What does Israel have against the Jenin refugee camp? | the news

In the largest Israeli assault on the occupied West Bank since the second intifada, the city of Jenin and its nearby refugee camps once again found themselves at the center of an Israeli military assault.

Israeli occupation forces are besieging the city of Jenin, home to an estimated 50,000 people, as part of a wider offensive that has witnessed attacks on Jenin, Nablus, Tubas and Tulkarm and has so far killed 10 Palestinians and injured many others. Access to the hospital was blocked by dirt barriers, while occupation forces surrounded other medical facilities.

Jenin has been the focus of Israeli military aggression many times before, which in its long history of military attacks – in the words of Zaid al-Shuaibi, a Palestinian human rights activist on the island’s West Bank – “on a small scale like Gaza you can’t see the roads because they’re destroyed.” Infrastructure: Sewerage systems, electricity, water pipes and communication networks have been damaged.”

Frequent break ins

From the current attacks to the violence of the Second Intifada between 2000 and 2005, Jenin was rarely far from the worst of the storms sweeping the West Bank.

About 14,000 people are believed to live in Jenin’s refugee camp, almost all of them descendants of Palestinians who were dispossessed of their land and homes when the Israeli entity was established in 1948. The condition of the camp is desperate. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Jenin suffers from the highest rates of unemployment and poverty among the ten camps spread across the occupied West Bank.

In January last year, 10 Palestinians were martyred during an Israeli attack on the Jenin camp, and during its repeated attacks, Israeli forces destroyed entire neighborhoods claiming shelter for fighters. Activists told Al Jazeera that the operation is punishing civilians by killing, arresting or displacing them.

In April 2002, Israel launched a major attack on the Jenin camp, during which Israeli infantry, commandos and attack helicopters clashed across the civilian camp with militants armed with small arms and homemade booby traps, a response later condemned by human rights groups. “Disproportionate.”

That year, 52 Palestinians were martyred, half of them civilians, according to a UN report issued later that year, 23 Israeli soldiers were killed.

Resistance and “Dying Proudly”

There are several armed groups in Jenin, including the Islamic Jihad Movement and Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which govern the Gaza Strip, and the military wing of the Palestinian Liberation Movement (Fatah), led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and fighters operating under the umbrella of the Jenin Brigade in the camp.

Tahani Mustafa, an expert on Israel and Palestine at the International Crisis Group, said in a statement to Al Jazeera that the groups in Jenin began as a community defense mechanism, so the more violent Israeli attacks grew and they became more systematic. According to him, these groups have become bigger.

He said young people who join the group are responding to the Israeli occupation and are disillusioned with the Palestinian Authority, which administers the occupied West Bank, and which many Palestinians consider Israel’s aid tool.

Palestinian activist al-Shuaibi told Al Jazeera that the opportunity to “die with pride” has led to more young people joining the ranks of resistance, adding that the families of the martyrs – even if they feel pain – understand why their brothers, sons or other family members do this. involved, even if they felt pain “They weren’t members of the resistance, they were targets.”

Jenin from an Israeli perspective

Jenin’s position in the Israeli popular imagination as a center of resistance is often reflected in the country’s parliament, the Knesset. In December 2023, after a pre-dawn military operation in Jenin, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gavir defended Israeli soldiers who used loudspeakers in a mosque to broadcast Jewish religious songs to nearby residents.

In June of the same year, after further incursions into the area, the far-right Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, called for a full military deployment to the city, including tanks and air force, after 7 Israeli soldiers were wounded during the fighting. . Israeli forces killed 4 Palestinians in that operation.

According to Uri Goldberg, a political analyst in Tel Aviv, the Israeli public is used to seeing itself as a victim and therefore fails to imagine Jenin as a refugee camp.

He said, “Humanitarian problems and the plight of Palestinians are not really a concern of Israelis. You hear expressions like panic nests and other inhumane expressions about Jenin more than anywhere else.”

Partly as a result, Goldberg added, the Israeli military presence around the refugee camps of Jenin and Tulkarm has grown at a higher rate than elsewhere since the start of the Gaza war.

“It’s part of the same cycle,” he said, noting how the armed resistance in Jenin led to the default response among Israeli lawmakers and the public, “Oh, Jenin. It’s bad. We have to do something,” before calling for the military. Any complaints are acted upon and detailed.