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.

  • @[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