Occupied West Bank | In Jenin, violence destroys generation after generation

(Jenin) In Jenin in the occupied West Bank, Madleen Sabbagh, seven months pregnant, mourns her husband, one of the latest victims of violence between Israel and Palestinians, and now fears that it will also affect her children.

She sits by a bullet-hole window overlooking the overcrowded Jenin refugee camp, the same one where her husband Mohammed, 30, was standing when he was shot dead in early November during a raid by Israeli forces. .

“My husband was killed for no reason, hit by a bullet,” she told AFP, adding that she had not eaten since. “Now what worries us is not what happened, but what will happen,” she said, Israeli soldiers “deliberately targeting young men because they are the soul of our society.”

The couple already had three children, before the unborn one. “Obviously, as a mother I worry about their safety,” explains the 24-year-old widow, “from now on I am their mother and father.”

Hundreds of Palestinians – fighters, bystanders, children – have died this year during Israeli raids, including dozens in Jenin, long considered a hotbed of Palestinian “resistance”.

In the wake of the unprecedented attack carried out on October 7 in Israel from the Gaza Strip by the Islamist movement Hamas, followed by Israeli reprisals, violence flared in the West Bank, stronghold of the Fatah movement of the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, occupied by Israel.

The Sabbaghs are one of many families who have lost their loved ones. “It is not a life: the martyrs are lucky because it is the living who are truly dead,” notes Imane Sabbagh, mother of Mohammed, assuring that her son had “nothing to do” with the “resistance “.

“The children are screaming”

In the early 2000s, the Jenin camp was one of the heartlands of the second Intifada, the “uprising” against the Israeli occupier.

In 2002, the Israeli army besieged it for more than a month. In the clashes, 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers were killed and hundreds of houses razed.

Photos of young Palestinian victims of Israeli forces cover the walls of the camp, riddled with impacts.

The Sabbagh children play, without reacting to the bursts unleashed during the funeral of a 21-year-old young man, mortally wounded during a recent Israeli raid.

Many Jenin residents confirm to AFP the consequences of years of violence on society, particularly on mental health.

“Most of the children can’t sleep at night and their mothers stay awake too, the children scream as soon as the sirens go off,” explains Majd Abu Salameh, an employee at a local women’s center.

“Most of the “martyrs” were often the sole breadwinners of their families,” she emphasizes, “when you walk around the camp, you only see children” and “elderly men.”

Empty bed

Israel has occupied the West Bank for 56 years and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been moribund for years.

Those who take up arms against Israeli forces are sometimes just teenagers, like Yamen Jarar, 16, killed on November 3. Dozens of photos of the boy – named in memory of a loved one previously killed – are spread out near his empty bed.

“While others dream of traveling, for example, he always wanted to become a martyr,” explains his mother Jihan Jarar. “When someone is ardently attached to his land, you cannot hold him back.”

While one of his brothers stares at the photos, his eyes moist, his mother says that she does not want “another martyr” in her offspring.

Economic difficulties – which make school fees or pocket money almost unaffordable – and family grief have an impact on the children.

“When there is no school and nothing to do, what can young people do? », asks Samiha Zoued, grandmother of Yamen Jarar.

Shortly after the family’s interview with AFP, sirens sounded in Jenin, warning that Israeli forces were approaching. The sound of gunfire and explosions and the incessant drone of military drones fill the night.

The next day, three men were buried. The Israeli army claims to have killed five people.

Madleen Sabbagh explains to AFP that she “will always be afraid”. “We don’t know what can happen to our children.”