West Bank Dispatch: Israel’s Jenin operation has begun

Key Developments (June 30 – July 3)

• Eight Palestinians have been killed so far in a large-scale Israeli military offensive on Jenin in the northern West Bank overnight on Monday that involved airstrikes and a ground invasion, sparking fierce confrontations with local Palestinian resistance groups. As of Monday afternoon local time, the death toll was still rising hours after the invasion began. The target of the invasion were fighters in the Jenin refugee camp, which has been the site of numerous Israeli attacks over the past six months, including a deadly raid less than two weeks ago.
• The Palestinian Ministry of Health (MOH) identified some of the dead as: Samih Firas Abu Alofa, Husam Muhammad Abu Dhiba, Ows al-Hanoun, and Nour el-Din Husam Marshoud. According to the MOH, 100 Palestinians have also been injured in Jenin, including 20 in critical condition.

• According to reports from local journalists on the ground, Israeli air forces carried out at least ten airstrikes on Jenin, causing significant damage to homes and structures in the camp and the surrounding areas.

• As of Monday afternoon, Israeli troops on the ground were still besieging the camp, with Al Jazeera reporting some 150 armored vehicles and around 1,000 Israeli troops on the ground. Al Jazeera reports civilians were injured by live fire while inside their homes. Reports from local media said that Palestinian medics and ambulances were prevented from evacuating the wounded and that Israeli forces also shot at Palestinian journalists covering the attack.

• Videos circulating on social media showed disturbing footage from the camp, with bloodied bodies of young Palestinian men piled up in the streets. Other footage taken from the camp showed the cement roads in the camp being torn up by Israeli bulldozers. The Israeli army said in statements to the media that it was targeting weapons stores and “infrastructure” of the Palestinian resistance in the camp, with a spokesperson telling the Times of Israel that “there was no specific timeline for ending the operation.”

• A Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the Ramallah area on Monday. 21-year-old Mohammad Emad Husnain was shot at the entrance to the town of al-Bireh in the early hours of Monday morning and was pronounced dead by the MOH at around 4:26 a.m. According to Wafa News Agency, Husnain was killed while participating in a protest against the ongoing Israeli assault on Jenin. 
• Israeli settlers continued their attacks across the West Bank on Sunday, June 2, targeting a number of Palestinian communities. According to Wafa News Agency, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians and their property in the Salfit, Bethlehem, and Nablus areas. In Salfit, which is located in the central West Bank, Israeli settlers vandalized structures and set fire to trees inside a public park in the Palestinian town of Qarawat Bani Hassan. Also in Salfit, near the village of Yasuf, Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian vehicle while it was full of passengers, smashing the windshields. No injuries were reported. South of Nablus, near the villages of Urif and Asira al-Qibliya, Israeli settlers torched a Palestinian truck after throwing  Molotov cocktails at it. In the southern Wets Bank district of Bethlehem near the town of al-Khader, Israeli settlers uprooted dozens of trees on Palestinian farmlands. Over the weekend, Israeli settlers also set fire to Palestinian  agricultural lands in the village of al-Tuwani in Masafer Yatta. Israeli settler attacks have been on the rise in recent months, with dozens of attacks taking place in the past few weeks alone. In late June, Israeli settlers launched a number of pogroms on Palestinian towns in the West Bank, burning down dozens of Palestinian homes and vehicles under the protection and assistance of the Israeli military.

In-depth: a war on the resistance ‘infrastructure‘

The Jenin operation has been anticipated for some time now — as far back as February when Itamar Ben-Gvir called for an “Operation Defensive Shield 2.” Most of the Israeli political mainstream scoffed at the mere suggestion; an Israeli military reoccupation of Jenin would mean becoming mired in enemy territory and getting dragged into a protracted fight with an uncertain outcome. The Israeli army has held that line consistently in recent months, launching limited invasions on specific missions of assassination or arrest. No one operation would last for more than a few hours, the objective being the “neutralization” of bodies on the ground — taking resistance fighters out of the fight by killing or imprisoning them. It was done in the hopes of eventually bleeding the resistance groups dry until no one was left standing. Within a few months, the army declared “victory” in Nablus, having thinned the ranks of the Lions’ Den enough for shooting operations in Nablus to witness a precipitous drop. The army also continued to carry out arrests in Jenin and its surrounding area, setting its sights on eliminating the Jenin Brigade in a similar fashion.

But then something happened the army didn’t anticipate. In one of its routine raids into Jenin refugee camp, Palestinian fighters detonated an IED underneath a state-of-the-art armored troop carrier, significantly damaging it. Israeli soldiers then got caught up in an intense shootout with resistance fighters until they had to call for backup in the form of an Apache airstrike for the first time since the Second Intifada, which provided cover for their retreat. About a week later, a video surfaced online of resistance fighters launching a makeshift rocket from the Jenin area into Israel. Open disdain at the idea of a reoccupation of Jenin was replaced with growing concern.

The rightwing government was openly pushing for a wide-ranging operation, and while the military establishment remained reluctant and counseled patience, the Shabak was worried at the apparently growing capabilities of the Palestinian resistance. Talk became widespread of a wider operation, and the consensus for restraint within the Israeli military establishment began to erode. A broad invasion was now only a matter of time.

With today’s massive invasion, liberal Israeli security analysts are rushing to downplay its intended scope, calling it a targeted attack on the “infrastructure” of Palestinian resistance by destroying laboratories for making explosives and killing the Palestinians making them — and then hastening to add that this won’t change the status quo in the West Bank in the long-term absent a larger political change.

But amid the scale of indiscriminate destruction that this “targeted” attack has entailed, there’s something about this fight that isn’t being talked about. It isn’t following the same script that has usually played out in the army’s raids until now. For the past year, the strategy of the resistance fighters has been to act defensively and try to prevent the movement of the army within the camp — to engage it and fight to the death if need be. This has led to a trail of martyrs, as entire groups of comrades have been wiped out in one assassination mission after another. But today is different; while the scale of the destruction of the camp is unprecedented, the number of Palestinian casualties as of the time of writing is considerably lower than one might expect of such a large operation — eight martyrs as of the time of writing.

And the reason for this is telling: it points to a shift in tactics on the part of the resistance. The Managing Director of the INSS also noticed this, and expressed concern:

“What we saw this morning is the first phase of the operation – an operation launched with accurate intelligence and an opening move, primarily with airpower. In the next stage, there is usually friction with the armed operatives on the ground. This has not happened yet. The good news is that when there is no such friction, the number of our casualties decreases, but the bad news is that without friction the number of terrorists killed is also small.” 

In other words, the resistance fighters’ erstwhile strategy of fighting to the last breath seems to have been replaced by more conventional guerilla tactics — retreating and engaging from the peripheries while keeping their larger force intact. 

At least, this is what can be gleaned so far from developments on the ground. While it’s too early to tell what it could mean, it is clear that the intentions of the army are also theatrical — it wants to put on a show of leveling Jenin and sowing destruction to satisfy the demands of the hawkish rightwing officials, tearing up streets with D-9s and causing the flight of thousands of camp residents. This theatrical purpose also has a tactical advantage: the spread of terror will cause the flight of more Palestinian camp residents, allowing for the army’s greater freedom of movement in its wanton use of force, including indiscriminate airstrikes.

But the army also doesn’t want to kill so many people that it would create a response from Palestinian resistance factions in Gaza or even Lebanon. It is still trying to strike what it sees as a balance between destroying the “infrastructure” of the resistance and pulling out within a limited timeframe. Possibly, the army’s actions in the past 24 hours might be enough to declare victory at having found and eliminated explosives workshops, but that ideal scenario might not come to pass if it runs up against unforeseen obstacles in the field set up by the resistance.

That’s what this battle rides on now. The coming hours will determine whether the fight ends with an Israeli withdrawal after announcing a real or imagined victory at destroying “terrorist infrastructures,” or potentially evolves into something else.

Mondoweiss Highlights

• ‘The gravity of the situation cannot be understated’: an eyewitness account from the Israeli assault on Jenin, by Mustafa Sheta
• On the Brink: Jenin’s rising resistance, by Yumna Patel
• Inside the “Wasps’ Nest”: the rise of the Jenin Brigade, by Mariam Barghouti
• Inside the Jenin resistance, by Shatha Hanaysha

Important Figures

• At least 185 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the year, according to documentation collected by AFP

Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau
The Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau are the Mondoweiss staff members based in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.