Israel’s increasing airstrikes on the West Bank have killed 55 Palestinians — 24 of them children — in the past year.

Around 9:30 p.m. in late February, a white Mazda pulled up near a game cafe in the Jenin refugee camp on the northern edge of the West Bank, where a crowd of boys and young men often gathered to socialize.

As the car stopped, a few people walked by on the narrow street. Two motorbikes weaved past in different directions. “Everything was fine at the time,” according to an eyewitness sitting nearby in the camp’s main square.

Then the car erupted in a ball of flame. Two missiles fired from an Israeli drone had hit the Mazda in quick succession, as shown in a video the Israeli Air Force posted that night.

According to the IAF, the strike killed Yasser Hanoun, described as “a wanted terrorist.”

But Hanoun was not the only fatality: 16-year old Said Raed Said Jaradat, who was near the vehicle when it was hit, sustained shrapnel wounds all over his body, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International-Palestine. He died from his injuries at 1 a.m. the next morning.

Jaradat is one of 24 children killed in Israel’s airstrikes on the West Bank since last summer, when the Israeli forces began deploying drones, planes, and helicopters to carry out attacks in the occupied territory for the first time in decades.

  • @Eximius
    8•5 months ago

    “Fighting back” by heavily bombarding a Palestine area that has no offensive means due to decades of slowly administered austerity measures. From a land their diaspora didnt own for the last 2000 years…

    • @[email protected]English
      -8•5 months ago

      To be fair they literally asked for it and continue to do so by taking and not releasing the hostages.

      Edit: It doesn’t help that when killed the other civilians refer to them as martyrs. The whole thing is incredibly ugly and done for imo stupid reasons on both sides.

    • @[email protected]English
      -16•5 months ago

      “no offensive means” except the rockets and a military of tens of thousands of people with guns

      As for living there a long time… are you fucking stupid? Jerusalem is in Israel, and the Kingdom of Israel (which is in that vicinity) is mentioned in the original Hebrew fucking bible, which was completed around 2000 years ago. Jews have been living in that region since Judaism became a thing.

      • @Eximius
        7•5 months ago

        No. Israel has 13bil in millitary means just from this year from USA, while Gaza is starving. Fuck off.

        Just open other books as well. Plenty of books talk about lands controlled by long forgotten kingdoms. And many of these are actually history books, instead of religious gospel from influential figures.

        • @[email protected]English
          -6•5 months ago

          Yes, Israel is stronger than Palestine. Is that a crime? Palestine still regularly attacks Israel, they had to build a fucking missile defence system because of it.

          Are you actually claiming jews didn’t live in that region for the last two thousand years? There are thousands of historical records beyond just the bible proving that they did.

          • @hark
            1•5 months ago

            Israel is a weak little bitch that relies on daddy America while pretending to be the toughest kid in the neighborhood. An old book does not justify genocide and ethnic cleansing.

            • @[email protected]English
              -3•5 months ago

              Hamas is an even weaker little bitch that relies on money and arms being smuggled in from Muslim countries to fight against Israel.

              Gaza has a GDP per capita of $800 PER YEAR. Israel is around $60,000.

              • @hark
                6•5 months ago

                Hamas is a terrorist organization. You’d think Israel, as an internationally-recognized country, would be better than a terrorist organization, but apparently not. In fact, Israel has been more brutal and less reasonable than even Hamas in many cases.

                Then you jump to comparing the GDP of Gaza, which has the entire weight of Israel and the west sitting on it, with the GDP of Israel which has the full backing of the west. Kind of hard to produce things when you’ve got a neighboring country hell-bent on ethnically cleansing all of your land and the most powerful countries in the world funding them to carry it out.

                • @[email protected]English
                  -2•5 months ago

                  I wouldn’t think Israel would be better, because the whole fighting strategy of guerilla terrorist organizations like Hamas is to make it impossible to fight cleanly. That’s why they meet up in residential locations surrounded by women and children, and set up resources in schools, hospitals, etc.

                  This strategy isn’t unique to Hamas, it’s used by pretty much every group around the world who are fighting civil wars from a weaker position.

                  I’m not saying that the reason they’re poor isn’t because of Israel, I’m simply saying that they are poor as fuck and therefore the funding for their terrorism is coming from elsewhere.

              • @Keeponstalin
                1•5 months ago

                The Israeli imposed closure on Gaza began in 1991, temporarily, becoming permanent in 1993. The barrier began around Gaza around 1972. After the ‘disengagement’ in 2007, this turned into a full blockade; where Israel has had control over the airspace, borders, and sea. Under the guise of ‘dual-use’ Israel has restricted food, allocating a minimum supply leading to over half of Gaza being food insecure; construction materials, medical supplies, and other basic necessities have also been restricted. This has been a deliberate tactic of De-development.

                Gaza Policy Forum summary: Experts agree that Israel’s dual-use policy causes acute distress

                Through 1993 Israel imposed a one-way system of tariffs and duties on the importation of goods through its borders; leaving Israel for Gaza, however, no tariffs or other regulations applied. Thus, for Israeli exports to Gaza, the Strip was treated as part of Israel; but for Gazan exports to Israel, the Strip was treated as a foreign entity subject to various “non-tariff barriers.” This placed Israel at a distinct advantage for trading and limited Gaza’s access to Israeli and foreign markets. Gazans had no recourse against such policies, being totally unable to protect themselves with tariffs or exchange rate controls. Thus, they had to pay more for highly protected Israeli products than they would if they had some control over their own economy. Such policies deprived the occupied territories of significant customs revenue, estimated at $118-$176 million in 1986. (Arguably, the economic terms of the Gaza—Jericho Agreement modify the situation only slightly.)

                • page 240

                In a report released in May 2015, the World Bank revealed that as a result of Israel’s blockade and OPE, Gaza’s manufacturing sector shrank by as much as 60 percent over eight years while real per capita income is 31 percent lower than it was 20 years ago. The report also stated that the blockade alone is responsible for a 50 percent decrease in Gaza’s GDP since 2007. Furthermore, OPE (com- bined with the tunnel closure) exacerbated an already grave situation by reducing Gaza’s economy by an additional $460 million.

                • Page 402

                The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development - Third Edition by Sara M. Roy