The 48 hours between Monday July 3rd and Wednesday July 5th saw the deadliest Israeli military invasion of the Jenin refugee camp since the Second Intifada. Twelve Palestinians were killed, and more than 100 others were injured. In the midst of the invasion, on Tuesday July 4th, Palestinian Authority security forces arrested two fighters who were wanted by Israeli authorities.
On July 6th, the Jenin Brigade, a local armed resistance group, issued a statement condemning the Palestinian Authority’s detention of its fighters, saying:
“It is heart-breaking that we are being fatally stabbed in the back by our own people, the PA security services, which committed an act on Tuesday that no fighter or defender of this land would accept.”
Just a few hours after Israeli forces withdrew from the Jenin Refugee Camp, local youth gathered outside the PA headquarters in the city to express their anger against the Palestinian security forces, who throughout the army invasion, remained inside their headquarters. The protest escalated with the use of explosives and Molotov cocktails. In response, the PA fired warning shots into the air and deployed tear gas canisters.
During the funeral procession for 12 Palestinians killed by the Israeli army in the Jenin Refugee Camp, local residents expelled a delegation representing the Palestinian Authority and the Fatah movement. Subsequent protests took place in Nablus and several other villages in the West Bank on the same day.
Ahmad Al-Bazz
Ahmad Al-Bazz is a Palestine-based independent journalist and documentary filmmaker focusing on Palestinian-Israeli affairs.
Sad and tragic are understatements.
The anger is understandable but armed conflict is almost certainly a losing hand. How can it not be? Is the idea guns will resolve what rocks didn’t?
Bullets are a problematic path to ending apartheid in one secular state and an unlikely route to an independent state with a positive future.
One has to wonder about media sources people in Jenin are relying on.