Immediately after Israeli security forces completed their withdrawal from the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin that left 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier dead, in addition to damage to roads and buildings, Palestinians Celebrated victory while analysts see uncertainties and troubling signs about the decades–long Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the future of Israel and Palestine, and aformer Israeli official told the New York Times that the next raid could come anytime.
Last week, the Financial Times’ editorial board warned: “A renewed cycle of violence risks spiralling out of control in the occupied West Bank. In fact, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel might be required to launch further counterterrorism operations in Jenin in the future after his forces withdrew from the city … The bloodshed comes against the backdrop of the government’s moves to accelerate expansion of Israeli settlements in the territory which are inflaming tensions and emboldening settlers. … Some fear the West Bank is now as close as it has ever been to a third intifada, or Palestinian uprising. … Israeli forces have been conducting near-daily raids on Palestinian targets following a spate of attacks by Palestinians on Israelis last spring.”
So, while the attack on Jenin represents a radical departure, it is also part of the way the Israeli occupation works. At any point, the next campaign could begin, in Jenin or in another city.
The Israeli attack represents a major escalation and the most intensive campaign in the West Bank since perhaps 2002, when Israeli forces destroyed parts of Jenin. But it also builds on an exceedingly violent year in Jenin and across the occupied West Bank, including ongoing Israeli raids on Palestinian homes there to crack down on grassroots resistance groups that use violence against the Israeli military. In May 2022, prominent Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead covering the Israeli raids of Palestinian homes in Jenin.
Though Israeli forces appear to have ended the campaign on Jenin, experts told me that there are risks of this continuing and such large-scale attacks on West Bank cities becoming the new reality. This year so far has seen a tremendous number of Palestinian deaths in the West Bank, more than 130 Palestinians killed so far this year, and is on track to overwhelmingly surpass 2022, which itself had set a tragic milestone, more than anytime in the past 15 years, of 146 Palestinians killed in the West Bank.
The raid on Jenin is a culmination of weeks of military strikes that have seen Israel deploy ever more heavy weaponry in the occupied West Bank. The attack represents a major escalation and the most intensive campaign in the West Bank since perhaps 2002, when Israeli forces destroyed parts of Jenin. But it also builds on an exceedingly violent year in Jenin and across the occupied West Bank, including ongoing Israeli raids on Palestinian homes there to crack down on grassroots resistance groups that use violence against the Israeli military. In May 2022, prominent Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead covering the Israeli raids of Palestinian homes in Jenin.
Though Israeli forces appear to have ended the campaign on Jenin, experts told me that there are risks of this continuing and such large-scale attacks on West Bank cities becoming the new reality. This year so far has seen a tremendous number of Palestinian deaths in the West Bank, more than 130 Palestinians killed so far this year, and is on track to overwhelmingly surpass 2022, which itself had set a tragic milestone, more than anytime in the past 15 years, of 146 Palestinians killed in the West Bank.
Many factors have contributed to this tense and dangerous moment. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank has resulted in daily injustice for Palestinians since 1967, and that has been supercharged by the current extreme-right Israeli government that is emboldening settler violence, the annexation of Palestinian land, and settlement expansion. That encroachment has led to both new armed Palestinian militant groups and individual acts of violence — like last week when an Israeli military raid in Jenin killed seven Palestinians, seemingly leading to a retaliatory Palestinian shooting of four Israeli settlers, which then led to more settler violence against Palestinians, all within three days. For their part, young Palestinians are disenfranchised and see a Palestine Liberation Organization that offers no hope for political rights.
Although the shape and scale of this attack was new, journalist Amjad Iraqi, writing in +972 Magazine, described the Israeli operation on Jenin as the Gazafication of the West Bank.
Israel has blockaded the occupied territory of Gaza for years and aggressively bombed Palestinians there as part of its counterterrorism campaigns in recent years. Hamas, which Israel and the US consider a terrorist group, in effect runs the government there. Palestinian militants have launched rockets into Israeli territory, and in response, Israel conducts operations against militants there that it calls “mowing the grass.” But that violent process has largely stayed in the confines of Gaza.
With over 600,000 Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, the territory has not experienced such an intensive bombardment. But now that dynamic appears to have changed.
The strict Israeli military occupation of the West Bank has largely rooted out the kind of organized resistance factions that have threatened Israeli national security interests. But a new generation of Palestinians has begun to resort to violence in response to the Israeli military, settler violence, and against Israelis in other situations.
The Israeli government described its military activity in Jenin as self-defense. “We’re not trying to hold the ground. We’re acting against specific targets,” said Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht.
These grassroots military groups have attacked Israeli soldiers, but analysts have questioned the extent of the threat that disparate Palestinian groups represent beyond occasional, uncoordinated attacks. “Their offensive operations have been confined to occasional, small-scale attacks on Israeli military outposts, checkpoints and settlers,” according to the International Crisis Group’s field reporting. “As things stand today, this new generation of armed groups does not yet seem to pose a major security threat. Interviews with residents, Fatah members and PA officials in Nablus suggest that the groups are small, disjointed and scattered, without clear leadership.”
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, an analyst with the Palestinian research network Al-Shabaka, emphasizes the power asymmetry between the Israeli military and Palestinian military groups. “In Jenin refugee camp, they’re defending themselves from an Israeli invasion of the camp. They’re engaging in armed confrontations with soldiers who are part of one of the most advanced and most well-trained militaries on this planet, that has access to some of the best technology out there,” he told me.
Experts have been warning of a third intifada, or uprising, among Palestinians given their intense disenfranchisement at a time when the Israeli government appears to be moving forward with normalization deals with Arab states and leaving Palestinians behind. Israel might have conducted this week’s raid to weaken organized resistance groups, but experts said it might only further inflame resistance.
Ayman Yousef, a political scientist at Arab American University in Jenin, says the attacks have brought about “a huge solidarity among Palestinians.” He worries that this unification among Palestinians will cause Israel to view this operation as a failure, which could lead to further escalatory and retaliatory measures from Israel, including the possibility of targeted assassinations. “There is a backlash of this Israeli operation, a kind of reverse result, in that people are more prepared to fight till the last drop, as they say,” he told me.
Jenin looms large in Palestinian life and has been an epicenter of Palestinian resistance. In 1953, the refugee camp was established, and nearly 50 years later during the second intifada, Israeli forces used jets and bulldozers to destroy parts of the camp. “The young people in the camp are still refugees today; their grandparents, or great-grandparents, had been expelled from Haifa by what became the Israeli army,” Abdel Razak explained. “We’re looking at a generation that’s only known the violence of the second intifada and its aftermath.”
“You’re talking about a camp and city with neighborhoods that are completely destroyed, still besieged, still unfree, and now with damaged infrastructure, being separated and confined, like Israel did with Gaza,” Abdel Razak added. “If we are not addressing the root causes of apartheid and simply now go back to the situation of a few days ago, when is the next time?”
As Abdel Razak told me, “Even with such an Israeli government that is so blunt, and so clear of their intentions, international impunity is as strong as ever.”
Jenin refugee camp on the western edge of the town of Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank, has often experienced violence between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants. But the latest raid by Israeli forces, which involved deploying helicopter gunships, hundreds of troops and armed drones, is viewed as the biggest incursion in the West Bank since 2005 when a Palestinian uprising known as the second intifada ended.
Maha Nassar explains that, as a scholar of Palestinian history, she sees this recent episode as the latest chapter in a much longer history of Palestinian displacement and defiance of Israeli occupation. Understanding this history helps explain why the Jenin camp in particular has become a centre of Palestinian militant resistance.
On day one of the raid, the Biden administration has supported what it referred to as an Israeli policy of “self defense,” further empowering the Israeli government at a time when Israelis had grown divided over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhaul. Moreover Biden plays Netanyahu’s lapdog and supported the Israeli invasion of Jenin wholeheartedly. And The message from the Western countries to Israel was no different.
Zaha Hassan, a human rights lawyer and fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
believes the muted US response will lead to “the continued hemorrhaging of [US] credibility when speaking about human rights and respect for international norms”.
Yousef Munayyer comments on the recent Israeli military assault on Jenin refugee camp, stating that it promises to be the start of a new phase of Palestinian resistance to occupation and different battlefield dynamics. Munayyer argues that as Israel maintains its control from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, its military activities are the natural next step of its deepening apartheid system, no matter the cost to the Palestinians.
The resurgent resistance in Jenin shows that a narrow refugee camp with limited capabilities can stand against an entire IDF army and preserve its capacity to resist. Jenin Refugee Camp Ushers a New Stage of Resistance Against Israeli Apartheid.