What West Bank Palestinian youths are fighting for, in their own words : NPR

JENIN, Israeli-occupied West Bank — Israeli forces have withdrawn from the Jenin urban refugee camp in the northern Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to Jenin’s mayor. This comes after a major military raid into Palestinian towns, as the Israeli army vows to root out militant groups.

Mayor Nidal Ebeidy said the troops left a trail of destruction, bulldozing roads under which the Israeli military says Palestinians hide improvised explosives, and destroying homes and mosques where they say militants operate from.

The operation on Jenin, Tulkarem and al-Faraa urban camps is the largest since the start of the war against Hamas in Gaza almost a year ago, and has so far killed 39 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health officials, and three Israeli police officers, according to the Israeli military.

The Israeli military said it launched the raids on Aug. 28 to root out fighters who operate within these towns to stave off an attack similar to the one on Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel, killing some 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials. The attack triggered the war in Gaza which the Gaza health ministry says has killed over 40,800 Palestinians.

“The Israeli forces have destroyed 70% of infrastructure of Jenin,” Ebeidy told NPR. “It encircled the hospitals and killed civilians, and destroyed our power grid. Now we are starting to rebuild Jenin one more time.”

The heart of Palestinian armed resistance

The Israeli government built the Jenin refugee camp outside Jenin city in the northern West Bank for displaced Palestinians after the 1948 war, when Israel was created. It’s home to about 24,000 residents, according to the United Nations.

Like most refugee camps across the West Bank, Jenin’s began as a collection of temporary housing for Palestinians to shelter in, but over time, residents built concrete buildings, schools and shops, turning it into an urban town.

Israeli troops have raided the Jenin refugee camp many times since the beginning of the war in Gaza. Once bustling with residents in markets and schools, its roads are now piles of rubble from Israeli military bulldozers, and mosques and homes are blown up, with people’s belongings strewn everywhere.

For decades Jenin has been a stronghold for many militants who say they are fighting the Israeli occupation.

The al-Damaj neighborhood of the camp, which recently saw many drone attacks that killed Palestinians. There is graffiti just outside that says “The Alley of Death.” Here is a portion of a house that was damaged by a drone strike.

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Tanya Habjouqa/Noor Images for NPR

One of those men is 30-year-old Tareq Abu Mohammed, who is part of the militant group Islamic Jihad. When NPR met him in July, before the current fighting, he was standing guard on the side of a street outside a supermarket with another fighter. Both were carrying an automatic weapon.

Nearby was the Damaj neighborhood. It’s normally where the fighters can be found, but on the day of NPR’s visit it was eerily quiet. A drone faintly hummed overhead. Someone had spray-painted the words “The Alley of Death” in Arabic on the walls of buildings. The fighters normally sleep here during the day in preparation for potential Israeli military night raids.

Jenin was a flashpoint even before the Hamas attack from Gaza on Oct. 7.

It was the site of several battles during the Palestinian uprising in the early 2000s known as the Second Intifada, and while the Palestinian Authority is meant to be policing the camps, it’s really the fighters who control things around here.

In July 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was launching a new crackdown on militants from these camps.

“If Jenin will return to terrorism, then we will return to Jenin,” Netanyahu said.

Since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, the Israeli military has stepped up its incursions into the West Bank’s refugee camps.

Israel says they are breeding grounds for new militants.

A fighter’s purpose

After agreeing to an interview with NPR, Abu Mohammed sat on a stack of soda cans in a grocery store, cradling his gun.

He said he was in and out of Israeli prisons for about five years.

After Oct. 7, he got a call from Israeli security to turn himself in. Instead he picked up his weapon.

“Whoever sees the injustice we go through in those prisons, comes out and continues fighting,” Abu Mohammed said.

He described getting little food in prison and prisoners being beaten and humiliated by Israeli forces.

In Jenin refugee camp, a fighter shows a photo on his gun he says is a reminder of another young fighter who was killed by the Israeli army.

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Abu Mohammed said there was no use trying to wipe out the militants.

“Kill one of us, a thousand will pop up, our morale is high,” he said.

Abu Mohammed said he was ready to die for the sake of his land, but it’s not what he actually wishes he was doing with his life.

A farmer by trade, he said he’s always wanted a wife, children and a job, but there was hopelessness under occupation.

“We all want to live,” he said. “We are fighting so we can live, not just for the sake of dying.”

Youth with a death wish

On the outskirts of the West Bank’s largest city, Ramallah, is another urban refugee camp called Qalandiya. The Israeli military has raided Qalandiya almost nightly since the war in Gaza began.

Ahmad Aslan, 24, lived in Qalandiya until his death on July 24. His family told NPR that on that day, the Israeli military entered their town and soldiers started breaking into homes, searching them. Aslan’s parents said Israeli soldiers surrounded the camp, and he was stuck in his uncle’s house with his cousins. They ran to the roof to look down, and that’s when, they said, Ahmad was shot.

The Israeli military told NPR the raid was to demolish the home of a man who had killed two Israelis at a gas station in the West Bank.

It said that during the raid, soldiers opened fire at people gathered on rooftops to throw rocks and Molotov cocktails at them.

A day after his death, Aslan’s cousin released a video Aslan sent him days earlier. In it, Aslan shyly introduces himself as “the martyr Ahmad Aslan” and says he wishes to die fighting the Israeli occupation. He points to an empty grave in the Qalandiya cemetery.

The al-Damaj neighborhood of Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which recently saw many drone attacks that killed Palestinians.

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“God willing, I want my grave to be here,” he says. “Here is Yasser, and here is Ahmad Aslan’s.”

Yasser was his best friend, whose family says also died in an Israeli military raid a few months earlier.

A week later, the Aslan family was still receiving mourners paying their condolences. His mother, Amina Aslan, wore all black and maintained a brave face. She said he would always talk about hoping to die fighting the occupation, a topic that would make her mad. She pulled out a text message exchange they had a few days before he died.

“I told him: I swear if you keep talking like this, I will stop speaking to you!” she read out loud. “Go die! I’ll stop speaking to you!”

Aslan is one of a rising number of young men in the West Bank with such a death wish, according to Palestinians in the camp.

The war in Gaza, and Israel’s expanding settlements in the West Bank, have made the prospect of a Palestinian state ever more distant.

Unemployment is high, and with no future in sight, hopes are even lower.

Like Aslan, many young men say that their only choice is to fight the Israeli occupation.

Residents say they added this new extension of the Jenin refugee camp graveyard after fighting escalated following the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel.

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Some take up arms and join militant groups, others throw rocks at Israeli soldiers during raids.

Aslan’s mother said that every time there was an Israeli military incursion, her son would rush to join the youths on the streets.

In Aslan’s bedroom, his father, Nidal, pointed to items laid out neatly on his son’s bunk bed — a baseball cap, cigarette lighters, a piece of clothing blotted with blood.

He said these are all mementos his son collected and kept from his friends who were killed in Israeli raids. He said his son’s ultimate wish was to join his friends in heaven.

“Ahmed used to say, ‘sure I have friends, but those who have gone are dear to me,’ ” said Nidal Aslan.

Nuha Musleh contributed reporting in Ramallah and Jenin.