Palestinians return to camp ravaged by Israeli raid in West Bank

By AFP/Louis Baudoin-Laarman

Piles of shattered tarmac and twisted metal, churned up by bulldozers during an Israeli raid on a camp in the occupied West Bank, lined what was left of a devastated main street as inhabitants returned to their homes this week.

Above the wreckage, the upper floors of some buildings had been ripped open by excavators during the 11-day offensive in Faraa refugee camp, part of Israel's wider "Iron Wall" operation in the Palestinian territory.

Since January 21, the Israeli military has been conducting the major operation, saying it is targeting "terrorist infrastructure" in the northern West Bank areas of Jenin, Tubas and Tulkarem, where half a million Palestinians live.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas denounced the Israeli operation, calling it "ethnic cleansing" earlier in February.

The Palestinian health ministry said 70 people had been killed by Israel in the territory this year.

According to the United Nations, the operation has killed 39 Palestinians and displaced 40,000.

The military said on Wednesday that Iron Wall was still ongoing, and told AFP that the Faraa operation was a part of it.

"When we came back today, we found the entire house had been turned upside down," Ahmad Abu Sariss, 86, told AFP following his return to his home in Faraa.

In the winter rain, families -- some with small children and others with elderly relatives -- picked their way through the destruction.

'Large-scale operation'

Abu Sariss, who walks with the aid of a cane, left the camp in the north of the West Bank four days ago with his sons to escape the military raids.

The retired teacher said that while his home was not destroyed, the Israeli military had ransacked it during his absence.

"They went through all the belongings in the house," he said.

Water and electricity has been cut off to parts of the camp during the raid, said Ahmad al-Assad, the governor of Tubas, where the camp is located.

"The population has been suffering -- we were unable to evacuate kidney patients from the camp or deliver medicine to them," the governor said.

The building of the camp's Popular Committee, responsible for local affairs in Faraa, had been hit heavily in the assault. Holes had been ripped in its first floor by the diggers.

Inside, locals cleared out furniture damaged by soldiers.

In its main office, a large image showing the Dome of the Rock, the iconic Muslim holy site in the Israeli-annexed Old City of Jerusalem, had been slashed with a knife.

"This is a large-scale operation," Assad said, outlining how the military action in the West Bank had begun in the northern cities of Jenin and Tulkarem before expanding to Tubas, where an air strike killed 10 people two weeks ago.

In its statement, the military said the objectives in Faraa were the same as in the rest of the West Bank, defining its activity as a "counter-terrorism operation".

Some 1,500 residents of Faraa, roughly one-third of the camp, were displaced during the latest operation, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said.

'Third Nakba'

For Abu Sariss, being forced to leave brought back painful memories.

He was nine years old when his family was expelled from the coastal city of Haifa, now part of Israel, during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948.

The period is referred to in the Arab world as the "Nakba", or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled the fighting that accompanied Israel's creation.

"This is the third Nakba for us. The first one, I was a child. The second one, I was a young man. And now, as an old man, I am going through it again," he said, referring to the 1967 war that led to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank as the second Nakba.

"I don't even feel safe in my own home. If I stay, they can come in, assault me, arrest me for no reason," Abu Sariss said.

Ahmad Abdallah, another resident of the camp, was able to remain during the raid, but at a cost.

The 30-year-old and his wife stayed home without electricity or water, unable to safely get food from outside, while soldiers occasionally broke in.

"They entered my house three times and vandalised it," he told AFP.

Abdallah could not recall experiencing such an intense raid on the camp throughout his lifetime.

"This was the harshest attack on the camp -- much more severe than anything before," he said.

As debris was cleared from a path behind him, Abdallah described the assault as "days of suffering that will go down in the camp's history".