The third generation of Palestinian refugees won’t give Israel quiet

Palestinians in Jenin during the Israeli military operation, 3 July 2023

Hanin Majadli writes in Haaretz on 9 July 2023:

Another operation has ended, and the countdown to the next operation has begun. Operation Home and Garden is indeed a lovely, charming name, giving off a whiff of spring flowers, or a flowering of summer operations.

But aside from the name, what’s new?

The pointlessness is shared by all of Israel’s operations against the Palestinians over the last decade and a half. So they flattened a place that will someday be a second Gaza Strip – Jenin. Or more accurately, the Jenin refugee camp.

For anyone who didn’t know, this refugee camp houses Palestinians who were expelled from towns and villages near Jenin in 1948. Aside from the people expelled from Jaffa, there’s an impressive presence of people expelled from Haifa and its environs – Ayn Al-Mansi, Jaba, Al-Mazar, Ijzim, Ayn Hawd, Tantura and others.

Most Israelis don’t recognize the names of the places from which they were expelled, and which Israel destroyed. They don’t even know why the refugee camp is called a refugee camp. The ones who are directly responsible for the fact that there are refugee camps don’t know where these people came from or where those who didn’t go to the Jenin refugee camp went.

Because what difference does it make if they were expelled, or fled, or where they were expelled to, Lebanon or Jenin? What’s important is that they and any memory of them were erased, so now we will have quiet.

Except that the third generation of children from the refugee camps don’t want you to have quiet while they live in poverty and crowded conditions, deprived of everything.

I have no interest in softening the truth. These children and teenagers, whether 12 or 16, aren’t saboteurs and certainly aren’t terrorists. Their lives were destroyed by you, and they want to embitter your lives in return.

I’m sorry if this sounds harsh and extreme. But it’s the truth, and maybe for once we need to put it on the table. And I’ll take this opportunity to put a second truth there: Israel has no long-term plan of action with regard to the Palestinians, and these military operations have no purpose. There is no victory here; there isn’t anything at all.

Operation Home and Garden wasn’t launched because of a few weapons, or to kill eight “terrorists” aged 16 to 26 who possessed stolen Israel Defense Forces rifles or, even worse, homemade weapons. Nor was it launched because Jenin had upgraded its weaponry to the point that it could compete with the IDF’s superior equipment, or due to any other lie, either.

Operations like these are launched to hide the truth: Israel doesn’t know what to do with the Palestinians, aside from committing crimes against them and repressing them and stealing their land. Because any other plan – a just one, in the form of an agreement or an arrangement – isn’t something Israel wants.

In the case of Jenin, there’s been speculations that the goal was to reestablish the evicted settlements of Homesh, Kadim, Ganim and Sa-Nur, which were located north of Jenin – another operation to lavish goodies on religious Zionists.

On Wednesday, as Israeli troops were leaving Jenin, the IDF spokesman boasted that “the refugee camp suffered very severe damage.” With that, the ritual is complete.

Israeli soldiers were photographed with the refugee camp in the background, like a homage to pictures of the armed Palestinian brigades from the camp. In our reality of TikTok and wars of false consciousness, it’s ridiculous to speculate that the army entered the camp just to obtain this “victory picture.” Because even this victory is temporary.

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