[News] Israeli West Bank raid leaves destruction and determination in its wake

[GL HERO SHIMA]

Majdi was in his house at the entrance of Nur Shams refugee camp when the Israeli armoured bulldozers came.

He told his three children not to be scared as the bulldozer pushed up against their front wall, smashing through the staircase and balcony.

"The bulldozer kept coming closer to the house," he said. "It lifted the rubble near those two windows above. It was trying to hit them."

Residents living near the entrances to Nur Shams often leave when they hear the Israeli army is coming. I asked Majdi why he stayed.

"Why would I leave?" he said.

"We won't leave. We are staying here. We either go back to our lands [in what is now Israel] or stay here and die. There are no other options."

At least four men were killed in the Tulkarm area, which includes Nur Shams, during Israel’s two-day military operation here, including at least two who were fighting Israeli forces.

"Every time one of us is killed, 10 more are born. We are crushing them, and hopefully, our children will also crush them," Majdi said.

Israel's army pulled out of Nur Shams camp on Friday morning, but its wider operation across the north of the occupied West Bank continues - with the aim, Israel says, of dismantling the armed groups there.

One of the men killed during the operation was 69-year-old Ayed Abu Hajja, who was disabled and a long-term resident of Nur Shams. He was shot by a sniper, neighbours said, when he opened a window in his house.

On Friday, his body was carried through the narrow streets to his mother's home, before burial.

A large crowd of young men gathered to escort his body to the cemetery - but others were there to honour someone else.

Groups of young men filed silently past the crowd with their weapons - to a separate, symbolic burial for their leader, Mohammed Jaber - also killed during the Israeli operation in this city

The fighter and the civilian, living for years side by side in Nur Shams, remembered side by side in death. One with prayers; the other with bursts of automatic gunfire - a show of force from Tulkarm’s armed fighters, less than a day after Israel’s army withdrew.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgj36n8e6ro