• An armored car arrived at the site shortly after, unloading soldiers to clear the cemetery of its mourners, who walked away solemnly without protest

JENIN: Abeer Ghazzawi had little time to visit her two sons’ graves for Eid Al-Adha before Israeli soldiers cleared the cemetery near the refugee camp in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.

The Israeli army has conducted a months-long operation in the camp, which has forced Ghazzawi, along with thousands of other residents, from her home.

For Ghazzawi, the few precious minutes she spent at her sons’ graves still felt like a small victory.

“On the last Eid — Eid Al-Fitr, celebrating the end of Ramadan in March — they raided us. They even shot at us. But this Eid, there was no shooting, just that they kicked us out of the cemetery twice,” said the 48-year-old.

“We were able to visit our land, clean up around the graves, and pour rosewater and cologne on them,” she added.

As part of the Eid celebrations, families traditionally visit the graves of their loved ones.

In the Jenin camp cemetery, women and men had brought flowers for their deceased relatives, and many sat on the side of their loved ones’ graves as they remembered the dead, clearing away weeds and dust.

An armored car arrived at the site shortly after, unloading soldiers to clear the cemetery of its mourners, who walked away solemnly without protest.

Ghazzawi’s two sons, Mohammed and Basel, were killed in January 2024 in a Jenin hospital by undercover Israeli troops.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group claimed the two brothers as its fighters after their deaths.

Like Ghazzawi, many in Jenin mourned sons killed during one of the numerous Israeli operations that have targeted the city, a known bastion of Palestinian armed groups fighting Israel.

In the current months-long military operation in the north of the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, Israeli forces looking for militants have cleared three refugee camps and deployed tanks in Jenin.

Mohammed Abu Hjab, 51, went to the cemetery on the other side of the city to visit the grave of his son, killed in January by an Israeli strike that also killed five other people.

“There is no Eid. I lost my son — how can it be Eid for me?” he asked as he stood by the six small gravestones of the dead young men.

AFP