The Jenin refugee camp has turned into a veritable fortress: steel barriers on every streetcorner, security cameras, surveillance of every outsider who dares enter, hundreds of armed men preparing for the army's next incursion. And there will be blood
The cemetery in the Jenin refugee camp, with photos of the recent fallen posted on its walls.Credit: Alex Levac
Gideon Levy and Alex Levac report in Haaretz
Three open graves are waiting in the Jenin refugee camp for the next residents to be killed by the Israel Defense Forces. Here the graves are dug in advance – and, appallingly, they don’t remain empty for very long. Almost 50 armed fighters and others have been killed here in the past year by Israeli soldiers. The camp, in the northern West Bank, is experiencing its most difficult and violent time since the second intifada, some two decades ago.
The cemetery here is bursting with the graves of the fallen – this is already the third new section created since the intifada and most of its graves are occupied. At the end of last week, on the first morning of the Eid al-Fitr festival marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, as is the custom, the place was bustling with thousands of people, bereaved families and friends of the dead, in the most militant camp in the occupied territories.
For those looking for yet another similarity between us and them: As on Memorial Day in Israel, on this important Muslim holiday, there were families who did not visit the final resting place of their loved ones because of the presence of politicians – in this case, from the Palestinian Authority – who normally do not dare enter the camp. To protest the politicians’ presence, the families visited the graveyard in Jenin the day before the festival or waited until it was over.
On the last day of Eid al-Fitr, this past Monday, a bereaved mother watered the flowers on her son’s freshly dug grave from a plastic watering can. The parents we talked to spoke about their sons with a mixture of pain and pride. Just like in Israel.
A bereaved mother at the Jenin cemetery.Credit: Alex Levac
In visual terms, the cemetery is breathtaking. Huge, boldly colored photographs of the camp’s latest shahids (martyrs) hang all along the outer fence, while other portraits cry out from the new graves. The graves of the fighters, from all manner of militant groups, look the same and are tended better than the others. Small flower beds set off each grave, as in our military cemeteries. The three open graves made the whole scene even more haunting.
Around the corner, on the street outside, are outsize photographs marking the improvised memorial where Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed nearly a year ago – probably by the Israel Defense Forces, according to investigations by leading international media organizations and human rights groups. White smoke rises from heaps of burning garbage around the place where she fell.
