West Bank 'The Israelis are coming almost every day. They want revenge'

In their uncle's house, next door to the ruins of their demolished home, two young boys from Aqabat Jaber refugee camp in the occupied West Bank were still asleep at mid morning.

- Bethan McKernan 

A few nights ago, their own bedroom was blown up during an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) operation in the camp on the outskirts of Jericho: it was targeted because the boys' father, Maher Shalon, had been arrested on suspicion of killing an Israeli settler.

After the family home was destroyed, the boys' mother took their older brother to Bethlehem for medical treatment. The younger children are now being cared for by their uncle, Mansour, and their paternal grandmother, Hamda.

According to them, the boys have not gone outside since. "The Israelis are coming almost every day since 7 October," said Mansour, 56. "They are not even making arrests any more, I think, they come to kill instead now.

They want revenge." Aqabat Jaber is one of the 19 camps still scattered across the West Bank, set up in the aftermath of the creation of Israel in 1948, to house people fleeing what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe. Today, the camps are still slum-like mazes of narrow streets with few services, plagued by poverty and crime. They are also centres of armed resistance to the Israeli occupation.

Friday's raid on Aqabat Jaber was just one of several major Israeli operations in West Bank refugee camps and cities over the past two weeks - a signal that Israel also considers the territory fair game in its new war with Hamas in Gaza.