West Bank Dispatch: Israeli govt commits to preventing the collapse of the PA

Key Developments (July 7 – 10)

• Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is reported to have convened a meeting last week with the Fatah leadership and the Palestinian Security Forces to propose re-deploying PA forces in Jenin. Various Israeli media sources reported the alleged effort by Abbas to reestablish PA control of the area, though the PA made no official announcements. The reports came on the heels of an embarrassing encounter between PA and Fatah officials and locals in Jenin last week, when residents clashed with PA security forces and kicked out Mahmoud al-Aloul, a senior member of the Fatah movement, during his visit to the city on the heels of the deadly Israeli army invasion. Since the start of the year the PA has engaged in a number of talks with Israeli and US officials, of which one of the primary goals has reportedly been to curb growing Palestinian resistance. As reported by Mondoweiss earlier this year, sources with knowledge of the summits in Jordan and Egypt, part of the meetings “concerned designing a new security operations unit, consisting of at least 5,000 PA personnel to be trained in Jordan and deployed to Jenin and Nablus.” On Sunday, July 9th, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet announced a decision that Israel “would work to prevent the collapse” of the PA, Reuters reported. Netanyahu’s government offered no concrete steps on how it was going to support the PA, but said that it would take  “steps to stabilize the civil situation in the Palestinian arena.”

• Four Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire between July 7-10, and several others were injured, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. On Friday July 7th, Israeli forces assassinated two Palestinian fighters during a raid on their home in the city of Nablus. Khairy Shaheen, 34, and Hamza Maqboul, 32, both alleged members of the armed wing of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) party,  were killed after a brief confrontation with Israeli forces, who raided the home they were staying in. According to Al Jazeera, Shaheen and Maqboul used improvised explosives and engaged in a gunfight with Israeli soldiers. Israel had accused the two of carrying out a shooting targeting an Israeli police car outside the illegal Har Bracha settlement south of Nablus the week before. Three Palestinians were also injured during the raid, and another three were arrested. Also on July 7, 24-year-old Abdul-Jawad Saleh was shot and killed in the village of Umm Safa near Ramallah, during a protest against the establishment of an illegal settlement outpost on the town’s land. Israeli settlers reportedly threw stones toward Palestinians, while Israeli forces shot tear gas and live ammunition toward the unarmed Palestinian protesters. An eyewitness at the protest told Mondoweiss that while the settler and soldier attack prompted local youth to throw stones back, Saleh was not engaged in the stone-throwing, and that he was “shot out of nowhere, straight in the chest.” The eyewitness told Mondoweiss that the soldiers “were there to kill.” Palestinians in Umm Safa have been the subjects of a number of violent settler attacks in recent weeks. On Monday, July 10th, 33-year-old Bilal Qadah was killed by Israeli forces at a checkpoint near the village of Deir Nidham, northwest of Ramallah. Israeli reports claimed Qadah was attempting to throw an explosive when he was shot, Wafa news agency reported. 
  
• Israeli forces assaulted and damaged the vehicles of two Palestinian journalists Sunday night, according to a social media post by the journalists. Journalist Mohammad Turkman wrote on Facebook that he and his colleague Kharim Khamaysa and their friend Ali Awwad were stopped and searched by Israeli forces on their way home from reporting in Jenin. According to Turkman’s post, Israeli forces took the men’s ID cards and demanded they open up their phones for a search. When they declined the search of their phones, Israeli forces took Turkman out of the car and assaulted him, hitting him on his head and back, before detaining the three men and confiscating their ID cards and phones, while “pointing weapons at us the entire time,” Turkman wrote. He continued saying a masked soldier then got in Turkman’s car and drove it over a spike strip, busting all four tires. “Then he interrogated us, ‘where are you from’, ‘where you came from’, ‘where you went’ and many questions,” Turkman wrote. Once the soldiers released them, Turkman’s car had to be towed. “This is an occupation: despicable, and only knows the language of killing and destruction,” Turkman wrote. 

• Israeli settlers attack Palestinians and their property in a number of locations across the West Bank. According to Wafa, Israeli settlers attacked the homes of Palestinians in a bedouin village near Jericho, and polluted the village’s water supply with an “unknown substance.” In Nablus, settlers set fire to farmlands and trees in the village of al-Lubban al-Sharqiyah. Settlers also set fire to a Palestinian residential structure in the al-Baqaa area near the village of Mikhmas in the central West Bank. Israeli settlers also attacked Palestinian vehicles, including an ambulance, in the Jordan Valley, Tulkarem, Qalqilya, and Jerusalem governorates. The ambulance that was attacked by settlers with rocks was reportedly carrying a child, though no one was seriously hurt. Israeli settlers also erected tents and fenced off areas of Palestinian land in two separate incidents in the Hebron and Nablus area, reportedly in efforts to seize privately-owned Palestinian land. Around the same time as the continued settler attacks, which have been ongoing for weeks, Israeli Channel 12 reported that far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is planning to enact policy changes that will no longer see the police confiscation of settler weapons used in attacks against Palestinians. Last month, Ben-Gvir also announced plans to expand the number of Israelis eligible to receive gun licenses. 

• At least 18 Palestinians were detained by Israeli forces during raids across the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem, including at least two children, Wafa reported. Israeli arrest raids on Palestinian towns and cities are a near-nightly occurrence and most frequently take place in the middle of the night. 

In-Depth: Phase Two of the Jenin invasion

As Israel’s 48-hour onslaught on the Jenin refugee camp last week entered its denouement, former Israeli Brigadier General Tamir Hayman discussed the operation’s objectives during an INSS podcast. He came away with two primary aims: the restoration of the Israeli army’s “operational freedom” — the ability of Israel to enter any part of the West Bank unchallenged and unmolested by resistance — and, most notably, to facilitate the conditions for the return of the Palestinian Authority to the camp.

Hayman couched his explanation as desiring to ameliorate the “lack of efficiency” of the PA in containing “the cycle of revenge” perpetuated by the Palestinian resistance, meaning that the army would have to go in and undercut the influence of the resistance groups by taking out their so-called infrastructure (their ability to manufacture IEDs and other means of resistance). But he leaves much unsaid in this formulation — the Palestinian resistance remains alive and well in the camp precisely because the operation did not aim to eradicate it but merely removed a few of its guns and eliminated a handful of labs. In other words, it’s unclear how this narrow and much-touted “achievement” would facilitate the return of PA influence.

The answer lies not in the tactical military objectives of the operation but in its broader political goals — to engage in a theatrical display of wreaking havoc and destruction in the camp, unrelated to operational necessity in the field. The army’s D-9 bulldozers tore up streets and demolished homes not only to satisfy the calls of the bloodthirsty Israeli right for retribution but to create the opportunity for the PA to roll in with reconstruction aid. Whether this was an intentional part of the army’s operation is irrelevant — in reality, this is its Phase Two and the inauguration of Israel’s soft counterinsurgency effort.

This is also nothing new. After its destruction in 2002, Jenin refugee camp’s “urban redesign” took place amidst a concerted colonial counterinsurgency effort of bringing the PA security forces back in to police the resistance. Foreign money also streamed in as part of what Linda Tabar calls “bureaucratic humanitarian aid,” turning Jenin into Tony Blair’s “model economic and security zone.” This is the same strategy that the INSS regards as the exercise of “soft power,” which in conjunction with military power (alternating between “the carrot and the stick”) is how the Israeli army’s Central Command has strived to maintain the “status quo” since 1967 — creeping colonization coupled with colonial pacification.

And the attempts at pacification are already starting. A PA delegation to the funeral of the invasion’s martyrs was kicked out of the camp by the mourners, incensed at the PA’s silence during the operation. But the attempts did not stop there, as the delegation announced that the PA had formed a committee for the reconstruction of the camp and that it would lead the reconstruction efforts. Another delegation returned to the camp on Saturday, July 8, and met with members of the Jenin Brigade. The day after that, yet another delegation made up of PA ministers also arrived. And Algeria has pledged $30 million for the reconstruction, which will also be funneled through the PA.

In the background to all this, Israel’s national security cabinet met and decided to vote on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s proposal to “act to prevent the collapse of the Palestinian Authority,” which included economic measures to prop it up. The only ones opposed to this proposal were Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich (declaring “there will be no economic relief to the Palestinians”), whose absolutist positions will, according to the mainstream Israeli military-security establishment, lead to a “security disaster” for Israel.

The danger posed by the inauguration of the unofficial second phase of the Jenin operation is that the resistance will now have to fight a war on two fronts — from without and within. What’s harder is that the resistance groups can hardly turn down aid to rebuild the camp, but as it flows in, the challenge to the resistance will no longer only be airstrikes and assassination missions but a trojan horse waving a white flag.

Important figures

• At least 190 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the start of the year. 26 Israelis have been killed during the same time period.
• More than 500 Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank have been recorded since the start of the year.
• Israeli forces have conducted at least 1,800 search and arrest raids in the West Bank this year.