Israel's Jenin Raid Created the Terror Attack It Proclaimed to Thwart
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-01-29/ty-article/.premium/what-where-you-thinking/00000185
by Gideon Levy 29 January 2023
What were you thinking? That the killing of 146 Palestinians in the West Bank in 2022, according to B’Tselem, most of them noncombatants, would be meekly accepted? That the killing of about 30 people in the month to date would pass quietly?
That residents of the Shoafat refugee camp, who are maltreated every day and every night by police and Border Police officers who invade their homes in strange operations, from tax raids to nighttime arrests, destroying their property and their dignity, will shower their abusers with rice? That someone whose grandfather was murdered by a settler and whose 17-year-old friend was killed last week by the Border Police was not liable to commit an attack?
And what were the commanders of Thursday’s insane operation in the Jenin refugee camp thinking? What was the point of the operation, aside from a demonstration of power? To suppress terrorism? It only fanned the flames.
They knew that if they raided the center of the camp it would result in great bloodshed. The Israel Defense Forces and the Police Special Anti-Terror Unit can no longer invade this brave, determined camp without spilling a lot of blood. They also knew that no “huge terrorist attack inside Israel” was thwarted by the operation, as the IDF mouthpiece also known as Yedioth Ahronoth proclaimed Friday. They invaded the camp in the morning, while the children were on their way to school – fortunately, at least the UNRWA schools were on strike that day – just because they could.