Jenin, occupied the West Bank – A crowd of people gathered to see two huge armored bulldozers in the Jenin refugee camp, and to tear asphalt to clean Road for three Israeli tanks.

“This is the first time that I saw a tank with eyes,” a young man said, and his voice said a mixture of awe and disbelief, as the sun sets on one of the camp entrances on Sunday.

In front of him, huge bulldozers wandered forward, destroying more road underneath. The refugee camp, which was almost emptied after weeks of uncompromising attacks, was preparing for another military incursion.

Ahmed, born in Jenin in 2003 at the height of the second intifada, witnessed military incursions before. But the Israeli tanks have not been seen in the streets of Jenin since 2002, when this uprising began, and it appears that the Israelis are planning to stay.

Ahmed stood between a group of young men and children on Haifa Street, near one of the camp entrances.

“It will not be easy for them to survive,” it completed, as the heavy mechanism continued its work.

For more than an hour, journalists and local residents noticed an Israeli military pocket close in silence while the bulldozers dismantled the roundabout on Haifa Street. After that, with the last pieces of the debris aside, the Merkava tank engines were calm, and the armored vehicles began to advance them to the city.

A young man stands nearby, when asked if he expected immediate resistance, shook his head. “I don’t think so. No one remains in the camp, not even the fighters.”

Tanks and stones

However, with pressure on the tanks forward towards the refugee camp, a familiar scene was revealed.

Groups of Palestinian youth and children, armed people who are nothing but stones, threw them into the nearby tanks. In response, a tank operator was aimed at its cannon and tower directly on a crowd of journalists and spectators. Moments later, the air is filled with tear gas, and the difference of youth and children who gathered.

Israel performs almost daily raids In the occupied West Bank Since 2022; Its stated goal is to weaken the armed Palestinian resistance groups that operate there. since The war in Gaza It started in October 2023, Israel increased the deadly power it uses in the West Bank, using helicopters, drones and tanks now.

This last intensification of violence began in Jenin on January 21, but the Israeli forces also attacked elsewhere, including in al -Qanbah and Tolkram. On Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said it had ordered the army “to prepare for a long stay in the camps that were purified for the coming years, preventing residents from returning and stopping terrorism from re -renewal.”

Among those watching the tanks that disappear in the camp, was one young man who was displaced just weeks ago. He stood in silence, and his face is tense with certainty. “Once again, we don’t know what will happen,” he said. “I have a house to stay at the moment, but many people have no place to sleep tonight.”

Save property

According to the United Nations Relief and Business Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), more than 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes in the West Bank, and Israeli forces refuse to allow them to return.

The siege is followed to the camp in two weeks of the siege, where at first Palestinian Authority forces Then the Israeli army imposed severe restrictions on the movement, cutting water and electricity to the camp.

Many families were forced to flee suddenly, leaving behind their property, including a group of women who move in the destroyed and mud -full streets.

They gathered at one of the camp entrances, planned to return to their homes and seize some of what they were forced to leave.

Tired faces, muddy shoes, surrounded by the bags they used to collect their property, and waited for allowing.

But they did not succeed. The Israeli soldiers who forced them to flee their homes prevented them from passing through the checkpoints they set up using the rubble they created by destroying the streets of the camp.

“The officer told us yesterday that we can return today, but now he refuses to allow us to enter,” one of the women said, which is clear in her voice.

Women did not want to surrender and start walking on the path of another arrival, as they were dwarfed from the rubble and destruction that filled the muddy narrow streets. They were warned of trying again, with a single word: “snipers!”

Only clothes on her back

“We will one day return,” Halima Zawaidi said, her smile in contrast to tired eyes, her slow walking and mixing caused by lung cancer.

Halima was born in the Jenin refugee camp and lived her entire life there, but she was forced to leave her home by her Israeli soldiers on January 22. She escaped from violence, with something more than clothes on her back.

The 63 -year -old can remember the planes that fly in its sky as the shooting sound fills the air, and a shot flying over their heads.

Israeli forces have killed 10 people on that day, and put the tone of the coming weeks.

Now, Halima, her brothers, sisters, and father – eight people in total – are crowded into one room in a deaf educational center, which has become a shelter for about 16 families who were firmly expelled from the refugee camp.

Other families have been forced to be excited around the city of Jenin, or to stay with the family or in any other spaces they were able to find them.

But Halima said, this is the largest and most fierce Israeli attack that she witnessed in a camp that has witnessed more than sufficient Israeli raids over the past decades.

She added that the Israelis will remain, because it believes that they want to expel everyone who lives in the camp, as shown in all destruction.

Halima hopes that her home is still partially standing; Windows and doors were detonated, and many walls were damaged or fell.

In addition to the ordinary Israeli raids suffered by residents of the refugee camp for years, “we were under siege for 45 days.”

“There was no electricity, no water, no roads, the shooting. She added, referring to a raid by the Palestinian Authority forces that surrounded the Palestinians in the camp before the Israeli invasion.

Halima has no idea about when it will return home, as well as any of the others displaced in Jenin.

Israel continues to violate what could have been considered by red lines, but with a few handrails and the administration of the United States, which seems to support its actions actively, facing few severe consequences.

Many observers believe that the ultimate goal of Israel is to dismantle the West Bank for its Palestinian population, but in Gaza, where Israel has launched the full force of its army for 15 months, as a similar goal has failed so far.

But even without a strategy, Israel’s military force directed towards the Jenin people has raised the lives of thousands, without end on the horizon.

“What will they do?” One of the residents asked, Jamela. “Destroying all the camp? Do they want to make a hole on the ground and put us there?”