GAZA/JENIN (Dispatches) -- Hours after Israel’s leader said a large-scale military aggression against the West Bank city of Jenin was wrapping up, five rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip in retaliation into Occupied Palestine early Wednesday.
Earlier on Tuesday, eight Zionists were wounded by a Palestinian man in a car-ramming and stabbing attack in Tel Aviv.
The Palestinian death toll in the Jenin operation that began on Monday and stretched into Tuesday, the biggest that Israel has launched in the area in many years, rose to 12, Palestinian health officials said. Four of the dead were under 18 years old, and at least five were claimed by Palestinian resistance groups as fighters. At least 120 people were injured, including 20 seriously, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
A spokesman for the Zionist military also said on Twitter on Tuesday evening that a soldier had been killed “by gunfire” during the military raid.
The military aggression sent people fleeing, with as many as 3,000 of the camp’s roughly 17,000 residents seeking shelter in schools and other public buildings, or with families elsewhere.
Palestinian resistance fighters paraded in Jenin on Wednesday and angry crowds confronted senior Palestinian Authority officials, accusing them of weakness.
Hours before the funeral procession, crowds of Palestinians gathered outside the Palestinian Authority’s headquarters in Jenin to protest.
Some pelted the building with stones to denounce the PA’s inaction during the violent raid on Jenin.
The two-day aggression left a trail of wrecked streets and burned-out cars and sparked fury across the Arab world.
“We stayed inside the house, but then they cut off the electricity then the water,” said Muhammad Mansour, a resident of the camp where armored bulldozers tore up streets to expose roadside bombs, cutting power cables and water pipes.
“We ended up running out of bread and supplies ... I’ve never been through such days.”
At a funeral for 10 of the martyrs, thousands of mourners confronted three senior Palestinian Authority leaders, chanting “Get out! Get out!” They forced them to leave under protection of guards who used tear gas to push back the crowds.
Following the retreat of the Zionist force on Tuesday evening, leaders of Islamic Jihad and other
armed factions hailed victory, and the mood among residents returning home to the camp appeared triumphant.
“They did not get what they wanted, thank God. The youths are fine, the families are fine, and the camp is fine,” Mutasem Estatia, a father of six, said after what he described as two nights being kept away, one of them in Israeli detention.
“There are 12 martyrs and we are proud of them, but we expected more damage.”
Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Tuesday the Jenin aggression was unlikely to be a “one-off” and said it would be “the beginning of regular incursions and continuous control of the territory”.
In turn, the spokesman for the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, said “every alley and street will soon turn into clashes and fighting fields.”
The scale of the Israeli aggression, one of the biggest in 20 years, pointed to the growing strength of the resistance groups in Jenin, where the Zionist regime estimates almost half the population is affiliated to Islamic Jihad or Hamas.
Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh congratulated the Palestinians on inflicting a “humiliating defeat” on Israel.
“We say this to the Zionist enemy that their days when it would perpetrate crimes against the Palestinian nation without paying the price are over,” he said.
The resistance operation featured an “integrated response” on the part of Palestinian fighters from various branches, striking “fear and terror” inside the heart of the Israeli military, Haniyeh noted.
He said the incidents showed Palestinians from various places and societal strata view resistance as their “strategic option” against the enemy’s atrocities.
Islamic Jihad also felicitated Palestinians on the occasion of the “great victory.”
“Through their unity and the support they provided for the Palestinian fighters, the Palestinian people proved that they can defeat the enemy in whatever confrontation,” said its secretary general Ziad al-Nakhaleh.
Many parts of the Jenin camp have been reduced to rubble, with hospitals and places of worship also heavily damaged in the attacks. Eyewitnesses said the attacks resembled the aftermath of an earthquake.