After Friday prayers, Hussein Shibly took a stroll home through a city that was attempting to transform from destruction to simple poverty. Men mended bullet holes in a rooftop water tank, a bulldozer lifted a crushed automobile, and a fire engine cleaned soot from a busy street.
Shibly arrived at his family’s house and ascended the stairs to a living room that had been completely destroyed by a shoulder-fired missile. He posed the question while surrounded by the charred remains of couches and chairs: “Is this fit to live in?” We asked ourselves, “Why did this happen to us?”
Shibly and his neighbors are in shock following Israel’s two-day foray into the occupied West Bank, which unleashed firefights and airstrikes on these steep alleyways lined with densely populated homes.
Israel said that the attack on the Jenin refugee camp, long regarded as a stronghold of armed Palestinian militancy, was necessary for security reasons in order to weaken the power of a growing terrorist base. Israel has been the target of at least 50 strikes this year, according to officials. The Israel Defense Forces stated that all 12 of the Palestinians slain during the operation were known militants.
But it was 44 hours of terror for families who had become trapped in the camp due to fighting. Numerous residents were able to escape. Others took cover in toilets and bedrooms. Few people experienced the variety of tragedies that the Shiblys did.
Hussein, 69, was up late watching television Sunday, his usual routine after years spent working the night shift at an Israeli meat processing plant. He was born in this camp, where at least 14,000 people, possibly many more, are packed into an area measuring less than half a square kilometer. Poverty and unemployment are rampant. Raids by Israeli commandos are common.
That night, rumors of a big operation were swirling. But no one knew what was coming.
Around 1 a.m. Monday, Hussein saw a report on Israeli news: IDF soldiers had entered the camp. Then he heard drones, many of them. “They are going to bomb,” he thought. Then came an explosion.
Hussein and his two brothers own three interconnected houses with nine apartments, which are home to the Shibly family. Israeli raids are a common occurrence there. Numerous members of the extended family flocked to the basement in a matter of minutes.
In the cramped, dim areas where Hussein’s nephew Fadi raises parakeets, there were close to 50 people present. Numerous birds chirped and fluttered as gunfights broke out outside. The family sat and listened all day and night on Monday, lighting candles when the lights went out a few hours into the altercation.
Hussein remarked, “The kids were scared.
However, Fadi, 34, chose to remain in his second-floor apartment out of concern for his expectant wife and their young kid who were in the congested basement. Fadi watched via a tiny bathroom window as his family hunkered low in a living room.
The Shibly compound commands a broad view over the camp since it is perched high on an incline. Below, he could see Israeli soldiers moving. Updates were shared by neighbors over the phone.
“Now they are going into Jaffar’s,” recalled Fadi. They are currently breaking into your cousin’s home.
He received a call Monday night at around 11 p.m. saying, “Fadi, they are coming to you.”
He heard a racket downstairs, and, suddenly, the two doors of his apartment crashed in simultaneously, shattering the frames. About 12 soldiers poured in, all clad in body armor and wearing headlamps.
Fadi, with his son crying in his arms and his wife clutching his side, stood before them and pleaded in Hebrew: “Easy! Easy! A little one here!” he remembers saying.
“Your ID,” the leader commanded in Arabic. “Where are the terrorists?”
The soldiers blew out the candles, cuffed Fadi with plastic ties and ordered the three into the living room. Through the open door, they watched the troops search through cupboards. One set up at the wide kitchen window. Soon, he began firing in long bursts with his automatic rifle. Bullet casings fell by the hundreds onto the tile floor.
“Please!” Fadi shouted. “The boy is terrified.”
The other family members were below, hopeless. Fadi had ceased to reply.
Hussein stated, “We believed he was dead. The females were sobbing and screaming.
The shooting kept going. A commander escorted Fadi to a bedroom where there were plastic scooters and trucks after Fadi’s wife requested him to grab a toy for the kid. According to Fadi, the soldier allegedly swore, slapped the man on the shoulder with the butt of his rifle, then pushed him back into the living room when he noticed a toy machine gun by the entrance.
They requested to go down stairs with their family. According to Fadi, the commander replied “no.” He informed them that everyone will be departing soon.
Around midnight, a loudspeaker began to shout, “Get out! Get away! You’ll be secure.
The people in the basement hurried to gather paperwork and diapers before finding a firetruck, a Red Crescent crew, and Fadi’s family in the courtyard. They encircled them, sobbing and hugging them as a doctor removed Fadi’s handcuffs.
They were told by a firefighter to “walk out together.” To avoid being shot, men should stick with the ladies and kids in a group.
Over debris and dead cables, they carefully made their way down the roads. Where Israeli bulldozers had purposefully destroyed explosives buried in the pavement, one long street was plowed like a farm furrow.The family dispersed to relative houses after leaving the camp. Hussein had his eyes fixed to the screen.
He learned late Tuesday that a shoulder-fired missile had hit close to his neighborhood’s Abdullah Azzam mosque.
He stated, “I observed that it was our house that was damaged, not the mosque. “I watched on television as a fire destroyed my son’s home.”
When he arrived back on Wednesday morning, a few hours after Israeli forces left the Jenin camp, it was still smoking. Bullet fragments were all around Fadi’s apartment.
Hussein said that there had been no reason to target their compound — that no one in the family was involved with militant groups, and that none were wanted by the Israelis.
“We all have permits to work in Israel. They know us well,” said Hussein, recalling his years working side by side with Israeli Jews on a kosher-compliance team, led by a rabbi, that monitored animal health conditions.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment on why the Shibly house might have been targeted.
On Friday, as a surveillance drone hovered overhead, life was returning to the compound. Women cooked in Hussein’s ground-floor apartment. Fadi tended to his birds. About 20 of them had died of lack of food during the incursion, he said.
The United Nations has called for donors to help rebuild Jenin. The United Arab Emirates pledged $15 million on Thursday. But Hussein is skeptical.
“We hear about money on the news, but we never see any of it,” he said. He has little faith that things will change. Jenin will remain poor, and Israeli forces will return.
“They will be back,” Hussein said. “They said they wanted to eliminate resistance in Jenin. But they will not.”
The Washington Post
