In the West Bank, funeral time after the deadliest Israeli raid since 2005

In Jenin, funeral time returned on Friday, the day after the deadliest Israeli raid since at least 2005, in this city which has long been a bastion of the "resistance" à Israeli occupation in the West Bank.

Installed on the roof of an abandoned building in the center of Jenin, the large city in the north of the Palestinian territory, children counted up to ten bodies of Palestinian fighters carried to their graves during these funerals .

The bodies of these men were carried out of homes and hospital morgues on stretchers, accompanied by dozens of other masked militants firing into the air. Thousands of men took part in this funeral procession.

“We are coming for the fight,” chanted the crowd, carrying Palestinian flags, and others from the Islamic Jihad group, a great ally of the Hamas, alongside which he fights in Gaza, and also the flags of Fatah, the party of President Mahmoud Abbas.

The bodies, which have not been washed, bear traces of blood, as befits “martyrs”.

On Thursday, the Palestinian Health Ministry announced 14 deaths in a day of fighting in Jenin. It is the deadliest Israeli raid in a long time, at least since 2005 when the UN began recording deaths from Israeli incursions in the West Bank.

Throughout this territory, occupied since 1967 , 18 Palestinians were killed that day, according to this source.

– “Never safe” –

People carry the draped bodies of men killed in an Israeli raid followed by clashes with Palestinians, in the Jenin refugee camp, in the occupied West Bank, during their funerals, on 10 November 2023 © AFP – Aris MESSINIS

After these clashes between masked gunmen and Israeli forces in armored personnel carriers, the streets of Jenin were devastated and strewn with sparkling bullet casings.

The Israeli army said it “exchanged fire with armed terrorists, more than ten terrorists were killed and more than 20 wanted suspects were apprehended.”

“Every day they attack. They enter the town, the camp, the villages. We are never safe,” Salam Hussein, 39, told AFP, accompanied by three children in the rubble of a razed street in Jenin.

A young boy poses for a photo, displaying a peace sign next to a monument to a previously killed militant destroyed during Thursday's fighting.< /p>

The funeral ended Friday on the same ground where other fighters were buried a week earlier.

Men laid concrete blocks to mark off the graves, before the crowd dispersed again in a city once again torn by fighting.

The West Bank, Palestinian territory separated from the Gaza Strip through Israeli territory, has been plagued by an intensification of violence since the start of the war in Gaza.

This war was triggered by the Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7 and caused at least 1,400 victims, mostly civilians killed on the day of the attack, according to Israeli authorities.

A woman and children are inside a house damaged during an Israeli raid followed by clashes with Palestinians, in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, on November 10, 2023 © AFP – Aris MESSINIS

To “annihilate” Hamas, the Israeli army bombs the 2.4 million Gazans day and night and at least 11,000 of them have been killed, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.

In the West Bank, Israeli incursions, settler attacks on Palestinian villages, closures and arrests continue to increase.

In one month, around 180 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank by fire from Israeli soldiers or settlers, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

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