The Israeli occupation army arrested approximately 2,300 Palestinians in the past year in the Jenin and Tulkarm governorates of the northern occupied West Bank, as part of a campaign to displace tens of thousands of residents and destroy the infrastructure and social fabric of refugee camps.
The Palestinian Prisoners Club stated in a press release on Tuesday, marking the one-year anniversary of the military operation in the northern West Bank camps, which began on January 21, 2015, that the Israeli army arrested 2,300 Palestinians from the Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams refugee camps.
The statement indicated that the arrests targeted various segments of the population and were part of a comprehensive campaign characterized by its indiscriminate nature and systematic escalation. This included converting Palestinian homes into military barracks and field interrogation centers, as well as carrying out brutal physical assaults, torture, and direct threats against individuals and their families.
The Club added that the occupation forces used civilians as hostages and human shields, and conducted looting, pillaging, and demolition operations, including the destruction of hundreds of homes in the camps. This resulted in the displacement of tens of thousands and the imposition of a forced reality on the residents. He pointed out that the arrests come within a broader context of mass arrest campaigns that have been ongoing since the Israeli war of extermination on the Gaza Strip in October 2013 (which lasted two years), and which affected more than 21,000 Palestinians in the West Bank, in addition to thousands from the Gaza Strip.
Children, the elderly and people with chronic diseases are the first victims of this epidemiological explosion, as emergency and intensive care departments are filled with critical cases, amid almost complete inability to provide the necessary treatment, in light of the collapse of the health system and the absence of basic vaccines.
The Director General of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, said that hospitals are witnessing a wide spread of a new mutant of the Corona virus, accompanied by severe respiratory symptoms, most notably severe chest inflammation, severe shortness of breath and a high temperature. Abu Salmiya explained that the tests confirm that there are cases of corona virus within this mutated, but it is more fierce than before, due to the weak immunity of the population resulting from famine and malnutrition.
He warned that the continuation of this reality portends a wider wave of deaths, unless medicines, medical supplies and vaccines are introduced urgently and without restrictions.
