Operation Iron Wall: West Bank areas ‘turning into mini-Gaza’ as Israeli troops bulldoze homes

A bulldozer tears huge chunks out of buildings in an emptied out Palestinian neighbourhood.

It is not clearing rubble, this is a demolition project – methodical and devastating.

It is part of Operation Iron Wall, a massive Israeli military assault in the northern West Bank.

Nominally, Iron Wall is about rooting out militant groups, to stop another 7 October attack from originating in the restive refugee camps of Jenin or Tulkarm.

Politically it appears to be a way of appeasing far-right figures in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government who want a return to war in Gaza.

That is why it was launched just days after the Gaza ceasefire was agreed. According to the UN, 40,000 people have already been displaced.

Zeinab Qasam, who is there to inspect her home in Tulkarm after an Israeli raid, says the area has become “a mini-Gaza.

“People who’ve lost their houses, they’ve lost all chances. And they’re not allowed to rebuild either.”

Qasam and her family have had to evacuate three times since 21 January.

Israeli forces trashed her neighbour’s flat, rifling through drawers and shooting into the walls and ceiling. They held her children at gunpoint.

She peers gingerly through the door onto the street. “They’re still there”, she whispers.

“I have a daughter with special needs, so you can imagine she couldn’t comprehend what was happening, or what it means when a weapon is pointed at her head”, Zeinab says.

“I was so scared I started crying”, adds her 12-year-old son, Assad. “They came in and they were so aggressive, they were screaming so much.”

Upstairs, the IDF have set up a sniper position, two holes for the barrel of a gun through a piece of plywood. That’s why it is risky to move about these streets. You never know who has you in their sights.

“They want to build wider roads so that their missions become easier, so that their operations against ‘terrorists’ are easier”, Zeinab says.

“Honestly I don’t even know who the terrorist is in this situation, the people who are just sitting at home quietly, going to work, coming home – how exactly does that make us terrorists?”

On 7 February, 10-year-old Saddam Rajab, who’d been shot in the stomach ten days earlier during an Israeli operation in Tulkarm, died of his wounds.

“He never woke up”, his father, Iyad, tells us.

“But for the first three days whenever I would walk in the doctor told me he felt my presence. His vital signs would change.”

Saddam was making a call to his mother when he was shot.

The moment was caught on CCTV. There is a loud explosion and Saddam launches forward screaming, clutching his chest.

The screams gradually fade as he loses the ability to move. Almost two minutes later a desperate figure on crutches appears in the corner of the frame and tries to pull the boy to safety. It is Saddam’s father, Iyad.

Iyad explains how, even when the ambulance came, he was stopped from going to hospital with his son as the IDF searched through his apartment building.

The ambulance taking Saddam to hospital was delayed for an extensive search en route.

The next day when the boy was transferred to a larger hospital in Nablus, the ambulance was searched again. Critical, life-saving moments were lost.

“Will I file a case against them? Yes, yes I will. Not just because he’s my son, the boy didn’t do anything. Standing in front of his home, no one nearby was involved in clashes, there wasn’t rock throwing, there wasn’t anyone armed in the area, nothing.”

The IDF says their military police have opened a criminal investigation into Saddam’s case and that they cannot comment further when the investigation is ongoing.

They say they have seized weapons caches and dismantled terror cells in Jenin and Tulkarm and continue both to detain and “eliminate” terrorists.

Iyad describes Saddam as having been a quiet boy. He says Saddam had been his everything after he was injured in an accident and could only walk on crutches.

He could never have imagined that this could happen to his family, even though incidents like this of young children killed by Israeli troops in the West Bank are all too frequent.

Saddam was empathetic, compassionate, a best friend to his older sister, Raghad, Iyad tells me. “She and Saddam were two halves of one soul”.

Raghad’s screams at the funeral, in video Iyad shows me on his phone, are terrible to watch.

He worries about the explosion of resentment and racism he sees all around him, since 7 October.

“My youngest daughter comes and asks me, ‘where is Saddam?’. What do you expect from her when she finds out as she grows older? She’s going to have resentment growing in her,” Iyad says.

“I watched the first intifada in 1988 and then the second in 2000 and this war again. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never seen an attack this bad. For those who witnessed the first and second intifadas, they’ll understand how this is a lot more difficult.”

Donald Trump has said he will make “a decision” on the West Bank soon – after he was asked whether he believed Israel should annex the occupied area.

It is an ominous sign. Whatever it may mean, it is unlikely to account for the three million Palestinians who call the West Bank their home.