Outrage, fundraisers, protest: Jordanians respond to Israeli assaults on Jenin camp

AMMAN — The large-scale Israeli assault on Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp has produced a rising tide of rage and dissatisfaction among different Jordanian parties and unions.

Beginning on Monday, Israeli occupation forces brought in bulldozers to destroy streets and infrastructure in Jenin, in addition to holding Palestinians at gunpoint at their own homes, sealing off the camp and entering the territory with air strikes and ground raids.

The two-day Israeli operation, which has left residents of the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank stunned by the sheer damage, was met with fierce criticism from Jordanian government institutions, political parties and unions.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates condemned the continuous Israeli escalations and warned against the continuation of violence, calling the international community to act immediately to halt Israeli aggression in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Islamic Action Front Party (IAF) expressed its rejection of the violent Israeli incursions, also calling on the international community to shoulder its responsibility to end “the apartheid aggression on Palestinians”.

President of the Jordan Engineers Association (JEA) and Chairman of the Supreme Committee for Palestinian Construction in Jordan, Ahmad Samara Zu'bi, announced that the association will hold a day of solidarity with Palestinians. On the day of solidarity, the JEA will launch a fundraising campaign to rebuild what was destroyed in the camp.

On Wednesday evening, a number of political parties organised a mass sit-in at the Al Jaysh traffic circle under the slogan “Victory for the Palestinian People and their Brave Resistance”.

The National Constitutional Party, represented by its Secretary-General Ahmad Shanaq, spoke about “the newest Zionist aggression” against Palestinians in Jenin in a radio interview, detailing the objectives and connotations of the latest assault, which Shanaq described as “the biggest military operation since 2002”.

“The Nakba lives on today through Israeli policies of displacement and ethnic cleansing, with every Palestinian generation [suffering from] the loss of Israeli’s colonial project,” the Free Palestine Instagram page posted regarding the assault.

“What is happening in Jenin is another attempt to weaken Palestinian resistance that has been going on for generations…. Israeli aggression has no constraints or accountability,” Salam Bader, a Jordanian with ancestral roots in Jenin, told The Jordan Times on Wednesday.

Expressing alarm on Twitter, Jordanian researcher and Director of the Phenix Centre for Economics and Informatics Studies (PCEIS) Ahmad Awad wrote: “Israeli Occupation Forces have persisted in their crimes for nearly 75 years now; the only resistors are the ones who can break the continuity of this criminal entity.”