Palestinian militants in Jenin (Jaafar ASHTIYEH / AFP)
The armoured column drives slowly north out of Jenin. On one vehicle, a bleary-eyed Israeli soldier leans on a massive Vulcan cannon. “Fucking Saigon,” he mutters when I ask about the recent battle. He’s not far off: his unit has just finished fighting in the city’s refugee camp, using the Vulcans, originally intended as anti-aircraft cannons, to blast the upper floors of homes.
That was 21 years ago, at the peak of Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield, in which entire divisions occupied the Palestinian cities of the West Bank. Back then, their targets were the militant organisations who had been waging a suicide bombing campaign within Israel during the Second Intifada.
Last week, I stood on the same spot as the Israeli soldiers who had once again occupied the Jenin refugee camp started to leave. Most of them hadn’t even been born in 2002; here was just another generation of Israelis and Palestinians fighting for the same little piece of land in yet another round of this interminable conflict.
Not everything was the same, however. Two decades on, Israel’s tactics are markedly different. This time, they deployed a much lighter operational footprint — without the tanks, armoured personnel carriers and massive firepower of 2002. Instead, they were mounted on nimble armoured tactical vehicles, with aerial cover provided by drone strikes. They also had better intelligence, pinpointing the locations of the militants’ weapons stores and command posts. And they spent much less time there: two days, rather than 11.
Another key difference was that, in 2002, the entire West Bank was in turmoil, with the Second Intifada raging in every town and village. Last week, with the exception of a few individual clashes, beyond Jenin the region was tense but largely calm. The death toll was therefore lower, with 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier killed (compared with 53 Palestinians and 23 Israelis in 2002). But while the fighting was more limited, look close enough and one can discern the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Jenin, the northernmost city in the West Bank, is relatively isolated from the Palestinian Authority’s administrative capital in Ramallah: it is unique in not having Israeli settlements built around it, and is close to Israel’s heavily Palestinian cities across the border. For a short period in the middle of the 2010s, there was talk of “the Jenin Model”, for what some called “an economic peace” or “shrinking the conflict”.
Thousands of the city’s residents had work-permits in Israel, and thousands of Israelis flocked to Jenin to shop and do business. After the Second Intifada ended in 2005, Israel gradually handed back control of the cities to the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority (PA). By that point, exhausted by the conflict and the damage done to the local economy, many Palestinians were more interested in rebuilding their lives than resisting the Israeli occupation. Until 2020, militant activity remained at the lowest level in decades, as the PA’s security forces maintained order in the town, cooperating closely with the Israeli army.
Then came the pandemic and the return of Israeli roadblocks, which were designed to stop the spread of Covid-19 but succeeded mainly in suffocating the nascent economic revival. These came along with a series of power struggles within the local Palestinian apparatus and the resulting vacuum was filled by a group of young gunmen who took over the refugee camp, producing videos of themselves strutting with assault rifles on social media. Then some of them began carrying out shooting attacks on Israeli patrols and settlements, and even further afield inside Israel.
Israel’s initial response was to launch a series of arrest raids, aimed at capturing or killing the leaders of what became known as Kataib Jenin, the Jenin Brigades. But then, six months ago, a new Israeli government came to power, under the veteran prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who returned to office thanks to an alliance of far-Right parties, representing the Jewish settlers in the West Bank. They demanded a much wider and deadlier military operation in the West Bank. The Jenin operation was what they got.
For many years, it was Hebron, the southernmost city of the West Bank, also isolated from the PA’s centre in Ramallah, that was regarded by many on both sides as the main hub of Palestinian resistance. After all, Hebron is not only surrounded by Israeli settlements — it has a settlement within its old city with constant Israeli military presence. But despite the many sources of tension within the city, and the de facto eviction of hundreds of Palestinian families from their property around the settlement in the old quarter, other districts have flourished.
Drive into Hebron from its northern side, which is under Palestinian control, and you discover a boomtown with new malls and building projects. “Many of the families here have relatives living in the Far East, especially China, and Hebron has become a centre of trade that was barely disturbed during the pandemic,” one local businessman tells me. “It’s not that anyone here is happy with the settlers or the occupation, but people here also have what to lose.” Roughly 10% of the West Bank’s population live in Hebron, but an estimated 35% of its trade goes through there. Unlike in Jenin, where the attempts to build a new economic future of the city mainly came from outside, with the Israeli and Turkish governments trying to push an ambitious industrial zone project, in Hebron the financial initiative has come from the city’s population itself.
The same is true of the armed resistance. While the “legacy” Palestinian organisations tried to posthumously claim the affiliation of the 12 young men (four of them teenagers) killed during the recent Israeli incursion, the real power currently in Jenin’s refugee camp is the Jenin Brigades — a group that has been in existence for barely two years and owes allegiance to none of the established movements, though it is happy to accept money and arms from Iran.
It is a new form of resistance to Israeli occupation, which is no longer based on the old ideological and hierarchical lines dividing the rival Palestinian movements. Instead, it resembles a franchising model, where the local franchise-holders control their small fiefdoms. A similar framework has emerged in the Balata refugee camp of Nablus, the West Bank second-largest city.
Crucially, these developments are cause for concern within both Israel and the PA — proof of how little power they have over the general direction of the West Bank. But they are also worrisome for those supporters of the Palestinian cause who have hoped to see some form of collective leadership. For the past 16 years, since Hamas’s takeover of Gaza, the main split within the Palestinian movement was between the Fatah-dominated PA in the West Bank and Hamas-ruled Gaza. Last week’s round of bloodshed in Jenin, however, heralded a future in which the area becomes a series of warring enclaves. The result is twofold: an unending security headache for Israel, but unless some unity evolves, also a perpetuation of its occupation.
Anshel Pfeffer is a senior correspondent for Haaretz and Israel correspondent for The Economist. He is the author of Bibi
The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu.
AnshelPfeffer 
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SubscribePfeffer never says what he means by “resisting the occupation,” a phrase he uses repeatedly in the article. That phrase is misleading because it suggests that the goal of the “resistive” activity is to end the occupation, and that’s not the case. In reality, well-heeled and well-connected “pro-Palestinian” far-left and Islamist NGOs in the West share with Iran and the Palestinian factions an interest in perpetuating the occupation. It would be harder to market their campaign to delegitimize and destroy Israel if there were no occupation to “resist,” but—crucially—they would still try, as they have been doing in Gaza since Israel withdrew in 2005.
I don’t think Israel ‘withdrew’ from Gaza, they occupy it in all but name,
Precisely.
Gaza is little more than a ‘Live Firing Range’.
Things will HAVE to change.
So, why did British Army resist IRA?
IRA claims they are freedom fighters.
They needed the practice.
They needed the practice.
So, why did British Army resist IRA?
IRA claims they are freedom fighters.
Precisely.
Gaza is little more than a ‘Live Firing Range’.
Things will HAVE to change.
An excellent analysis and here’s proof if ever proof were needed that the Israeli left mimic a lot of what the International left media tries to hide.
Aside from the “occupation” that would not be classified as an occupation for anyone other than the Jews, the writer fails to mention who the “12 Palestinians” killed were.
Of course, it’s all the fault of the right-wing government that Pfeffer is hostile to, and what’s the “de facto eviction of hundreds of Palestinian families from their property around the settlement in the old quarter” in Hebron got to do with it, a clever use of words, I must admit to decontextualise how and why this happened.
I don’t think Israel ‘withdrew’ from Gaza, they occupy it in all but name,
An excellent analysis and here’s proof if ever proof were needed that the Israeli left mimic a lot of what the International left media tries to hide.
Aside from the “occupation” that would not be classified as an occupation for anyone other than the Jews, the writer fails to mention who the “12 Palestinians” killed were.
Of course, it’s all the fault of the right-wing government that Pfeffer is hostile to, and what’s the “de facto eviction of hundreds of Palestinian families from their property around the settlement in the old quarter” in Hebron got to do with it, a clever use of words, I must admit to decontextualise how and why this happened.
Pfeffer never says what he means by “resisting the occupation,” a phrase he uses repeatedly in the article. That phrase is misleading because it suggests that the goal of the “resistive” activity is to end the occupation, and that’s not the case. In reality, well-heeled and well-connected “pro-Palestinian” far-left and Islamist NGOs in the West share with Iran and the Palestinian factions an interest in perpetuating the occupation. It would be harder to market their campaign to delegitimize and destroy Israel if there were no occupation to “resist,” but—crucially—they would still try, as they have been doing in Gaza since Israel withdrew in 2005.
“The result is twofold: an unending security headache for Israel, but unless some unity evolves, also a perpetuation of its occupation.” – interesting way to end the article. Isn’t this the result no matter what?
“The result is twofold: an unending security headache for Israel, but unless some unity evolves, also a perpetuation of its occupation.” – interesting way to end the article. Isn’t this the result no matter what?
The Arabs conquered Palestine* in 636 AD after the Battle of Yamuk..
What did the indigenous Jewish population do?
It appears they must have converted to Islam, not a difficult choice given the similarities of both sects.
Thus are today’s reviled Palestinians the linear descendants of the pre 636AD Jewish population?
Those of the diaspora* who previously fled the place of their own volition continued to practice the old faith but do seem to have changed in other ways. How and why?
(*What percentage of the original population were involved anyone?)
(* Now Israel.)
There’s no evidence of mass conversion of Palestinian Jews after Muslim conquest, but I would love the irony of the Lions Den terrorists discovering some latent crypto Zionist family heritage.
After the Muslim conquest there was an influx of Arab settlers and some brief respite for the Jews of the religious oppression experienced for centuries under Christian rule. Jews continued to practice rabbinic Judaism in the Holy Land as well as Diaspora centers under Christian and Islamic rule. Rabbinic Judaism is based on the Pharisaic stream present during the 2nd Temple and the only stream to survive the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70AD, an event that commenced the Diaspora (they were murdered or enslaved after wars with Rome and did not leave of their own volition), due in part to Rabbinic Judaism’s acquiescence to a state of exile with a yearning to return to sovereignty over the land. The Jewish population gradually diminished due to the civil wars, mismanagement, and religious oppression of Islamic rulers and of course the Crusaders, but Jewish presence persisted in the Holy Land uninterrupted by these calamities, a fact uncontested by historians.
Hope that helps.
There’s no evidence of mass conversion of Palestinian Jews after Muslim conquest, but I would love the irony of the Lions Den terrorists discovering some latent crypto Zionist family heritage.
After the Muslim conquest there was an influx of Arab settlers and some brief respite for the Jews of the religious oppression experienced for centuries under Christian rule. Jews continued to practice rabbinic Judaism in the Holy Land as well as Diaspora centers under Christian and Islamic rule. Rabbinic Judaism is based on the Pharisaic stream present during the 2nd Temple and the only stream to survive the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70AD, an event that commenced the Diaspora (they were murdered or enslaved after wars with Rome and did not leave of their own volition), due in part to Rabbinic Judaism’s acquiescence to a state of exile with a yearning to return to sovereignty over the land. The Jewish population gradually diminished due to the civil wars, mismanagement, and religious oppression of Islamic rulers and of course the Crusaders, but Jewish presence persisted in the Holy Land uninterrupted by these calamities, a fact uncontested by historians.
Hope that helps.
The Arabs conquered Palestine* in 636 AD after the Battle of Yamuk..
What did the indigenous Jewish population do?
It appears they must have converted to Islam, not a difficult choice given the similarities of both sects.
Thus are today’s reviled Palestinians the linear descendants of the pre 636AD Jewish population?
Those of the diaspora* who previously fled the place of their own volition continued to practice the old faith but do seem to have changed in other ways. How and why?
(*What percentage of the original population were involved anyone?)
(* Now Israel.)
Summarising the comments the conclusion seems to be that for Israel to survive Islam MUST be destroyed.
As the audacious Romans would have said “if you wish for peace, prepare for war”.
Summarising the comments the conclusion seems to be that for Israel to survive Islam MUST be destroyed.
As the audacious Romans would have said “if you wish for peace, prepare for war”.
The boys of the Jenin Brigades know that the Israelis made their families refugees. But they also know that the Palestinian Authority has a large share of culpability for the fact that they themselves were born that way, in a giant refugee camp that had been under Palestinian rule since before they were glints in the eye. With their purely homemade weapons, these extreme youths, in both senses, are no Iranian proxies. They have risen as much against Fatah, Hamas, and even Islamic Jihad, as they have against the Occupation. Next, head down the road to Nablus, and watch out for the Lions’ Den.
One day, not today, not tomorrow or even the next day, but ONE day, these “Jenin Boys” will acquire a ‘ hand-held’ nuclear device,* perhaps more than one of them.
These they will then cheerfully denote, immolating both themselves and the entire country.
Thus will the Middle East conundrum be solved and ‘we’ will be able to truly say those immortal words, Consummatum Est’.
(*ie: Very small, no more than say 30-40 kg in weight.)
What a disgusting thing to say.
Horrific would be a better word, but there is still time to avoid such a scenario don’t you think?
I dread to imagine how you think the “scenario” could be avoided.
Compromise.
Stop treating the Palestinians as HELOTS.
Even the Spartans found it didn’t work in the end!
When you figure out how to “compromise” with radicals who refuse any reasonable compromise and refuse to negotiate in good faith, let me know.
South Africa, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt and Vietnam to name but a few were all eventually resolved by compromise.
Eventually the 73 year and counting Israeli War will be also. It’s only a matter of time.
I am sorry but your examples have little to do with compromise but with one side winning the conflict and the other side accepting the result.
Apart from Egypt.
I am not Jewish but I fail to see how Israel can compromise with people who deny Israel right to exist.
We can all argue that maybe Israel should had been created in Florida or in Crimea (since Stalin deported all the Tatars) but it is not relevant to situation as it is.
They could try being less greedy.
After all aren’t they all Semites? So it’s only a pseudo religious conflict at the end of the day.
Historically, as you may recall, we had a similar problem in Ireland but eventually managed to curtail ‘our’ greed and begrudgingly agree to a compromise settlement.
Charles, I think you’re right about compromise and Ireland as a possible precedent, but I’m confused. The Palestinian leaders rejected the offers of a state in 2000 and 2008. Or are you saying some Semites are greedier than others?
Charles, I think you’re right about compromise and Ireland as a possible precedent, but I’m confused. The Palestinian leaders rejected the offers of a state in 2000 and 2008. Or are you saying some Semites are greedier than others?
They could try being less greedy.
After all aren’t they all Semites? So it’s only a pseudo religious conflict at the end of the day.
Historically, as you may recall, we had a similar problem in Ireland but eventually managed to curtail ‘our’ greed and begrudgingly agree to a compromise settlement.
I am sorry but your examples have little to do with compromise but with one side winning the conflict and the other side accepting the result.
Apart from Egypt.
I am not Jewish but I fail to see how Israel can compromise with people who deny Israel right to exist.
We can all argue that maybe Israel should had been created in Florida or in Crimea (since Stalin deported all the Tatars) but it is not relevant to situation as it is.
South Africa, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt and Vietnam to name but a few were all eventually resolved by compromise.
Eventually the 73 year and counting Israeli War will be also. It’s only a matter of time.
When you figure out how to “compromise” with radicals who refuse any reasonable compromise and refuse to negotiate in good faith, let me know.
Compromise.
Stop treating the Palestinians as HELOTS.
Even the Spartans found it didn’t work in the end!
I dread to imagine how you think the “scenario” could be avoided.
Horrific would be a better word, but there is still time to avoid such a scenario don’t you think?
But then, if small nuclear devices proliferate, why would terrorists limit themselves to West Bank and Israel?
Should we agree to Sharia Law in uk if some islamofashists demand that and threatens using nukes?
Aha! A man after my own heart, and an advocate of Plan B. B for Bomb that is!
The Roman answer to an existential threat was to go for total destruction.
For example in what we know call the year 146 BC they perceived both the Greeks of Corinth and the Carthaginians of Carthage to be a potential menace and thus completely obliterated BOTH cities, selling the surviving populations into bondage. It would be the equivalent today of destroying both London and Paris.
So if the “islamofashists”*as you call them ever get hold of small nuclear devices we shall have to completely destroy Islam with major, simultaneous strikes on Cairo, Baghdad,Karachi, Tehran Mecca and so forth. Or do you have an alternative solution?
(*May I suggest Islamofascists.)
Aha! A man after my own heart, and an advocate of Plan B. B for Bomb that is!
The Roman answer to an existential threat was to go for total destruction.
For example in what we know call the year 146 BC they perceived both the Greeks of Corinth and the Carthaginians of Carthage to be a potential menace and thus completely obliterated BOTH cities, selling the surviving populations into bondage. It would be the equivalent today of destroying both London and Paris.
So if the “islamofashists”*as you call them ever get hold of small nuclear devices we shall have to completely destroy Islam with major, simultaneous strikes on Cairo, Baghdad,Karachi, Tehran Mecca and so forth. Or do you have an alternative solution?
(*May I suggest Islamofascists.)
What a disgusting thing to say.
But then, if small nuclear devices proliferate, why would terrorists limit themselves to West Bank and Israel?
Should we agree to Sharia Law in uk if some islamofashists demand that and threatens using nukes?
Yet again you perpetuate the myth that all those who left Israel in 1948 did so by Israeli orders which was not the case. Only approx. 250,000 were expelled. The rest left of their own volition having listened to their own leaders telling them to get out of the way of the invading armies from the neighbouring states so that they could ‘drive all the Jews into the sea’ & then they could return & take whatever they wanted. Recordings of the Mufti of Jerusalem, by then exiled by the British Mandate Authorities to Egypt, prove this beyond question. By the way, name one Jewish action which acted the same way towards the Arab countries who threw out their (ancient) Jewish populations with the threat of death if they tried to remain.
Has Ilan Pappé just made it all up then?
Ilan Pappe says it all.
Yes, he makes a lot of it up. He freely admits that “Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts, Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers,” Pappe, in an interview with the French newspaper Le Soir, Nov. 29, 1999.
What a guy to get your “facts” from.
He holds a ‘chair’ at Exeter University*, so I suspect you may be overdoing it!
(* In Devon, England.)
I was quoting him. He doesn’t care about facts, only ideology. That’s your guy. The appeal to authority (Exeter, also Haifa by the way) is irrelevant.
What if any, is your ‘authority’, may I ask?
What if any, is your ‘authority’, may I ask?
I was quoting him. He doesn’t care about facts, only ideology. That’s your guy. The appeal to authority (Exeter, also Haifa by the way) is irrelevant.
“At best, Ilan Pappe must be one of the world’s sloppiest historians; at worst, one of the most dishonest. In truth, he probably merits a place somewhere between the two.” Bennie Morris, Middle East historian.
https://newrepublic.com/article/85344/ilan-pappe-sloppy-dishonest-historian
Interesting, then perhaps someone from Exeter University might care to explain why they still employ him?
Wokery ??
Wokery ??
Interesting, then perhaps someone from Exeter University might care to explain why they still employ him?
He holds a ‘chair’ at Exeter University*, so I suspect you may be overdoing it!
(* In Devon, England.)
“At best, Ilan Pappe must be one of the world’s sloppiest historians; at worst, one of the most dishonest. In truth, he probably merits a place somewhere between the two.” Bennie Morris, Middle East historian.
https://newrepublic.com/article/85344/ilan-pappe-sloppy-dishonest-historian
Ilan Pappe says it all.
Yes, he makes a lot of it up. He freely admits that “Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts, Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers,” Pappe, in an interview with the French newspaper Le Soir, Nov. 29, 1999.
What a guy to get your “facts” from.
Has Ilan Pappé just made it all up then?
One day, not today, not tomorrow or even the next day, but ONE day, these “Jenin Boys” will acquire a ‘ hand-held’ nuclear device,* perhaps more than one of them.
These they will then cheerfully denote, immolating both themselves and the entire country.
Thus will the Middle East conundrum be solved and ‘we’ will be able to truly say those immortal words, Consummatum Est’.
(*ie: Very small, no more than say 30-40 kg in weight.)
Yet again you perpetuate the myth that all those who left Israel in 1948 did so by Israeli orders which was not the case. Only approx. 250,000 were expelled. The rest left of their own volition having listened to their own leaders telling them to get out of the way of the invading armies from the neighbouring states so that they could ‘drive all the Jews into the sea’ & then they could return & take whatever they wanted. Recordings of the Mufti of Jerusalem, by then exiled by the British Mandate Authorities to Egypt, prove this beyond question. By the way, name one Jewish action which acted the same way towards the Arab countries who threw out their (ancient) Jewish populations with the threat of death if they tried to remain.
The boys of the Jenin Brigades know that the Israelis made their families refugees. But they also know that the Palestinian Authority has a large share of culpability for the fact that they themselves were born that way, in a giant refugee camp that had been under Palestinian rule since before they were glints in the eye. With their purely homemade weapons, these extreme youths, in both senses, are no Iranian proxies. They have risen as much against Fatah, Hamas, and even Islamic Jihad, as they have against the Occupation. Next, head down the road to Nablus, and watch out for the Lions’ Den.