“We came to you from Khan Yunis.” This is what the occupation did in Tulkarm camp

Tulkarm witnesses the most violent Israeli military attacks in years (Al Jazeera)

Tulkarm -

Just hours after the start of the Israeli military operation in the city of Tulkarm and its two camps (Tulkarm and Nur Shams) in the north of the West Bank, an Israeli occupation sniper wounded the Palestinian citizen Maryam Mahmoud Abu Jamous with a bullet near the heart, fragmenting her body, and leaving her in a difficult condition.

As a result of the murder attempt, the occupation army moved with its huge military bulldozers to the Abu Jamous family’s house and demolished the lower floors (storerooms) of it, just as it did with dozens of houses that it completely or partially demolished, creating a state of great devastation that made it difficult to live inside those houses.

This scene summarizes the scale of the military occupation operation in the city of Tulkarm and its main camp (Tulkarm), which was launched at dawn last Wednesday, and lasted for about two days, and was described as the most dangerous and violent among many operations that the camp has experienced recently, as the occupation caused a state of great destruction that did not stop with the demolition, arrest, and complete bulldozing of the structures. Infrastructure, and even assassinated a number of young men whom he described as wanted.

The occupation army carried out its air and ground military operations, and stormed the city from all its axes with dozens of military vehicles, including no less than 8 tracked and ordinary bulldozers. It surrounded the camp and mounted houses in it, and took them as military barracks or turned them into monitoring and sniping points for everything that moved.

The operation resulted in the martyrdom of 8 young men, the injury of about 40 others, including serious cases, the arrest of dozens, the displacement of hundreds or their detention in harsh conditions, with their humanity insulted.

Inside the house and among her children

Inside her house on the third floor of the building inhabited by the Abu Jamous family on Schools Street in Tulkarm camp, Mrs. Maryam (58 years old) was injured when she wanted to move from one room to another to remove the window glass that had been shattered as a result of the explosions, “but as soon as she moved, a soldier who was standing on top of a building sniped at her.” An interview with our house,” says her husband, Mahmoud Abu Jamous.

He described his wife's condition as very serious, "to the point that he announced her martyrdom three times on social media," and said that her condition is still dangerous while she is in a coma, as the injury touched the main artery of the heart.

Fearing that what the Abu Jamous family faced would happen to him, Bashar Fawazaa and his family, consisting of 7 members, fled to his brother’s house in the city of Tulkarm in the first moments of the occupation’s attack on the camp. Hours after his withdrawal, Fawazaa returned to the camp to inspect what had happened to his house.

Fawazaa told Al Jazeera Net, "I was displaced from the camp because of the horror of what I saw in previous incursions caused by occupation soldiers storming homes and assaulting citizens, without regard to the elderly or children."

Scenes of destruction and ruin fill the streets of Tulkarm camp (Al Jazeera)

They crucified the martyr

In her account as an eyewitness to the martyrdom of the young man Abdul Rahman Othman, who appeared in video clips published on social media sites after his martyrdom lying on the ground, covered in his blood and shackled for more than 6 hours, Umm Jamal Abu Hish told local media that the soldiers killed him from zero distance, then tied him up and crucified him. On one of the columns, amidst “ugly insults and mutilation of his body, they urinated on him and filmed it while the sound of their laughter grew louder.”

What happened in Tulkarm camp is “a microcosm of what is happening in Gaza,” as Faisal Salama, head of the camp’s services committee, describes it. He said that it was an “invasion” in the truest sense of the word, in which Israel used warplanes and drones to bomb the camp, kill its citizens, and demolish their homes. It also killed citizens and mutilated their bodies.

The soldiers stormed the homes, took the residents out and detained them in the open, before arresting hundreds (most of them were later released), interrogating them on the ground, and transferring them to detention centers inside and outside the camp in the open and extreme cold, amidst abuse, stripping their bodies, severely beating them, handcuffing them, blindfolding them, and threatening them not to return. To the camp.

Salama added in a call with Al Jazeera Net, "The heavily armed soldiers deliberately practiced the methods that were used in Gaza, and some of them told the people that they had come from the city of Khan Yunis in Gaza to the Tulkarm camp to do to them what they did there."

The martyrdom of the young man Abdul Rahman Othman in Tulkarm camp, after the occupation tortured his body, dragged him, and left him on the ground bleeding for hours while his hands and feet were bound and blindfolded!!

God is sufficient for me, and He is the best disposer of affairs💔

May God curse the occupation, its agents, and the agents’ authority pic.twitter.com/EOTeL8nnLF

- 𓂆𝙃𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙖 (@rann_ND) January 18, 2024

Complete destruction

The scenes of detention are no less dangerous than the bulldozing of streets in all the camp’s neighborhoods, and the destruction of the entire infrastructure, including water, electricity, communication, and sewage networks, at a cost of more than $10 million, according to Salama. He says, describing the scene, “It has become impossible to move inside the camp’s alleys and neighborhoods with vehicles, and to walk on.” Feet are not easy.

The occupation army completely and partially destroyed dozens of homes, and - according to Salama - resorted to destroying the homes surrounding the home of any “resistance wanted for the occupation,” and he says, “They were destroying 5 or 6 homes, until they reached the wanted house.”

The army also prevented ambulance crews from reaching the injured, some of whom were left to bleed to death, and the occupation obstructed their access to hospitals.

Sweeping streets in the neighborhoods of Tulkarm camp (Al Jazeera)

To end the popular incubator

Since the war on Gaza on October 7, the Tulkarm camp, which is inhabited by about 11,000 people, has been subjected to more than 30 incursions, including 10 broad and long incursions that were violent in their goals, reaching the point of invasion.

28 citizens were martyred in the camp, out of about 70 martyrs in the governorate, and more than 110 buildings were completely or partially destroyed.

Camp activist Alaa Srouji says, “The occupation targets the resistance and is trying to deter it by targeting the camp’s infrastructure to pressure the people to reject the resistance and end their popular incubator.”

A spokesman for the Israeli occupation army said - in a statement - that its military operation in the Tulkarm camp ended after 45 hours, during which a thousand buildings were searched, 400 explosive devices were found, and 27 weapons were confiscated, in addition to the destruction of 5 bomb-making laboratories, 4 rooms for reconnaissance operations, and an arrest. 37 citizens, while the occupation army admitted that one of its soldiers was seriously injured by resistance bullets.

Coinciding with its storming of the Tulkarm camp, the occupation army entered the nearby Nour Shams camp, demolishing the homes of citizens and killing one of them. It also stormed the nearby Ezbet al-Jarad, killing one of the citizens there as well.

Source: Al Jazeera