NABLUS, West Bank, Dec 19: After six months of Israeli army reoccupation, curfews and deadly clashes, Palestinians can hardly hide their despair as their plight drags on in locked-down cities, with the worst being that there is no end in sight.

June 18 marked a turning point for more than two million Palestinians who live on the West Bank when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged “a change in the way Israeli responds to murderous acts of terror. Israel will respond to acts of terror by capturing PA territories.”

“These areas will be held by Israel as long as terror continues. Additional acts of terror will lead to the taking of additional areas,” he said in the aftermath of one of the deadliest Palestinian suicide bombings in Jerusalem.

On June 19, following yet another Palestinian suicide attack, Israeli armour rumbled into the northern West Bank towns of Jenin, Qalqilya and Nablus and progressively took over Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron in a bid to dismantle militant cells.

Commenting on the Israeli presence in Nablus, its governor said: “The Israeli army is trying with its current offensive on the city, which is now nearing six months, to coerce civilians into accepting life under occupation.”

“But when the army realizes it has failed to strangle us and turn our lives into hell, it will want to make us kneel down by increasing the pressure,” said Mahmud al-Aalul.

“But this too will fail and the proof is that street clashes in the city continue, with even children leaving their homes to hurl stones at Israeli tanks to express their refusal of the occupation,” he said.

He said the curfew imposed on Nablus was the longest in the city’s long history with “110 days of curfew in a row and only 70 hours during which it was lifted.”

He said Israel had taken over Nablus and attacked its infrastructure because it is the “northern West Bank’s political and economic nerve center,” adding that its inhabitants were nonetheless defying the curfew, “leaving their homes at great risk to go work.”

Israel had temporarily taken over the city in the spring during its massive military offensive on the West Bank dubbed “Operation Defensive Shield.”

It had left the battered city on May 10, after a month and a half, to reinvade it on June 19 as part of “Operation Determined Path.”

Qaddura Mussa, who works in Yasser Arafat’s local Jenin office, said his northern West Bank town had been “shaken by the six months of reoccupation.”

He said “70 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army in Jenin and its refugee camp, among them 13 children, and 580 injured.”

He estimated the losses incurred by Jenin town and refugee camp as a result of the invasion at 15 million dollars.

Mussa said economic activity had been brought to a halt and hundreds of “commercial shops and industrial workshops destroyed causing eight million dollars in losses.”

Jenin’s refugee camp was the scene of the fiercest clashes and destruction during Operation Defensive Shield last spring, with 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers killed.—AFP