Jenin, a turbulent history and a violent present

"Jenin," the name of the northern West Bank city has a lovely ring like a bell. Jenin is an ancient city with a turbulent history dating to the 14th century BCE and a violent present thanks to Israel's 57-year occupation.

Jenin city has a population of 50,000 and the Jenin refugee camp, which has merged into the city, has 14,000 inhabitants. While the Jenin enclave fell under the administration and security control of the Palestinian Authority in 1993, Israel has made a practice of violating prohibitions enshrined in the defunct Oslo Accords by dispatching its army into Jenin at will. The camp, the northernmost of 19 in the West Bank, has a high rate of unemployment and poverty which have fostered fierce resistance to the Israeli occupation. Israel’s most critical columnist Gideon Levy wrote yesterday in the liberal daily Haaretz, “Israel has exploited the war in Gaza to cause turmoil in the West Bank.”

During the Second Intifada (2000-2005) Jenin's suicide bombers struck Israeli cities and towns, prompting Israel to carry out devastating raids in the city and camp. The most famous event was the Battle of Jenin during then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's five-week Defensive Shield campaign, the largest Israeli offensive in the West Bank since the occupation. At that time Israeli troops swept into Ramallah where they besieged Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's compound, Tulkarem, Qalqilya, Bethlehem, Nablus, and Jenin.

During the Battle of Jenin, which took place between April 1st and 11th, Israeli commandos and helicopter gunships fought Palestinian defenders in the refugee camp, killing 52-54, half of whom were fighters, at the cost of 23 Israeli soldiers' lives.

After entering the camp Israeli troops burst into homes and broke openings in interior walls so they could move from place to place without being targeted on the streets by Palestinian snipers. Once the fighting ended, Israeli bulldozers levelled large areas in the camp before withdrawing on April 18th. As is the case today with Gaza, journalists were barred from the camp during Israel's operation but were grudgingly allowed to enter on April 19th-20th.

When I first tried to go to Jenin in a minibus with European municipal officials, Israeli troops in armoured scout cars shot over our vehicles, arrested us, and took us to a military camp. While the Israelis were interrogating our driver, I escaped in an ice cream van and caught an intercity bus on the road to Tel Aviv where I took another bus to Jerusalem. The next day I joined a Jordanian television team and other journalists in another minibus and succeeded in reaching the outskirts of Jenin. The Israelis had blocked the road with an earth berm, forcing us to walk to Jenin.

The first person I met was an old lady in black probing a mound of earth with a long pole. When I asked her what she was doing, she replied, "I'm looking for my grandson." How old was he? I asked. "Six." I visited shattered houses, the wall in one spattered with black fibrous brain matter. The front wall of a second storey flat had been sliced away revealing a green sitting room with furniture intact and a confused well-dressed woman. Scores of refugees who had fled the fighting had returned to the camp to see if their homes had survived. The smell of death hung in the air although bodies had been taken away.

After a couple of hours, I met my companions and began the walk to our vehicle. As I made my way along a terraced slope with olive trees in bloom, an Israeli sniper on the opposite hillside shot over my head, showering me with leaves. Ahead of me Palestinian women in embroidered dresses risked death or injury for visiting what was left of their camp. The television team recorded the incident which was shown that evening on Jordanian television. The Israelis were not keen on people seeing what had happened to Jenin.

In recent years, its angry, alienated youth formed the Jenin Brigade comprised of fighters from Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Fatah and making Jenin the city of "martyrs" and drawing Israeli retaliation. The most recent incursions by Israeli troops and border police backed up by tanks, drones, and fighter planes, have been resisted by Islamic Jihad's al-Quds Brigades which has joined forces with other resistance forces. Al-Quds commander argued Israel is behaving in the same way as in Gaza. To meet the challenge, he said "there are cells spread across all cities and camps, now operating under the formations of the al-Quds Brigades and the resistance." As always, the battle involves Palestinian youngsters armed with light weapons and heavily armed regular Israeli forces backed up by armour and air strikes on civilian areas.

Jenin has been presented with new martyrs while Israeli troops have bulldozed streets, water mains, power lines, and homes while besieging the city and camp. Israeli forces sealed off and desecrated Al-Ansar mosque on Friday. Palestinian residents plead for access to food, water and paramedics. Journalists have been allowed into Jenin. After turning Gaza into a wasteland without incurring the wrath of the world, Israel is free to wreak havoc wherever it likes in the West Bank. On Saturday, Israel claimed it had killed 26 Palestinians and arrested 30. On Sunday, three Israeli police officers were shot to death in the southern West Bank.

UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese said on X, “Israel claims that what it is doing in the West Bank is justified under the law of self-defence. This claim has no validity.” She pointed out that the International Court of Justice has ruled, “Israel’s very presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is itself unlawful.”

Former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth told Al-Jazeera, "Even though there’s extensive combat between Israeli forces and militants in the Jenin refugee camp, that doesn’t mean there are no rules – the Geneva Conventions still apply.”

“One of the basic rules is Israel has to allow access to humanitarian aid. So, it can’t just cut off food, water, electricity, and medical care – as we’ve heard it’s doing. It has a duty to allow those for the civilian population. It can’t use the excuse of the fighters to starve civilians, and that’s what it did in Gaza,” he stated. More than 622 Palestinians and 18 Israelis have been killed in the West Bank since October 7th, 2023.