05 September 2024

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) vehemently condemns the ongoing Israeli military assault in the northern West Bank for the ninth consecutive day carrying out killings, destruction, forced displacement, and other grave violations. The latest occurred this morning when a 17-year-old boy was executed after being shot, and his body was brutally mutilated in the Al-Far’a refugee camp in Tubas.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, since the beginning of the Israeli assault on 28 August 2023, 39 Palestinians have been killed, including 8 children and 2 elderlies, and 145 others have been injured. The death toll is expected to rise amid the Israeli relentless attacks backed by the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) highly permissive rules of engagement and alarming use of drone strikes. all of these actions are committed in the absence of international accountability and unabated silence on the genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip ongoing for 11 months.

In Tubas, according to eyewitnesses and PCHR’s field documentation of killing and mutilating the boy’s body, at approximately 00:45 on Thursday, 05 September 2024, IOF, accompanied by bulldozers and drones, move into Al-Far’a refugee camp, south of Tubas. Several residents then gathered and threw stones at the Israeli vehicles while the soldiers opened fire on them. An hour later, soldiers shot a boy in the western neighborhood of the camp, who appeared to be taking out something from his pocket. They shot him in the leg and then a soldier ordered him to take off his shirt and he obeyed. And when the soldier ordered him take off his pants, the boy tried but couldn’t. Immediately, the soldiers fired two bullets that hit his neck and chest, causing him to collapse. He was left to bleed for approximately an hour and a half, as the soldiers denied medics from reaching him to provide aid or even retrieve his body. At around 2:30, IOF brought in a bulldozer and began desecrating the boy’s body, tearing open his abdomen and exposing his internal organs before dragging and throwing him on al-Far’a hill along Nablus-Tubas Road and opposite al-Far’a Valley. After IOF’s withdrawal at 06:45, the boy’s body, disfigured and unrecognizable, was retrieved and transported to the Tubas Turkish Public Hospital. The boy was later identified as Majed Fida Abu Zina (17), a resident of the Camp.

Moreover, in an extrajudicial execution through a drone strike, IOF killed five Palestinians, and wounded a sixth, suspectedly being affiliated with Palestinian armed groups, while they were in a carwash in Tubas.

This is the second military operation carried out by IOF in Al-Far’a camp since they launched a widescale military aggression across Jenin, Tulkarm, Tubas all their refugee camps on 28 August 2023. In the earlier operation, IOF killed four Palestinian civilians in Tubas, including two children, and injured nine others. They also bulldozed the camp’s streets and detonated one of its mosques, as death toll now stands at ten, including three children.

In Jenin, the Israeli military operation in the city and its refugee camp continues for the ninth consecutive day. So far, the assaults have claimed the lives of 19 Palestinians, including five children and two elderlies: one died shortly after being arrested amid doubts that he was tortured. During this ongoing operation, IOF has bulldozed infrastructure, including water, telephone, and power lines, and partially destroyed shops and homes. They have also detonated 10 houses as part of a collective punishment policy, while forcibly displacing residents from their homes, turning some of them into military outposts.

In Tulkarm, IOF have carried out several largescale incursions into the city and Tulkarm and Nur Shams refugee camps, killing seven Palestinians, including two civilians and a child. Additionally, IOF inflicted extensive damage to Tulkarm’s infrastructure and refugee camps, destroying water, telephone, and electricity lines, partially demolishing homes, and detonating a house where members of the Palestinian armed groups had barricaded themselves, as many residents were forcibly displaced.

During their assault, IOF deployed several military vehicles around Jenin Hospital, Ibn Sina Hospital and Al-Israa and Thabet Thabet Hospitals in Tulkarm. They intercepted ambulances, checked the ID cards of paramedics and medical personnel, and the ID cards of the injured, sick, or dead bodies being transported, thereby obstructing the medical personnel’s work and denying Palestinians access to life-saving medical care.

PCHR warns of the heinous crimes and blatant violations committed by IOF in the West Bank, particularly forced displacement of civilians, land expropriation, and settlement expansion- all part of Israel’s declared policies to annex the West Bank. PCHR condemns these actions as a calculated form of genocide, with a broader pattern of genocidal acts in the Gaza Strip.

PCHR urges the international community to intervene immediately and take prompt countermeasures to protect the Palestinian civilians and end all forms of genocide and oppression against Palestinians. PCHR warns that the continued inaction and failure by the international community, Third States, and the UN bodies to stop Israel’s systematic violations of international law only fuel IOF to escalate its violence and entrench its settler-colonial project aimed at obliterating the existence of Palestinians.

PCHR calls on the international community and UN bodies to fulfill their legal and moral responsibilities and take decisive action to stop IOF crimes and its settlers against Palestinians, ensuring their protection.