PALESTINE Jenin priest: ‘calm’ apparent after ‘crime’, high risk of ‘bloodshed’

Yesterday there were 10 victims in the West Bank, nine after an army raid on a refugee camp plus a protester who killed north of Jerusalem. Airstrikes overnight in Gaza in response to rocket fire from the Strip. Father Deibes: the “normality” of these events is the “main reason for shame.”

Jerusalem () – There is an atmosphere of apparent “calm” in Jenin, Father Labib Deibes, parish priest of the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, told after the bloody raid carried out yesterday by the Israeli army, sparking protests and heavy clashes throughout Palestine, as well as the firing of rockets from Gaza. The objective of the operation was a “jihadist cell” in the local refugee camp, but then the attack spread, turning into an open confrontation between the military and the civilian population, with the throwing of stones and projectiles.

The balance is nine victims -including the two brothers Mohammad and Nureddin Ghneim and a third member suspected of affiliation to Islamic Jihad- and at least 20 injured, four of them seriously and hospitalized at the Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin. In the afternoon, another 22-year-old was killed in Al-Ram, north of Jerusalem, by security forces shooting during protests that broke out in numerous parts of the West Bank.

“Now the situation is calmer,” says Fr. Deibes, after the serious violence yesterday that triggered “the arrival of the Israeli military”. What they did, he continues, constitutes “a crime” against the population, although they “do not feel special fear today, because we are used to violence.” Perhaps it is precisely the normality of these events – he adds – that constitutes the main reason for shame”. In the West, in Europe “they talk about energy, about prices” while we “what we need most is freedom, not living under a constant occupation that also endangers Christians” and for this reason they try more and more “to escape, to emigrate”. Pray for us, the priest concluded, because “before we fought with stones but today it is done with weapons, and the risk of more bloodshed is very great. The one that just ended was a year of death, but 2023 seems to have started even worse.”

The tensions from yesterday continued overnight. Israeli aviation carried out several attacks in Gaza in response to rocket fire from the Strip towards the south of the country. Hamas sources speak of 15 targets hit by the Israeli air force, but no further casualties or injuries have been reported. Shortly before midnight they had fired at least two rockets from the Gaza Strip towards the Jewish state, which were immediately intercepted and destroyed by the Iron Dome defense system. The sirens for the possible arrival of rockets had sounded in the coastal town of Ascalon and in the kibbutz of Zikim and Karnia; In this case, too, there were no damages or injuries. Meanwhile, the Palestinian National Authority has severed security relations with Israel, and the number of victims of violence since the beginning of the year now stands at 26. What is most worrying is the intransigent attitude of the new israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, made up of religious and far-right parties that do not hesitate to use force while fueling tensions in the holy places of Jerusalem.

Jenin, where the raid took place, is the Palestinian city where Christian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in similar circumstances on 11 May. The reporter was shot by an Israeli soldier during a patrol operation. Two days later, on May 13, during the funeral procession that was taking the body from St. Joseph Hospital to the burial site, riot police attacked the crowd, endangering the stability of the coffin. The family was received by the Pope and turned to the International Criminal Court for justice, while Israel kept the investigation secret.

His death, symbolic of a year of violence and deaths that have gone silent in the international community, occurred in a region facing the same challenges as most Palestinian cities: occupation and blockades of roads, economic crisis and high youth unemployment. and emigration to other areas of Palestine or abroad. Jenin’s population is made up of 50 thousand inhabitants, while there are about 150 Christians, all Catholics. The nuns of the Congregation of the Daughters of Santa Ana work in the area and there is a kindergarten for about 90 Christian and Muslim children run by an educational and administrative group made up of a Christian woman, two Muslim teachers and two Christians.