tulkarem, says Israeli troops use bulldozers to destroy homes and infrastructure and they also intentionally cut off basic provisions to make life difficult for the population.
In addition, he said, Israeli security forces cooperate with and support Israelis from illegal settlements in attacking civilians.
With Tulkarem lying between several settlements, he said, “People are constantly scared of attacks from settlers and from the occupation forces.”
“In the end… whether there are resistance fighters or not, they [Israel] want to take our land,” Abdullah said.
Why Tulkarem ?
Tulkarem has fertile agricultural land thanks to its abundance of natural water, activists and rights groups say.
But the illegal Israeli settlements set up in recent years have forced Palestinian farmers and inhabitants to rely on pricey tanker water and rainwater collection systems because settlers have stolen land with water resources.
Abdullah said the population density in Tulkarem city and the refugee camp is quite high due to the forced displacement of Palestinians from surrounding areas.
The destruction of residential areas in raids makes the population density even higher as people move from devastated areas into ones they hope will be safe.
How does Israel carry out these raids ?
Israel has in the past dispatched forces disguised as Palestinians to do reconnaissance on a camp before approving a raid.
Israeli troops will then enter the camps with bulldozers to destroy schools, hospitals and homes. These heavily armoured machines are often accompanied by drones and helicopters for air cover.
Drones, in particular, play a substantial role in Israeli raids, as they did in the Thursday strike that killed three Palestinians.
Earlier this month, Israeli forces used drones to kill 11 Palestinians in Jenin, another West Bank city where armed resistance has emerged over the last three years.
Israel also used drones to target the Nur Shams camp on July 3, killing four Palestinians.
The use of such weapons, says Abdullah, is part of a broader attempt to scare a younger generation of Palestinians from partaking in armed resistance.
He added that Israel may also be attempting to push the inhabitants of the camps to blame resistance fighters for the destruction.
But, Abdullah says, that tactic doesn’t work.
“There is no difference between the civilians and armed fighters,” he said. “We all participate in resistance, but we participate in different ways. Civilians don’t want fighters to stop fighting. On the contrary, they just want the Israeli occupation to end.”
Mat Nashed is a journalist and analyst specializing in the Middle East and North Africa
