Undercover in broad daylight: Israeli military raids in West Bank cities
Relatives mourn over the bodies of Palestinians killed in an Israeli raid earlier in the day during their funeral in Jenin on 16 March 2023
Ola Marshoud reports in Middle East Eye:
On a calm Wednesday morning, Allam Abdulhaq was cleaning his small shop in the Mreij Street in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, when he found himself in the middle of a violent Israeli undercover raid.
It took him a few moments before he realised that a group of telecommunication workers that had arrived in his neighbourhood moments earlier was in fact an Israeli forces unit preparing to detain Palestinian fighter Mohammed Hamdan.
The raid, on 22 March, came as part of a series of similar Israeli military raids into various West Bank towns and neighbourhoods that aimed to detain or assassinate wanted Palestinian resistance fighters. Many of these raids resulted in the killing of several Palestinians, in what Palestinian officials have described as a series of “massacres”.
In a trembling voice, Abdulhaq recalled the events of that morning. “I saw two young men dressing like workers of the telecommunication or the electricity company. They were carrying equipment and their clothes were covered in dust and dirt,” the 55-year-old shop owner said.
“One of them spoke to his colleague in Arabic then bought a bottle of water. A few moments later, a car with a ladder strapped to its roof arrived and four men got out. They asked the two young men: ‘Ready?’. They responded, ‘Yes, ready’.
“The four then headed to the delivery company in front of my shop, and the other two remained near my shop.”A few minutes passed before Hamdan came running out of the company, followed by the four men who pointed their guns at him and shot him, then started yelling and cursing him using obscene words.”
While Abdulhaq was watching the incident unfold, the two young men pointed their guns to his head, forcing him to turn his back on the scene. However, he tried to take a look to see if Hamdan, who was shot in the thigh, was still alive. “I thought that it was a family problem or some kind of row, until military reinforcements arrived in a bus that was carrying undercover agents and Israeli forces. Only then did I realise that what was going on was a military raid to detain a wanted Palestinian man,” Abdulhaq told Middle East Eye.
Three weeks after the raid, Abdulhaq seems to still be in shock. “I was terrified. I have diabetes and I was in a miserable state, so my brother, who is a doctor, called an ambulance,” he recalled. “I cannot forget the voice of Mohammed Hamdan shouting as he was being detained: ‘Say hello to my daughters’. I cannot get him out of my mind.”