Bethan McKernan & Sufian Taha
The Guardian / January 6, 2025
PA seeking to prove it will be able to handle governing the Gaza Strip when the war there ends.
Amid the echo of gunfire and explosions, 23-year-old Mariam picked her way through puddles on the unpaved streets of the refugee camp adjacent to the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, determined to get to a university class.
A sniper believed to be part of the Palestinian Authority (PA) forces shot and killed her friend, 22-year-old journalism student Shatha al-Sabbagh, a few days ago. Mariam said she was always afraid to leave the house, but an unprecedented PA operation on armed militant groups in the camp is now entering its second month, and shows no sign of ending. Her family has decided to try to preserve as much of their normal routine as they can.
“My mum is a teacher, and my sister studies with me. It’s not possible to go out every day. When we do, we risk our lives, and for what? This is basically a civil war, Palestinians killing Palestinians,” she said.
Jenin’s refugee camp, one of 19 across the West Bank built in the aftermath of Israel’s creation in 1948 to house displaced Palestinians, has always been an important centre of armed Palestinian resistance to the occupation. It is no stranger to Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operations, which have increased in scale and scope since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.
The new Palestinian Authority raid on the camp is the largest operation the western-backed governing body has undertaken in the 30 years since it was formed.
Israel hopes it can delegate stamping out militant activity to the Ramallah-based authority, and the PA is seeking to prove it will be able to handle governing the Gaza Strip when the war there ends. Instead, growing anger at the lengthy, destructive raid, and what is considered by much of the Palestinian public as increasing PA complicity in the occupation, could fuel further unrest.
During the Guardian’s visit to Jenin on Tuesday, ambulances raced up and down the main road leading to the camp, bouncing through muddy water on roads churned up during previous incursions by Israeli tanks and bulldozers.
The PA-run police station’s tall gates were shut, and the upper floors of the compound were covered in bullet holes; the west side of the local hospital on the outskirts of the camp was also pockmarked by bullets and shrapnel, and several windows were broken. Gunfire echoed in every direction as shoppers hurried away from the smell of teargas.
“When the Israelis come, it is tough, but we know what to expect. In this raid, this kind of fighting we haven’t seen before. It’s like there are no rules,” said a member of staff at the hospital, who asked not to be named so he could speak freely.
A new generation of fighters has now come of age in Jenin, as well as Nablus and the Nur Shams camp in Tulkarm. They have no memory of the Oslo peace agreements of the 1990s; any hope their parents had that the diplomatic process would lead to the creation of an independent Palestinian state faded long ago.
Most of these young men are part of small, ad hoc militias only loosely affiliated with the traditional Palestinian factions, such as Fatah and its rival Hamas. During visits to Jenin, the militants have repeatedly told the Guardian that they readily switch allegiance to whichever group can provide the funding and weapons they say are needed to combat Israeli incursions.
The IDF began its most serious operations in camps around the West Bank for 20 years in the spring of 2023, after a wave of Palestinian attacks against Israelis, and they have intensified since the war in Gaza began: the use of helicopter gunships, drone assassinations and weeks-long sieges are now commonplace.
Currently, Hamas’s armed wing, and the smaller, more radical Islamic Jihad, both of which have ties to Iran, control the camp. The PA, which is dominated by the secular Fatah, has dubbed the armed youth of the camp “outlaws”, launching the campaign against them on 5 December.
Operation Protect the Homeland marks the first direct Fatah-Hamas clashes since 2007, when the PA lost control of Gaza to the Islamist group in a brief civil war. So far, the PA operation in Jenin is less deadly than Israeli raids – three fighters, three security officers and four civilians have been killed – but shows signs of morphing into a war of attrition.
The operation will continue until “outlaws serving foreign agendas” that undermine the PA’s efforts to “protect civilians, security and peace in the West Bank,” have been neutralised or surrendered, Brig Gen Anwar Rajab said.
“It is the outlaws who are helping Israel, they give the Israelis an excuse to annex the West Bank and weaken the Palestinian Authority,” he said. “Above all, we want to avoid a scenario like Gaza right now happening in the West Bank.”
Rajab’s argument, however, appeared to hold little water with the people of Jenin. “The PA are traitors, people don’t trust them. From the beginning, they have always been against the resistance,” said Abu Yasin, 50, a baker from the camp selling cheese and spinach fatayer pies. He was a former member of Hamas’s armed wing, he said, and had spent time in both Israeli and Palestinian jails.
“Everyone knows they are in Jenin to send a signal to the Israelis and to America that they can handle security and take control of Gaza again.”
The PA was formed in 1994 as part of the Oslo peace accords as a five-year interim body designed to administer parts of the Palestinian territories and coordinate with Israel on security matters. Its final status was never agreed, however, as talks stalled and the second intifada, or uprising, erupted. The deeply unpopular Mahmoud Abbas, 89, was elected to a four-year term in 2005 and has remained in charge ever since.
Under his watch, a corrupt, repressive and ineffectual ruling class has emerged that has proved unwilling or unable to combat Israeli settlement expansion and the rising tide of settler violence in the West Bank. The PA is hated by much of the Palestinian public but supported by pragmatic elements of the Israeli political and defence establishment and western donors, who fear a power vacuum if it collapses.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has repeatedly said that he will not allow the PA to administer the Gaza Strip when the war ends, although the US and much of the international community back its return.
“Sooner or later Israel will run out of use for the PA and will discard them,” said Abu Yasin, the baker. “Then [the PA] will not be able to pretend they are protecting us anymore.”
Bethan McKernan is Jerusalem correspondent for The Guardian
Sufian Taha in Jenin
