The army operation carried out in the middle of the day, in the old town, left eleven dead and a hundred wounded. This is the heaviest balance sheet in the West Bank since the second Intifada (2000-2005).
by Louis Imbert (Nablouse (West Bank), Special Envoy)
Fadi Faqih is stretched, the stiff neck in his turtleneck, on a bed in the Rafidia hospital in Nablus. The 20 -year -old boy barely dares to move. He was shot in the chest on Wednesday, February 22, during a raid led by the Israeli army. Doctors do not dare to withdraw it: it has stayed too close to the heart.
This electricity engineering student was injured on the outskirts of his city when he came back from the university, according to his father. The soldiers withdrew after four hours of fighting, led in the heart of the old town. Their raid left eleven dead and at least one hundred two injured with real bullets, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
This is the worst check in the West Bank since the second Intifada (2000-2005). A month ago, a previous raid led to Jénine (North) had ten Palestinian victims, at the peak of a massive repression that the army has led for a year in the West Bank. This year, more than one Palestinian was killed per day (sixty-one), as well as eleven Israelis, including seven in an attack on civilians in a colony of East Jerusalem, in the aftermath of the Jenin raid. Sunday, the Palestinian authority had however concluded an agreement of “deconflict” with Israel, under pressure from Washington.
The Israeli government has taken the risk of burning this “deal”, to arrest an alleged member of a commando who had killed a soldier in October 2022. The Palestinian activist and his two companions, whom the Israeli soldiers surrounded in an old town’s house, “prepares attacks on Israelis,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Hecht, an army spokesman, without bringing elements to support his remarks. The three men were killed during the assault.
Mohammed Abu Baker, known as “Al-Jnaidi”, directed in Nablus the armed branch of Islamic jihad, organization at the forefront of the current insurrection, which does not aspire to power. Hussam Islim and Walid Dakhil belonged to the Lions of Nablus, a immensely popular local group in the West Bank, author of attacks against soldiers and settlers. The Lions claim to be all the Palestinian armed groups, but of no political faction. Israel estimated to have beheaded them in October 2022, by murdering their head of then.
At around 10 a.m. Wednesday, Israeli armored vehicles entered the old town. Intelligence members and an elite unit of the border police, Yamam, continued on foot through a market, to join a plainclothes unit in the vicinity. “These were disguised as Salafists, beards and long tunics,” said several members of the Lions. One of these young people is surprised that the Israelis came in broad daylight: “Hussam and Mohammed often spent the night at the corner of a fire in this covered alley”, deserted in the evening. The soldiers could have found them there and arrest them.
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