Simply two days after a shaky ceasefire took maintain within the Gaza Strip, Israel on Jan. 21, 2025, launched a large-scale incursion of the Jenin refugee camp within the West Financial institution.
Troopers raided tons of of houses within the West Financial institution metropolis in what the Israeli navy referred to as a “counterterrorism” operation, aiming to reassert management there. Many analysts have instructed the raid is an try by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to appease far-right members of his coalition who oppose the ceasefire deal.
Regardless of the motive, the offensive has been devastating for lots of the camp’s residents. The Israeli navy has destroyed infrastructure, closed entrances to native hospitals and forcibly displaced about 2,000 households, based on studies on the raids. Because it was, life for inhabitants of the densely populated camp – dwelling to some 24,000 Palestinian refugees – was exhausting. The West Financial institution director of UNRWA, the U.N. company overseeing refugees, just lately described camp situations as “nearly uninhabitable.”
The main focus of the newest Israeli operation shouldn’t be new. The Jenin refugee camp, on the western fringe of the city of Jenin within the north of the occupied West Financial institution, has usually skilled violence between Israeli troopers and Palestinian militants.
That violence has escalated for the reason that Oct. 7, 2023, assaults, when Hamas gunmen led an incursion into Israel during which round 1,200 folks had been killed. The camp has confronted repeated large-scale navy operations by Israeli forces, together with drone strikes, floor raids, and airstrikes which have brought about widespread destruction. In the meantime, Israeli settlers have torched Palestinian vehicles and properties, with 64 such assaults within the Jenin space alone since Oct. 7, 2023. Final December, the Palestinian Authority, which coordinates with Israel to supervise safety in elements of the West Financial institution, additionally attacked native militants.
These occasions have deepened political tensions and worsened the financial and humanitarian crises within the West Financial institution. Based on the U.N., greater than 1 / 4 of the 800-plus Palestinians killed within the West Financial institution since Oct. 7 assault have come from the Jenin district; a number of Israeli civilians have additionally been killed within the West Financial institution throughout the identical interval.
As a scholar of Palestinian historical past, I see this latest episode as the newest chapter in a for much longer historical past of Palestinian displacement and defiance of Israeli occupation. Understanding this historical past helps clarify why the Jenin camp specifically has grow to be a goal of Israeli offensives and a middle of Palestinian militant resistance.
Camp situations
Jenin, an agricultural city that dates again to historical instances, has lengthy been a middle of Palestinian resistance. Through the 1948 Arab-Israeli Struggle, Arab fighters efficiently pushed again Israeli makes an attempt to seize the city.
On the finish of that battle, the city turned a refuge for a few of the tons of of hundreds of Palestinian refugees who fled or had been expelled from lands that turned a part of Israel. Jenin, together with the hilly inside of Palestine often called the West Financial institution, was annexed by Jordan.
The U.N. Aid and Works Company established the Jenin camp in 1953, simply west of the town. Since then, the company has supplied fundamental companies to the camp’s residents, together with meals, housing and schooling.
Camp situations have at all times been troublesome. Within the early years of the camp, refugees needed to stand in lengthy strains to obtain meals rations, and for many years their cramped houses lacked electrical energy or working water.
The Jenin camp quickly turned the poorest and most densely populated of the West Financial institution’s 19 refugee camps. And given its location close to the “Green Line” – the armistice line that serves as Israel’s de facto border – camp residents who had been expelled from northern Palestine might really see the houses and villages from which they had been expelled. However they had been prevented from returning to them.
The rise of militancy
Since 1967, Jenin, together with the remainder of the West Financial institution, has been occupied by the Israeli navy.
The Israeli occupation of Jenin compounded the difficulties of those refugees. As stateless Palestinians, they couldn’t return dwelling. However beneath Israeli occupation, they couldn’t dwell freely in Jenin, both. Human rights teams have lengthy documented what has been described as “systematic oppression,” which incorporates discriminatory land seizures, compelled evictions and journey restrictions.
Seeing no different path ahead, lots of the camp’s younger refugees turned to armed resistance.
Within the Eighties, teams such because the Black Panthers, which was affiliated with the Palestinian nationalist Fatah group, launched assaults on Israeli targets in an effort to finish the occupation and liberate their ancestral lands. All through the primary intifada – a Palestinian rebellion lasting from 1987 to 1993 – the Israeli military raided the Jenin camp many instances, looking for to arrest members of militant teams. Within the course of, Israeli forces additionally typically demolished members of the family’ houses and arrested relations. Such acts of obvious collective punishment bolstered the concept for a lot of Palestinians that the Israeli occupation might solely be ended by drive.
Members of the militant group Fatah in Jenin in 1991.
Esaias Baitel/Gamma-Rapho through Getty Photos)
The Oslo peace means of the Nineties – which consisted of a collection of conferences between Israeli authorities and Palestinian representatives – led some former militants to hope that the occupation may very well be ended by negotiations as an alternative. However Jenin’s camp residents remained marginalized within the West Financial institution and sealed off from Israel, seeing little enchancment of their lives, even after the switch of administrative powers from Israel to the Palestinian Authority in 1995.
Impartial tasks just like the The Freedom Theatre supplied some aid to the camp’s refugee kids, but it surely was not sufficient to beat the grinding poverty or the violence they confronted from Israeli troopers and settlers. By the point the second intifada broke out in 2000, lots of the camp’s youngsters joined militant teams. That included Freedom Theatre co-founder Zakaria Zubeidi, who joined the Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Just like the youth of the Eighties, they, too, concluded that solely armed resistance would deliver an finish to the occupation.
A cycle of violence?
In April 2002, the Israeli military invaded the Jenin camp, hoping to place an finish to such armed teams. There have been fierce clashes between Israeli troopers and younger Palestinian males within the camp, solidifying Jenin’s repute amongst Palestinians as “the capital of the resistance.”
The shortage of progress on peace talks since then, Israel’s settlement constructing on occupied land – deemed unlawful beneath worldwide regulation – and the inclusion of hard-line Israeli politicians within the authorities have exacerbated resentment within the camp. Polls present Palestinians more and more help armed resistance.
Looking for to guard the camp from Israeli incursions, in 2021 a bunch of native residents fashioned the Jenin Brigades. Whereas its founder was affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the group rapidly drew in militants from numerous political factions. Members acquired weapons, patrolled the streets and fought off Israeli navy incursions. By 2022, that they had declared elements of the camp to be “liberated” from the Israeli occupation.
Seemingly alarmed by the rise in militancy and the stockpiling of weapons within the camp, Israel dramatically stepped up its raids in 2022. It was throughout such a raid that Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by an Israeli soldier.
On July 3, 2023, the Israeli navy once more invaded Jenin, withdrawing after two days of heavy aerial bombardment and a floor invasion that killed 12 Palestinians and wounded over 100.
The newest offensive might properly surpass that demise toll, with at the least 10 killed within the first day of combating. However the militancy related to the camp was constructed on a long time of resistance and defiance to occupation that Israel has had little success in extinguishing. Equally this time, I imagine, such militancy inside the camp will solely enhance with the newest deaths and destruction.
This text is an up to date model of a narrative that was first revealed by The Dialog on July 5, 2023.