It is as if an earthquake has struck Jenin. Roads, water pipes, communication networks, and electricity cables have been damaged or destroyed across a 25km radius. Streets and homes have been reduced to rubble.
Yet the Palestinian city of Jenin in the heart of the occupied West Bank has not suffered an act of vengeance at the hands of the gods or the planet but of Israel. Far from random, this destruction was planned. Today, parts of Jenin look like Gaza.
The raiders were clad not in the clothes of Jewish settlers but in the Israeli army uniform. So devastating was their nine-day operation that Jenin’s residents no longer recognise the camp that once bore their city’s name. Dozens of homes are no more. Others have been gutted of their contents. Shops have been vandalised, Israeli bulldozers smashing their doors and filling them with debris, damaging the goods inside.
Disturbingly, they called this deadly spree that killed 39 Palestinians ‘Operation Summer Camp’, in reference to the typically joyful week-long holiday events for children more often associated with archery and art, bowling and bouncy castles.
Searching for ‘terrorists’
On the tenth day, just before withdrawing, the Israeli army announced that its operation would resume until all “terrorist hotbeds” in the camp were eliminated—a reference to the dozens of militants active in the area. The offensive touched several other areas in the northern West Bank, particularly the city of Tulkarm and its surrounding camps—Tulkarm and Nour Shams—as well as the city of Tubas and the nearby Far’a camp.
Among the victims were 22 residents of Jenin and its camp, including seven militants. In Tubas, the Israeli army killed five militants, and in Tulkarm, seven. The remaining victims were civilians, including an 80-year-old man shot multiple times while walking in the east of Jenin, a 69-year-old man shot in front of his house, and a government employee in his 30s, also killed outside his home.
According to human rights groups, since the war began on 7 October 2023, Israeli forces and settlers have killed around 670 Palestinians in the West Bank. Almost a third of these have occurred in Jenin and its camp.
Going door-to-door
While the destruction in Jenin's commercial centre was severe, even greater devastation struck homes and infrastructure in Jenin camp, where 12,000 people live within a tiny site measuring less than one square kilometre. Soldiers systematically raided homes, terrorised residents, and destroyed the houses of alleged militants, along with their contents.
When Israeli soldiers storm the city, they routinely encircle the camp and parts of its nearby neighbourhoods, conducting house-to-house searches aimed at capturing or killing militants. In response, armed groups retreat. Camp sources told Al Majalla that militants often withdraw to safer areas outside the camp and sometimes beyond the city.
"We know their goals and how they operate, so we counter their campaigns in our own ways," said a gunman from a group known as the Jenin Battalion.
During the recent operation, the Israelis killed five Battalion members by tracking their vehicle and launching missiles at it from a drone. They also killed two fighters after they ambushed and killed an Israeli soldier inside a house, wounding others. The Israeli army later acknowledged the soldier's death in the Al-Damj area of the camp. There are thought to be around 170 armed men in the camp, including 100 members of the Jenin Battalion, a group backed by the Islamic Jihad movement.
The remaining militants are affiliated with Hamas and Fatah, the latter getting support from its branch in Lebanon, led by Munir Maqdah, who is backed by Hezbollah. After Israeli forces withdrew, the militants—who enjoy considerable popular support here—re-entered the camp and held a military parade in the destroyed streets as a show of defiance.
