“They targeted all the houses,” residents say amid the rubble of the Jenin camp

The Israeli army has withdrawn from Jenin in the West Bank after a major operation marked by the destruction of infrastructure, which has left 36 Palestinians dead according to the Palestinian Authority, since August 28.

Pipes have been ripped open, tarmac torn up by Israeli bulldozers, and sewage now sits in muddy puddles. Three days after the end of the Israeli army’s largest operation in the occupied West Bank in more than 20 years, life is returning to life amid the rubble in the Jenin refugee camp where the fighting was at its worst.

The toll is 36 Palestinians killed throughout the territory according to the Ministry of Health of the Palestinian Authority. It is the large city in the north that pays the heaviest price with, according to the same source, 21 dead since August 28. For its part, the Israeli army claims to have killed 14 terrorists and arrested 30 other people.

It is hot in Jenin, the smell is foul, the walls are riddled with bullet holes, and many houses, like Aziz’s, are destroyed. “They shot at the house non-stop.says Aziz. They were combing the neighborhood. We ran next door and then they threw a grenade without warning.”

Aziz never left the camp. He was already there, more than 20 years ago, during the battle of Jenin, perhaps the most violent, until then in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the occupied West Bank: “This time it was more brutal than in 2002. They targeted all the houses, whereas at that time they had only attacked the Al Hawachine neighborhood. At that time, they were not targeting civilians. There was no one in our house. No fighters or resistance fighters… No one!”

Two blocks away, Mohammed is talking to a vegetable vendor. On one of the stall’s walls hangs a photo of a teenager. He was killed in March after a drone strike. “Why do some of our young people take up arms? It’s because they are suffering from the occupationexplains Mohammed. When a child or any Israeli is killed, the whole world is outraged. But we, our people, can be exterminated and no one cares. What does international justice do?”

At the entrance to the Jenin camp, the giant portrait of Ismail Haniyeh, assassinated this summer in Iran, covers part of the facade of the mosque. He was one of the two main leaders of Hamas.