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Why Jabalia?

By Tamer Ajrami | MEMO | May 31, 2024

For 20 days now, the occupation army has been committing massacres that have caught the attention of the entire world in Jabalia and the city’s refugee camp.

Everyone is asking what makes this small spot the subject of this continuous destruction. This narrow area, which does not exceed 1.4 square kilometres, holds the highest population density in the world. It is home to 116,000 people and is the largest refugee camp in Palestine.

At the beginning of the current war, the occupation army poured out its anger on Jabalia camp, carrying out four of the most violent and brutal massacres of this war so far.

It later announced victory over Jabalia and began to head south. So why has it returned?

Due to Jabalia’s steadfastness, the occupation army bombed its neighborhoods with dumb bombs, killing hundreds of people in each strike. It went on to starve Palestinians in the north.

And now, Netanyahu’s army is trying a second entry/invasion, perhaps wanting to destroy the camp.

What is happening is a repeat and intensification of what happened long ago, as my father told me. In 1967, Jabalia camp was the site where the first resistance against the occupation began. The occupation went crazy then, wondering how a freedom fighter dared to shoot at a helicopter.

They sent truckloads of soldiers and carried out field executions and the army dropped napalm bombs.

To this day, no one knows how many were killed in that crime, but in the camp, entire families were erased from the civil registry.

And in 1987, the spark of the First Intifada was ignited from Jabalia. After that, everyone started calling it “the revolution camp.”

Among its brave freedom fighters was Hatem Al-Sisi who was the first martyr of the intifada, which extended from 1987 until the Oslo Accords in 1993. The shedding of his blood was the catalyst to the spread of the intifada across the West Bank and Gaza. This inspired my father to name my brother Hatem in his honor. The martyr fell in our neighborhood, near my grandfather’s house.

During the era of the war criminal Ariel Sharon, known as “the bulldozer of Israel”, the occupation’s tanks and planes destroyed Jabalia camp in 2003. The same criminal repeated the attack in 2004. Despite all his attempts, he failed to diminish the resistance, which forced him to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, defeated in 2005.

And today, after 20 years, his successor Netanyahu returns to attack Jabalia camp in multiple assaults. It seems that the desperate Netanyahu has not learned anything from history.

The policy of the “parents die and children forget” will not succeed with Palestinians. In Palestine, parents are martyred and children grow up and do not forget. Rather, they follow the same path as their parents. They call upon the world in all languages, wanting a dignified life and a future for their children.

But the occupation practices genocide against them.

The leaders of the occupation army discuss openly and secretly, shouting and holding conferences all the time; in their minds there is only one question: How do we erase Jabalia camp from the map? Should we drop a nuclear bomb on it, as if 40,000 tonnes of explosives have not quenched their thirst for death.

As if they are asking: “How many tonnes of bombs do we need to drop on them to make them die?”

In 1998, Jabalia camp was visited by then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. No other place could make the official understand our cause better.

I was 13 years old then, and I remember participating in the campaign to clean the school that he was visiting and the main street from the market to the school gate. I was a member of my school’s health committee, which Annan visited. I was the diligent student who greeted him in English, proudly saying, “Welcome to Jabalia camp.”

Yes, I am the son of Jabaliya and I am proud to have been born in that crowded spot. And I am saddened by what I am witnessing today.

For seven months, the occupation starved the people of northern Gaza, focusing on Jabalia camp. Perhaps they hoped the people would die of hunger or flee, making it easier to accomplish their mission of destroying the area completely, levelling it as they did to Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and Khan Yunis.

But Jabalia camp remained unbreakable; many were killed, but it stood firm and tall.

Yes, I know that those who remain in the camp are starving, tired and exhausted, but they are steadfast.

As if this steadfastness is a curse, the Israeli occupation’s tanks return to Jabalia as if the war has begun anew. Bombs drop from the sky. 1000lb, 2000lb bombs fall from warplanes aiming to kill more innocent civilians inside homes. Their only fault is that they said: “We will not leave our homes, we will not flee.”

It pains me to hear that the rabid army has now destroyed about 70 per cent of the camp’s landmarks. Its most prominent locations have disappeared.

Today, the news tells us that tanks are besieging the street which has four UNRWA schools; two primary and two elementary. This is the same street that Kofi Annan visited.

Those who remain in Jabalia know what displacement is. They lived as displaced people. They know it means permanent exile. They know another displacement means leaving Palestine and moving to Sinai, which would mean the end of our cause forever. They understand the occupation’s lies.

We see and hear them on television, dying of hunger and thirst, eating grass and animal feed, but they will not leave their land. Among them was my uncle, Abu Taysir Al-Ajrami, the father of three martyrs from the resistance who were martyred at the beginning of the Second Intifada between 2002 and 2003. He appeared on Al Jazeera saying: “We eat animal feed, but we will not leave our land. We die but do not leave.”

Everyone knows that if it weren’t for the steadfastness of Jabalia Camp and the patience of its people and the people of Gaza, Netanyahu’s goals of displacing them to Sinai would have been achieved.

Perhaps this is the reason for Netanyahu and his army’s anger towards Jabalia and its residents.

But, as they rebuilt Jabalia Camp after the first massacre in 1967 and the First Intifada in 1987, the second massacre in 2003, and the third massacre in 2004, Palestinians will rebuild the camp once again after the current massacres.

May 31, 2024 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment