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Photos:
Dr. Aseed Kamal Jabareen, Mahmoud Amjad Hamadna, 15, Allam Jaradat,
Osama Mohammad Naeem Hujair, 16, Muammar Mohammad Deeb Abu Amira, 50, Amir Issam Mohammad Abu Amira, 22, and Bassem Mahmoud Saleh Turkman, 53. ([not necessarily in order displayed] Published by IMEMC News

A Palestinian boy who was wounded by gunfire while riding his bike in the West Bank city of Jenin, on Tuesday morning. Published by Haaretz

Kamal, the 5-year-old son of the slain Dr. Jabareen, holds a picture of his family. Credit: Alex Levac. Published by Haaretz

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by IMEMC News
May 21, 2024

Israeli forces killed, on Monday morning, seven Palestinians, including two children, a doctor, and a teacher, and injured at least fifteen others, including two seriously, in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank.

Media sources said that a large army force, accompanied by a D-9 military bulldozer, front-end loaders, and excavators stormed the city of Jenin and its camp on Tuesday morning, from several axes, while reinforcements arrived at a later time; this is an ongoing situation.

A large number of military vehicles stormed the city from several directions, on Tuesday morning, while sharpshooters and undercover units were deployed, amid the overhead flight of reconnaissance drones, triggering protests among local Palestinian resistance fighters.
Exchanges of fire between resistance fighters and the army were said to be concentrated in the Jenin refugee camp and Wadi Burqin to the west of the city, while fighters also targeted the army’s heavy machinery with crude explosive devices.

The Arab 48 news website quoted the Ministry of Health which announced that seven Palestinians were killed and 15 others were injured, including two who continue to be in serious condition.

According to Wissam Bakr, the director of the Jenin Governmental Hospital, occupation forces shot and killed Dr. Aseed Kamal Jabareen, 51, a general surgery specialist at Jenin Hospital, targeting him in the vicinity of the hospital.

Soldiers killed the teacher, Allam Jaradat, 48, a former prisoner, who was on his way to work at the Walid Abu Muwais Basic School for Boys.

Two children, identified as Mahmoud Amjad Hamadna, 15, and Osama Mohammad Naeem Hujair, 16, were also shot and killed during the massive military incursion into the city and its camp.

Three more citizens, identified as Muammar Mohammad Deeb Abu Amira, 50, Amir Issam Mohammad Abu Amira, 22, and Bassem Mahmoud Saleh Turkman, 53, were also shot and killed by Israeli forces.

It is important to mention that Turkman is the brother of two slain young men, Mohammad, who was killed during the Israeli military invasion of the Jenin refugee camp in 2002, and Lotfi, who was killed during the first Intifada (uprising) which occurred between 1987 and 1993.

Meanwhile, occupation forces opened fire directly on the location where journalists gathered to cover the events, while Israeli sharpshooters shot Palestinian journalist, Amr Manasra, when they opened fire on everything that moved near the Martyr Khalil Suleiman Hospital.

Manasra was shot and injured by bullet fragments in the lower back, and his condition was described as stable.

It was added that a Palestinian paramedic was also shot and injured when occupation forces opened fire with live rounds, targeting an ambulance in the Jenin camp.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) ambulance crews reported that students were among the injured in Jenin, while the occupation army blocked them from reaching them.

Arab 48 quoted the director of ambulance and emergency services at the PRCS in Jenin said, “Our crews dealt with many casualties in Jenin, most of which were school students.”

According to Mustafa Hamarsheh, the medical director at Jenin Hospital, said that the number of medical staff is insufficient to deal with the large number of injuries, and that the army prevented ambulances from reaching the injured, in addition to blocking the entry of injured citizens and medical staff into hospitals.

Later it was reported that heavy machinery demolished a Palestinian-owned home in the Jenin camp, while bulldozers destroyed vital infrastructure in the vicinity of the Jenin Governmental Hospital.

The wife of the administrative detainee, Hani Barakat, and mother of the slain, Ahmad Barakat, stated that Israeli forces demolished their 280 square meter, two-storey home, shelter for 10 inhabitants, without any warning, denying its residents the ability of removing their belongings.

Media sources said that Ahmad Barakat was killed on March 20, 2024 along with three others, when an Israeli drone fired a missile at them near the camp.
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Seven Palestinians, Including Teen Riding Bicycle, Killed in Israeli Army Raid in Jenin, West Bank

The Israeli army said that it had started a counter-terrorism operation in Jenin, and that it had identified at least 15 wounded militants. Islamic Jihad announced that its operatives are taking part in the fighting

by Jack Khoury, Bar Peleg, Yaniv Kubovich for Haaretz
May 21, 2024

The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that seven people were killed and nine others wounded, including two seriously, during an Israeli forces raid in Jenin on Tuesday.

The IDF said that it had started a counter-terrorism operation in Jenin, and that the army had identified at least 15 wounded militants in the area. Islamic Jihad said that its operatives are part of the fighting in the city and the Jenin refugee camp.

According to local sources, among the dead is a senior doctor at the government hospital in Jenin, Aseed Jabareen, who was hit while on his way to work.

Local sources also reported that a local teacher, Allam Jaradat, was killed by gunfire while in his car. A boy who was riding a bicycle was reportedly also killed by gunfire. The IDF is looking into these reports.

According to testimonies in Jenin, special Israeli forces entered the city on Tuesday morning in disguise. They were exposed and a heavy exchange of fire began between them and local militants.

Later, additional Israeli forces entered Jenin, including dozens of combat soldiers, using armored vehicles, including a D9 bulldozer, and the exchange of fire continues.

The Palestinian Health Ministry issued an official statement mourning the death of Dr. Aseed Jabareen, who had been wounded on his way to work. The ministry said that Jabareen, 50, was a surgery specialist and had been working in the Palestinian health system for 17 years. "This is yet another crime that Israel is committing against medical personnel in the West Bank and Gaza," the ministry said.

According to the health ministry in Ramallah, the additional people that were killed are Basam Turkman, 53, Moamar Abu Amira, 50, Alam Jaradath, 48, Amir Abu Amira, 22, Osama Hajir, 16, and Mohammad Mhadana, 15.

A director of the government hospital in Jenin in the West Bank said that the number of wounded people in clashes with Israeli forces is constantly increasing, and that there are casualties in the area that medical teams are struggling to reach. One of the wounded is a photojournalist who was hit by gunfire while covering the events.
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In a Single Hour, Israeli Snipers Killed Seven Bystanders at the Jenin Refugee Camp

Jenin has endured plenty of rough days lately, but May 21 outdid them all. What happened?

by Gideon Levy and Alex Levac for Haaretz
Jun 14, 2024

Mounds of rubble in the Jenin refugee camp; once again mounds of rubble in the Jenin camp. A putrid stench rising from sewage flowing in the streets, dirt paths, streets reduced to pits and heaps of stones. The refugee camp was rehabilitated amazingly with a donation from the United Arab Emirates in 2002 following the Israel Defense Forces' incursion that spring. But now there isn't a street that hasn't been razed by IDF bulldozers, not a public square that hasn't been reduced to rubble, along with many stores that have been destroyed.

The IDF has raided the camp and the city in which the camp is situated multiple times recently; every incursion leaves behind dozens more killed or wounded. It looks as though the soldiers would rather be in the Gaza Strip and are compensating themselves by behaving in Jenin as though that's where they were. In "Little Gaza," as the Jenin refugee camp is known these days, the images speak for themselves. Two armed militants on a moped pass us in the wrecked alleyway, despair hangs palpably in the air.

Jenin has endured plenty of rough days lately, but May 21 outdid them all. In the course of one hour in the morning, snipers killed seven of the city's residents, all of them innocent passersby, even though the streets were quiet and the soldiers had no cause to open fire. They shot from high up in two buildings, called Rabia and A-Rein, just outside the camp, and the dead included two teenagers and the director of the surgical ward at the Jenin Governmental Hospital, who was just getting out of his car in the hospital's parking lot.

And if that bloodbath wasn't enough, just hours later, at dusk, soldiers burst into the Jenin home of Wafa, a 51-year-old social activist who had never been arrested before, ransacked the house and took her with them when they left. She remained in their jeep, bound, for about four hours. Then, as the vehicle started to move out toward their base, it exploded (apparently after a device was thrown at it), leaving the woman seriously wounded; both legs were subsequently amputated above the knee. She is hospitalized in serious condition in Jenin's Ibn Sina Hospital, ventilated and barely responsive.

A single day in Jenin. This week we walked through the streets of the city and the alleyways of the refugee camp in the wake of the events of May 21.

Dr. Osaid Jabareen lived in a fine stone house in the city's al-Marah neighborhood, together with his wife, Haneen Jarrar, 41, and their five children, aged 4 to 16. He attended medical school in Leningrad, when the Russian city still bore that name, and did a residency in Amman, the capital of Jordan. Dr. Jabareen, 50, was the director of the surgical ward at the Shaheed Dr. Khalil Suleiman Governmental Hospital. Over the years he operated on thousands of people wounded by the IDF in the city and the camp. His late father, Kamal, was a professor of geography at Bir Zeit University, adjacent to Ramallah, and also lectured at Princeton and Harvard. His cousin is attorney Hassan Jabareen, the general director of Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. His family has its origins in the city of Umm al-Fahm, in northern Israel.

Dr. Jabareen was the first of the fatalities in Jenin on May 21. Soon after dropping off his children at their respective schools and kindergarten, he arrived at the hospital. He got out of his car in the parking lot and had walked 16 meters – measured by Abdulkarim Sadi, a field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem – when suddenly, with no prior warning, he came under fire. A bullet struck him in the back, slamming into his spinal cord, killing him on the spot.

On the slain doctor's balcony, which overlooks the city and its refugee camp, his brother, attorney Qais Jabareen, a resident of Jordan, says that the Red Crescent logo was pasted on the windshield of the car in addition to a sign: "Doctor on call." "If I were a sniper I would have seen those identifying marks of a physician," his brother says, adding that Aseed never belonged to any political organization and that his only interest was his work as a surgeon. Over the years he turned down offers to work in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. "He had a commitment to the wounded of Jenin, who couldn't afford to pay and would come to the governmental hospital," Qais says.

His brother was rushed from the parking lot into the hospital – but all the physicians there could do was to pronounce their colleague dead. His son Kamal, a fine-looking boy of 5 named for his grandfather, arrives on the porch with a bashful smile. He already knows what happened to his father.

Sadi's investigation found that the streets were quiet at the time, and that no one was aware that undercover snipers had taken over two rooftops in the city as the platforms for their killing spree. After investigating the background of all seven of those who were killed in the first hour, Sadi's unequivocal conclusion is that all were innocent civilians who were shot for no reason.

Minutes after they shot the physician, the snipers shot and killed Allam Jaradat, a 48-year-old teacher who was on his way to the school where he taught; Amir Abu Amira, 21, and his uncle, Moamar Abu Amira, 50, both of whom tried to come to Jaradat's aid; Mahmoud Hamadna, 15, who was shot about 100 meters from the site of the physician's killing as he was riding his electric bike on the way home from school (when it became known that snipers were in the city classes were canceled and the students were sent home); another teenager, Osama Hajeer, 16, who worked as a delivery boy; and – the last of the snipers' victims in the first hour – Bassem Turkman, a passerby of 53.

According to Sadi, the Israeli special forces had never before killed with such indiscriminate abandon. By the end of the day, the IDF would kill another three people, two of whom were in fact wanted individuals. In the course of the day, some 50 residents of the city were wounded, some of them seriously. One of them was Anton Zubeidi, who belongs to the camp's best-known family of fighters. Sitting in the entrance to Ibn Sina Hospital in black attire is the father of the family, Jamal Zubeidi, one of the most amazing, courageous and tragic figures of the Jenin camp, someone who has been featured in many of these columns over the years.

Over the last year and a half, Jamal has buried two of his sons: Hamudi, who was killed on November 29, 2023, and Naim, killed almost exactly a year earlier, on December 1, 2022. Jamal's other son, Yusuf, is in administrative detention – imprisonment without charges or a trial – and now Anton, his eldest son, is seriously wounded. Anton's cousin, Zakaria Zubeidi, who was like a brother to him while growing up, is the most famous figure in the family, having served as the leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades in Jenin during the second intifada. During that same period, Zakaria's two brothers and his mother were killed.

Initially, there were fears for Anton's life, because he had lost so much blood. Now he's recovering in room 208 of Ibn Sina Hospital, still unable to stand on his legs.

Anton, 38, was walking from the camp to his job as an automotive glazier in the city's industrial zone. He had just passed the refrigerator of the cadavers in the hospital's east wing when he heard the gunfire that killed Dr. Jabareen. Frightened, he quickly retraced his steps back the short way toward the camp.

It was 7:50 A.M. A bullet struck his right leg, shrapnel sliced into his back. Falling to the ground, he began to crawl in search of shelter. Finally he hid behind a tree and waited about 20 minutes, wounded and not daring to budge.

In the meantime, Anton also called his father, who immediately summoned a Red Crescent ambulance. "We're on the way," they told Jamal. But the shooting continued, and the ambulance arrived only 20 minutes after Anton was shot. He was bleeding profusely, and according to Jamal the ambulance was shot at even after his son was in the vehicle. The driver managed to reach the nearby Governmental Hospital, but because of the seriousness of Anton's wound, he was transferred to the more advanced and better-equipped Ibn Sina Hospital.

It is in fact a polished, impressive institution. In our visit this week, we were ushered into a smartly designed modern office, where we were presented with an overview of the hospital before proceeding to room 208. Anton and his wife, Asma, have three children, with a fourth on the way. This was not the first time he's been wounded, and he has already undergone several operations here. He lost a lobe of one lung after being shot by an army drone. When he was 14 he was in a car in the camp when soldiers opened fire on the vehicle, killing the driver before Anton's eyes. On the other hand, he's the only member of the family who's never been arrested, other than very briefly last December. His father was worried that he wouldn't get his medications in prison, but fortunately Anton was released after three days without being charged.

The daughter and brother of Wafa, the social activist who was abducted and had to have her legs amputated, enter Anton's room. (They asked not to be identified by name.) They show us photographs of the destruction the soldiers wrought during a search of their home. Wafa continues to be hospitalized in the intensive care unit of Ibn Sina. Her family hasn't been given any information about the circumstances in which she was wounded, and there were no witnesses. Initially it was decided to leave her in administrative detention, but after nine days of hospitalization at Haemek Hospital in Afula, where her legs were amputated, she was transferred to the hospital in Jenin. Her family say that at first they were told that her condition was less serious than it actually is.

They add that the soldiers who came to the house to take Wafa behaved roughly and that there wasn't one female soldier among them, as is customary when an Arab woman is being arrested, even by the IDF. Her husband, Abd el-Jaber, has been incarcerated without trial for some months, and his administrative detention was recently extended by an additional four months.

Besides the double amputation, Wafa is suffering from internal injuries. Being on a ventilator makes it impossible for her to speak – her family is unclear about her mental state and they don't know if she is aware that she has lost both legs. "If it was an explosive device, how is it that only she was wounded and not a single soldier?" they ask.

Jamal Zubeidi leaves his son's room in the hospital with the aid of his heavy walker, and we drive to his home in the camp. The scenes along the way are grim, and an oppressive silence is felt in the car. It was also Jamal who led us through the refugee camp when it was destroyed by the IDF 22 years ago.

The IDF Spokesperson said in response to a request for comment: "During an operation to thwart terrorism in Jenin, which lasted about 40 hours, defense forces exchanged fire with armed terrorists, dozens of whom were hit. During the operation, army forces identified a large number of armed assailants hiding in civilian areas, like the Jenin Governmental Hospital. The circumstances under which uninvolved civilians were hit are under investigation."