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Starting Monday morning, the Israeli army launched a massive and violent military operation in Jenin, in the West Bank, and particularly in the refugee camp adjacent to the city. The army has carried out drone strikes for the first time since 2006, has sent about 2,000 soldiers to the camp and is using armored personnel carriers and bulldozers to clear roads and destroy settlements and buildings: at least 10 Palestinians have been killed and there are dozens wounded.
There are various reasons why Jenin has become the object of this Israeli operation, which is the largest military operation in the West Bank in the last 20 years: in the city – but above all in the refugee camp – there are some Palestinian armed groups, and from the city launched some of the worst attacks against Israelis in recent months. And recently, the level of violence has risen sharply: since the beginning of 2023, at least 133 Palestinians and 24 Israelis have been killed in clashes, which may have prompted the government of Israel to launch a massive military operation to appease a increasingly concerned public opinion. In recent months, however, similar operations have ended up increasing the level of violence between Israelis and Palestinians rather than reducing it.
Jenin is a major city in the West Bank, i.e. the territory that Israel has occupied since 1967 and which the Palestinians claim as their own. It has 39,000 inhabitants, 14,000 of whom live in the refugee camp, an area effectively incorporated into the city and about half a square kilometer large, populated with a very high density. Although defined as a refugee camp, Jenin is in fact a neighborhood, albeit an extremely poor one: it has existed since 1953 and is inhabited by descendants of Palestinians who were forced to leave their lands after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. There are dozens of similar camps in the region: 19 in the West Bank alone, plus others in Jordan and Lebanon.
In the Jenin refugee camp there have been no more tents for decades now, but buildings and houses, although they are often rather poor and makeshift constructions.
In the Jenin refugee camp there are numerous radical Palestinian armed groups, such as Islamic Jihad, Hamas (the group that controls the Gaza Strip) and the armed branch of Fatah, i.e. the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. These groups often work together with a local armed group, the Jenin Brigades (or Jenin Battalion), which was born a couple of years ago.
For just over a year, Jenin has become the center of a sharp increase in violence and clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, which began in 2022 and which has caused tens or hundreds of deaths between both sides. According to Israeli army data, 50 firearm attacks against Israelis have been launched from Jenin in the last two years and 19 people suspected of carrying out attacks have found refuge in the city’s refugee camp.
In March 2022, the Israeli army launched Operation Breakwater, which was tasked with countering terrorist activities in Jenin and the nearby city of Nablus, and involved frequent military raids (in some periods almost every night) in the refugee camp of Jenin, with the intent of apprehending people suspected of carrying out attacks or targeting what Israeli intelligence believed were terrorist groups.
Frequent and often violent Israeli raids have resulted in an increase in the level of violence by Palestinian armed groups in response. In the last year the clashes and attacks have become increasingly frequent. In one of these clashes, right in the Jenin refugee camp, the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in May 2022.
The progressive and ever greater fragmentation of Palestinian armed groups has also contributed to the violence: if until a few years ago the armed initiatives of the Palestinians depended mainly on Hamas and possibly on the Palestinian Authority, which controlled in a more or less lax manner various armed groups, in recent years, dozens of groups of fighters have sprung up which are not accountable to any higher authority, and which often act out of control and contribute to a sharp increase in violence.
Similar phenomena are taking place on the Israeli side, where the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu is leaving much room for maneuver to extremist and violent Israeli groups. For example, attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian settlements have recently multiplied.
In recent weeks the violence has further spread. Last month some Israeli army vehicles that had raided the Jenin refugee camp were blocked due to particularly strong resistance from local militiamen, who also used explosive weapons. The army was forced to send helicopter gunships to try to free the convoy of soldiers and six Palestinians died.
Last week, for the first time, a rocket was fired at Israel from Jenin. Israelis are used to rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, but that the rockets were fired from the West Bank is a pretty big development.
The increase in violence has probably created strong pressure both on Netanyahu’s government and above all on the army commands, which have been criticized by some particularly extremist government officials because they are not doing enough to ensure the safety of the population.
However, it is still not entirely clear why the Israeli operation has been launched now, nor what are the army’s long-term goals. The immediate objective is officially to hit the Palestinian groups that have positions and weapons in the camp, but according to numerous testimonies the military operations are much more indiscriminate, and the clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militiamen present in the camp have been compared to war scenes .
Jenin was the focus of another rather similar operation by the Israeli army over twenty years ago: in April 2002 the army also entered the Jenin refugee camp to counter local armed groups and ended up occupying the city for ten days. That of 2002 is still known as the “battle of Jenin” and was one of the most violent episodes of the so-called Second Intifada (a major armed uprising by Palestinians against the state of Israel between 2000 and 2005): 52 Palestinians, including many civilians, and 23 Israeli soldiers were killed.