A European envoy criticized Israel today for the “proportionality” of the force it uses, as international envoys visited Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank after this week’s violent raid.
His remarks reflected UN chief Antonio Guterres who on Thursday told reporters “there was an excessive force used by Israeli forces” in its 48-hour operation, the largest Israel has conducted in the Palestinian territory for years.
It involved air strikes and armored bulldozers destroying streets. Jenin is a hub for various armed Palestinian groups, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the refugee camp a “terrorist nest”.
European Union representative to the Palestinian territories Sven Kuehn von Burgdorff made his comments as he led a delegation of UN officials and diplomats from 25 countries to the camp in the northern West Bank.
Jenin camp, one of the most impoverished and overcrowded refugee camps in the West Bank, was the target of a massive Israeli military raid this week, the largest of its kind since the second Palestinian intifada in the early 2000s.
The raid, which Israel claimed was aimed at militants, left behind a trail of destruction in the camp, where about 18,000 people live in an area of 0.43 square kilometers. According to the UN, more than 100 houses were damaged, eight kilometers of water pipes and three kilometers of sewage pipes were ruined, and several schools were also affected.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) today appealed for urgent funding to help restore the camp’s infrastructure and provide support to the children who have been traumatized by the violence.
“We need cash … our appeal is desperately underfunded,” said Leni Stenseth, deputy commissioner-general of UNRWA. She urged donors to announce their support for the reconstruction efforts in Jenin camp as soon as possible. Some countries have already pledged to help. Algeria announced US$30 million on Thursday to “help rebuild the Palestinian city of Jenin after the barbaric and criminal attack” by Israel, while the United Arab Emirates, which established diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020, said Wednesday it “will provide $15 million”.
“We are concerned about the use of weaponry and weapons systems which question the proportionality of the military during the operation,” Kuehn von Burgsdorff said of the operation in which 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed.
“This cycle of violence has to stop, it cannot go on. If there is no political solution to the conflict, we are going to stand here in a week’s time, in a month’s time, in a year’s time, with nothing changed,” he added.
As the delegation walked through the camp, residents looked out of holes left in the walls by Israeli rockets, and local authorities tested a new camp-wide alarm system to warn of future raids.