WEST BANK (Palestine Foundation Information Center) The ongoing Israeli attack on Jenin camp in the northern occupied West Bank is an extension of the large-scale Israeli aggression against the Palestinians and their occupied land, the Euro-Med for Human Rights revealed in a statement issued on Friday.
Since the international community has remained silent about Israel’s aggressive strategy against the Palestinians, the occupation has been able to escalate its military assault and reach new parts of the West Bank, it said, warning against a repeat of the genocide carried out by the occupation army in the Gaza Strip, which killed and injured roughly 158,000 Palestinians and destroyed over 70% of the Strip’s buildings.
Last Tuesday afternoon, January 21, the Israeli occupation army launched its attack after Israeli special forces infiltrated the Jenin camp. This was followed by the arrival of numerous soldiers and military vehicles, the flight of attack and drone aircraft, and the Israeli military and political leadership’s declaration that a massive military operation known as the “Iron Wall” had begun.
As part of a larger security effort to seek out members of the armed Palestinian factions under the guise of maintaining security, the Palestinian security services that had been occupying the Jenin camp for 48 days withdrew in tandem with the Israeli incursion.
Nine Palestinians, including a child, were killed and forty others were wounded when Israeli occupation forces launched multiple airstrikes, dropped bombs from quadcopter drones, and opened fire on Palestinians attempting to flee the camp.
Two members of the armed Palestinian factions were besieged in a house in the town of Burqin, west of Jenin, and then executed extrajudicially by the occupation forces the day after the operation.
Euro-Med expressed deep concerns about the parallel campaign that the Palestinian security services launched against civilians and members of Palestinian factions as they attempted to flee the Jenin camp and a few nearby villages in the governorate.
The systematic practice of making arrests, particularly of individuals attempting to flee life-threatening military operations, is a grave human rights violation that goes against the Palestinian Authority’s applicable local and international legal obligations, the Euro-Med said.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Palestine has acceded without reservation, guarantees the right to liberty and security of person as well as the right to be free from arbitrary arrest or detention, it added.
The Euro-Med called on the international community to protect Palestinian civilians and put an end to Israel’s operation in the West Bank.
