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Photos: Published by Haaretz
Jamal Damiri and his son Islam, who is 7. Since witnessing the death of Nisreen, his mother, Islam has barely spoken. Credit: Alex Levac

Nisreen Damiri. Credit: Courtesy of the family.

The road leading to Tul Karm. The devastation this week is on the scale of Shujaiyeh. Credit: Alex Levac
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An IDF missile hurtled into an apartment in the densely populated Tul Karm refugee camp in the West Bank, killing Nisreen Damiri in front of her 7-year-old son, and wounding her sister-in-law. This is what happens when the Israeli army makes 'maximum effort to avoid harming noncombatants'

by Gideon Levy and Alex Levac for Haaretz
Jul 13, 2024

Tul Karm is beginning to resemble Gaza in terms of the vast destruction and devastation the Israel Defense Forces inflicted over the past few days on the West Bank city's two refugee camps – the Tul Karm camp and, even more so, on Nur Shams. That includes the home of the Damiri family.

The family resides in a small apartment on the second floor of a building housed by refugees in the Tul Karm camp. Though from the outside the building looks like just another refugee hovel, inside, the family home was exquisitely maintained, down to the last detail. Two small bedrooms, one for the only child, a boy, the other for his parents; crimson linens in the parents' room, a single bed made up in the center of the boy's room and on the wall, a painting of a guitar. Across from the bedrooms is a small dining area and a closet-sized kitchen. This refugee mini-apartment is located in the northernmost residential building in the camp.

In the Damiri family's kitchen, the entire plaster ceiling collapsed, covering all the beautifully ordered kitchen utensils, the sink, the spices, the dishes and cutlery, the stove and the refrigerator with a layer of dust that one sees only in the aftermath of a bombing. This is what a kitchen looks like after it's been attacked from the air. No one has dared enter the wrecked kitchen since the IDF's smart, sophisticated, precision missile penetrated the tin ceiling above the plaster one – the ammunition that's reserved for showboat operations and "surgical" assassinations, and which once again ended with the killing of an innocent woman.

Just like in the Gaza Strip, day after day, but on a small scale. The soldier working the joystick made a mistake. It happens. Never mind. Maybe they wanted to emulate their buddies in Gaza who kill indiscriminately as a matter of routine. Maybe they craved more action.

Here in the refugee camp, there were "confrontations," which is the way that the army refers to violent (and legitimate) resistance to the army's incursion – self-defense of the most clear-cut sort – and therefore the killing aroused no interest, not in the IDF and not in Israel. A woman who had done no wrong lost her life in her kitchen in the presence of her husband and child. This was in a place where the IDF uses aircraft to bomb wanted individuals and also innocent individuals from the air, in the densely crowded refugee camps in Tul Karm, which in recent months have become the new Jenin. The scenes evoke Gaza, just as the army's behavior does.

There is nothing small about the tragedy of the small Damiri family, now motherless. An only child, 7 years old, who was born after a decade of fertility treatments, has now been orphaned of his mother, and a father who devoted all his might to his family and his home has become a widower. The kitchen is a heap of ruins, the well-groomed boy who witnessed his mother's killing has not recovered, and is unlikely to, and the father is alone on the bed with the crimson linen. Yet this week no one was crying in this home, just days after it was the scene of a tragedy.

The road to Tul Karm is a war road. Driving toward the city from the Te'enim checkpoint, you pass by the two refugee camps, Nur Shams and then Tul Karm. Of the road that passed by Nur Shams nothing remains. This week the IDF obliterated everything there and ripped the main road apart. The roads here had previously been reduced to rubble, as the camp's resistance forces planted bombs on them. But the devastation this week is on the scale of Shujaiyeh.

It's as if asphalt had been outlawed here. The main road to the big city has been eviscerated of asphalt for kilometers. Just sand and more sand. Brackish ponds of sewage are welling up everywhere, store entrances have become gaping holes, their colorful signs now announcing only desolation; electrical cables are strewn across the ground, clouds of dust rise up from behind every wobbling car, what were once walls are now mounds of earth and scrap, public squares and monuments have been reduced to ground level.

We'd already encountered ruins a few weeks ago, but now the work has been fully completed. Israel's guardian neither slumbers nor sleeps in its mission of eradicating the refugee camps of Gaza, Jenin and Tul Karm. On Tuesday of this week, a day after we had somehow traversed this former road, IDF engineering forces and wrecking crews arrived again and operated as required.

The photographs we received were brutal: a family sitting in its kitchen as the treads of a bulldozer protrude through a hole in the wall, threatening to bring the house down on its occupants. A particularly dramatic note was added by the lamentations of the muezzin as we drove in the car of Abdulkarim Sadi, a field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, who has been risking his life in recent weeks to take us through the heart of darkness in the refugee camps of Tul Karm and Jenin, his zones of investigation. It's no easy matter now to approach there, certainly for Israelis. Locals burned the (unoccupied) car of a team of Turkish journalists here last week.

The entry gate to the Tul Karm camp is scorched. A barrier of car tires with yellow Fatah flags stands unmanned. We hustle into the house that is our destination. Every stranger here is immediately suspected. Children's shoes line the narrow, murky stairwell. Jamal Damiri is waiting for us on the second floor with his son, as we enter through a door that leads into the tiny dining area that also serves as a living room. We sit on the sofa on which the mother, Nisreen Damiri, was killed, and her sister-in-law Hiriya was wounded. The chirping of birds in a cage is heard from the roof. A hole gapes in the kitchen's tin ceiling, which remains intact.

Jamal, 58, who was married to Nisreen for 18 years – she was 46 at her death – worked in occasional, temporary jobs in recent years; Nisreen was a homemaker. Together they cultivated their tiny slice of heaven – their apartment – and above all their only child. An embarrassed smile flits across the face of Islam, a quiet, shy boy, well dressed, head shaved.

On Monday of last week, July 1, quiet reigned in their camp. The IDF was operating in nearby Nur Shams that day. At about 9:30 the three family members ate breakfast, prepared by Nisreen. Afterward, Nisreen went down to the apartment on the floor below and invited Hiriya, Jamal's sister, to come upstairs and join them for coffee. Hiriya, 59, lives alone. She and Nisreen sat on the sofa in the dining area, sipped coffee and chatted, while the guys – dad Jamal and son Islam – went to the bedroom where there's an air conditioner and a ceiling fan, in order to fight off the heat that was already spreading through the apartment.

Minutes later the house was rocked by a tremendous explosion. Then Jamal heard a bloodcurdling scream. Rushing into the dining area, he recoiled at a nightmarish scene. Shrapnel from the missile had slashed through Nisreen's throat and severed her aorta. She lay on the floor, bleeding. Next to her lay his sister, who had been hit in the stomach by a fragment. Islam, who witnessed all this, froze in his tracks and went mute. His father says he had never seen him like that before.

Snapping out of the shock, Jamal called the Red Crescent; within minutes, two ambulances arrived. Nisreen was motionless and not breathing. She was pronounced dead on arrival at Dr. Thabet Thabet Government Hospital. Hiriya was taken to an operating room, where surgeons were able to stabilize her condition, and was then transferred to the intensive care unit. She was released a few days later and is now staying with another brother in the Nur Shams camp. She didn't dare return to her home. Islam refuses to be left alone and hardly speaks. No one was on the roof at the time the smart, precise missile was fired, nor could the presence of any of those inside have justified the attack, either.

The IDF Spokesperson's Unit this week stated in response to a query from Haaretz: "The security forces carried out an operation to prevent terrorism in Nur Shams on July 1. During the action, exchanges of fire took place between terrorists, who fired from civilian spaces, and the forces. In addition, during the operation, a powerful bomb was set off against an armored IDF vehicle, as a result of which an IDF soldier was killed.

"In the activity," the IDF statement continued, "an aircraft identified an armed terrorist squad, which fired a number of times at the forces. The aircraft fired munition with the aim of attacking the squad and protecting our forces. Because of a malfunction, a nearby building was hit [in Tul Karm camp]. Afterward a report was received that a woman had been killed. The circumstances of the case are being clarified. The IDF makes the maximum effort to avoid harming noncombatants, and regrets harming them."

This is what happens when the IDF makes a "maximum effort."