Speaking from Jerusalem following a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken reiterated calls for a two-state solution and promoting the normalization of relations with Israel across the Middle East. Palestinians say the visit shows the United States remains biased towards Israel.

“When the U.S. draws an equivalence between the butcher and the butchered, then it is necessarily on the side of the butcher,” Ubai Aboudi, Executive Director at Bisan Center for Research and Development, tells Mondoweiss.

Omar al-Saadi, one of the founders of the armed resistance group, the Jenin Brigade, succumbed to wounds sustained during Israel’s military onslaught on Jenin refugee camp, bringing the massacre’s death toll to 10.

On Thursday, Israeli forces invaded Jenin refugee camp and killed nine Palestinians in what residents of the camp called “a massacre.” On Friday, Palestinians responded with protest and resistance that culminated in armed resistance operations being carried out across the West Bank, including in the Israeli settlement of Neve Yaakov in occupied East Jerusalem, where at least seven Israelis were killed.

Israeli forces launched a brutal assault on Jenin refugee camp that killed 9 Palestinians and a tenth later in the day during clashes in al-Ram, making it the deadliest day of 2023, and one of the single deadliest raids in the West Bank in years.

In Jenin refugee camp, Israeli forces killed resistance fighter Adham Jabareen. When eyewitness Jawad Bawaqneh tried to save him, he was also shot and killed by Israeli forces.

On Monday, January 16, Ahmad Kahla, 41, was killed in cold blood by Israeli soldiers at a temporary military checkpoint in the West Bank, just feet from his 20-year-old son. The anguish felt by Kahla’s family stems not only from the sorrow of loss, but from the fact that Ahmad’s killer would be standing at the same checkpoint the next day.

Israel assassinated two Palestinian resistance fighters in Jenin today, and a third martyr succumbed to wounds sustained two weeks ago, bringing the total number of Palestinian martyrs in 2023 to 12.

In less than two days, Israeli forces killed five Palestinians in Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, and Jenin.

Ahmad Amer Abu Juneid, 21, was killed with a bullet to the head in the Balata Refugee Camp in Nablus; Sanad Samamra, 19, was killed in Hebron after an alleged stabbing attempt; Samir Ouni Aslan, 41, was killed with a bullet to the chest in the Qalandia refugee camp; and Habib Mohammad Abdelrahman Kamil, 25, and Abdelhadi Fakhri Nazzal, 18, were killed in Qabatiya, Jenin.

There is an ebb and flow between hearing the stories, being on the ground reporting on the developments of war, and being a part of this reality at the same time. No certainty of what can be found, no real safety, and a looming feeling of endlessness. 

On January 9, the Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, banned the display of the Palestinian flag in all public spaces. 

This order is one in a recent string of escalating attacks on Palestinians by the newly formed ultra-rightwing Israeli government.

“It’s erasure and a form of criminalizing every act of Palestinian resistance and identity,” Linda Tabar, a Palestinian professor of international relations at the University of Sussex told Mondoweiss. “It’s a form of trying to negate Palestinian life,” Tabar said, “they’re suffocating us.”