“A Painful Experience”… A Palestinian Girl Recounts How the Israelis Used Her as a Shield in Tulkarm

According to the British newspaper, The Guardian, when Israeli soldiers arrived at the modest house along an alley in the Nour Shams camp on Wednesday evening, they threw the women and four children out into the street, but kept Malak Shihab.

The girl told the newspaper that the soldiers put her in front of them when they tried to open any of the doors of her aunt’s house, where she was taking shelter, and they remained behind her ready to shoot whoever might be inside.

In front of one of the doors that did not open, the girl remembers knocking on it with her head in an attempt to find someone to save her from the soldiers’ grip.

“I don’t know why I banged my head on the door. I just wanted it to open,” she said, accompanied by her parents, as she recalled her experience on the first night of the Israeli attack.

Finally, the soldiers opened the door with a rifle butt, leaving a hole above the handle, but there was no one on the other side, as the soldiers continued on their way and left the child.

According to the newspaper, the Israeli army rejected what they considered “allegations” by the girl and her family.

“Such events are contrary to the IDF’s code of conduct, and according to a preliminary investigation this story is fabricated and did not happen,” an army spokesman told the Guardian.

Last April, the newspaper referred to a similar incident during a previous Israeli raid on the Nour Shams camp, and at the time the army also denied these “allegations.”

Nur Shams camp is located on the eastern edge of Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank, and is a major target for repeated Israeli incursions into the city.

The West Bank attack continues

• Hundreds of Israeli forces have been carrying out raids across the occupied West Bank since Wednesday, in one of the largest operations in the area in months.
• Israel says the operation aims to eliminate “militants”.
• The deployment of army and police units across the West Bank highlights the intense pressure facing Israeli forces fighting on multiple fronts, with little sign of a breakthrough in talks to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
• “We are fighting on all fronts against a brutal enemy that wants to kill us all,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, also referring to six Israeli hostages who were killed while being held in the Gaza Strip and whose bodies were recovered from a tunnel in Rafah on Sunday.
• As Netanyahu spoke, Israeli forces were still operating in Jenin, where Hamas and Islamic Jihad said their fighters were clashing with Israeli forces.
• The operation, which entered its fifth day, caused extensive damage to the infrastructure of the city of Jenin and the adjacent refugee camp, a densely populated area.
• Many homes and buildings were damaged, and Israeli armored bulldozers destroyed many streets in search of bombs.
• At least 24 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israeli operation, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad have said most of the dead were their members.
• The Palestinian Prisoners Club said that Israeli forces arrested 110 Palestinians in the West Bank during the past few days.
• Israeli forces and armed settlers have killed about 680 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, including fighters, stone-throwing youths and civilians.