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This week, for two whole days, close to a thousand troops from the Israel Defense Forces carried out a military operation in the Jenin refugee camp, whose official objective was “to dismantle the armed infrastructure of the terrorist organizations that operate in the area.”
The Israeli offensive focused on nipping in the bud the capabilities of the Jenin Brigade, a local armed group that has gained weight in the last year, as tension has intensified within the framework of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, that this 2023 is experiencing its deadliest year in the last two decades, with a total of 156 Palestinians killed.
At least 12 Palestinians have died in the last two days, four of them minors, and most of them militants, while more than a hundred people were injured and twenty are in serious condition.
The background, according to Israel, was to address the more than 50 attacks committed since the beginning of the year by Palestinians from that area against Israeli civilians and soldiers. Since, according to the authorities, many people responsible for attacks are hiding in Jenin.
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Although the Israeli army announced on Wednesday the end of its military operation, which began on Monday, the UN warned of excessive use of force.
“The escalation is not the answer” to Israel’s “legitimate concerns for its security,” requested the UN Secretary General, António Guterres, who denounced the “excessive use of force” in the military operation in the occupied West Bank this week.
Columns of smoke rise in the West Bank city of Jenin.
“I understand Israel’s legitimate exposures for its security. But escalation is not the answer. This reinforces the radicalization that contributes to the aggravation of the spiral of violence and bloodshed,” Guterres told the press, noting that “restore the hope of the Palestinian people in a political process, leading to a two-state (creation) solution and the end of the occupation, is Israel’s essential contribution to its own security.”
For the UN chief, Israeli aerial bombardments and ground operations in a crowded refugee camp are “inconsistent with peacekeeping operations.”
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Israel defends intervention, highlights it as a tactical achievement
Israel highlights what it clearly sees as a tactical achievement for all that it destroyed and seized: laboratories for explosives, explosive charges, weapons and ammunition, and command and communications centers, although it is clear to him that the challenge is not over.
“If terrorism returns, we will return to Jenin,” declared the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who during the operation assured that “anyone who seeks to kill Israelis will end up in jail or in the grave.”
On Thursday, precisely, an attack was committed, the fourth with firearms so far this week, in which an Israeli civilian was killed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that if terrorism returns they will return to Jenin.
The Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamist group Hamas, claimed responsibility for the shooting attack by one of its members near a settlement in the northern occupied West Bank.
On the Palestinian side, The Palestinian Authority accused Israel as soon as it entered Jenin of having “declared war” and “committing war crimes.”
The Ministry of Health of the Palestinian Authority denounced that the Israeli Army fired at a hospital in Jenin, which left three Palestinians wounded, two of them graves.
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The Israeli army launched its attacks against medical facilities, hospitals and ambulance teams in the city.
According to Health, the Israeli Army launched “its attacks against medical facilities, hospitals and ambulance teams” in the city, “an aggression that is in defiance of all international laws.”
For his part, an Army spokesman said in a statement that for now he has no record of such incidents, adding that the information released by the Palestinian side “is not currently known to the security forces.”
Following complaints these days from the Palestinian Ministry of Health and Doctors Without Borders, which accused Israel of hindering access to medical services to treat the wounded, the Israeli army claimed that its forces “allow the movement of Palestinian medical teams” to move around the city and “reduce harm to non-combatants”.
Demonstration against the Israeli military operation in Jenin.
On the ground, the situation between Israelis and Palestinians is more complex.
EL TIEMPO spoke with Ashraf el-Ajrami, a former minister in the Palestinian Authority who was in charge of the issue of Palestinian prisoners in Israel (2007-2009) and who today works as a journalist and political analyst, and with Professor Uzi Rabi, Middle East and Islam expert and director of the Merkaz Dayan Center for Middle East and African Research at Tel Aviv University.
These are his views on the largest military operation that had not occurred for almost two decades.
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“The Israeli military operation has only further complicated the situation,” says Ashraf el-Ajrami. “The Israelis have achieved nothing from a security point of view, but have lost, as what happened motivates young Palestinians to resist the occupation more and more.”
Ashraf el-Ajrami is sure that “security and stability can never be achieved after the destruction like the one we saw in Jenin” and stresses that “the only way to reduce violence is to change Israeli politics by creating a political horizon that today is totally absent.”
Israeli military vehicles during a raid on Jenin, West Bank.
The Israeli professor Uzi Rabi fully agrees that today there is no political horizon, but he interprets it differently from Ajrami and sees Palestinian responsibility as a central element. In his opinion, although he does not exempt his country from errors, there is a fundamental problem both with terrorism and with the mentality of the Palestinian leadership.
“When the Palestinians say that they were victorious, despite the blows to their terrorist infrastructure, they are speaking for internal consumption. They sell it saying that if Israel were so strong it would conquer Jenin and would not have left after two days, alleging that it left because it was afraid to stay”, Rabi affirms. “It is the culture of lies that we already know and that is the reason why the situation of the Palestinians is continually deteriorating.”
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When it comes to the political horizon, Rabi stresses that “the Palestinians have had many opportunities to receive, although not everything they demand, but a part, yes, something to build the foundation of a State, but they always reject it.”
A complex point on the internal Palestinian map is the position of the Palestinian Authority (PA). in the Jenin area.
One of the elements by which Israel justified the military intervention is that for years the PA has not had a direct presence in Jenin and, therefore, does not contain the radicals either.
This does not mean that there is any political strategy that allows progress
We remind Ashraf el-Ajrami that PA representatives, including President Mahmud Abbas’s deputy Mahmud el-Alul, were expelled from funerals for those killed in Jenin. “People are upset that the AP has failed to protect them. And the way the PA is seen in Jenin is the fault of Israel whose policy does the opposite of what it says: it continually weakens the Palestinian Authority.”
Regarding the operation, Uzi Rabi assures that Israel had no choice but to act. “In Jenin, local groups are organized into a joint command that receives support from larger groups, but they also include totally independent frameworks, all committed to terrorism in different ways, both firearms and explosive charges and even the attempt to launch rockets”, he stated.
In your opinion, Jenin was on its way to becoming “another Gaza”. “And with this operation, Israel told them no. To make it very clear, this operation was carried out, which highlighted Israel’s unique technological capabilities.
Nevertheless, Nor does the professor consider that the military operation was or could be a definitive solution to the problem. “At the tactical operational level, there were many achievements, but this does not mean that there is any political strategy that allows progress,” he said.
“It is clear that they will return. And Israel will have to be careful not to allow them to grow too big again and to act again when necessary, to limit the strike capabilities of terrorism again,” she added.
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Damage after the withdrawal of the Israeli army from Jenin.
The civilians, a drama amid the tensions between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
In the middle of the discussions, there is always the civilian population. The Israeli, exposed to the attacks, and the Palestinian, in the place of the combats when there is a military operation.
Israel maintains that it made a great effort to distinguish between the terrorists and the innocent civilian population. At the beginning of the operation, messages were sent to the cell phones of the population urging them not to leave their homes so as not to expose themselves to the danger of the shots, and when on the second night thousands chose to leave their homes to move to safer places outside from the fighting zone, the PA accused Israel of expelling them. Israel categorically denied the accusation and assured that those who left did so of their own free will. In the interim they have all returned.
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Palestinians inspect the damage to a street in the Jenin refugee camp, after a raid by the Israeli army.
Also during the two days of the operation, some 130,000 Palestinians from the West Bank went to work, like every day, in Israeli territory. That ended 2,000 Palestinians from Jenin.
“People want to live in peace, earn well, not be in trouble,” said a Palestinian from Jenin nicknamed Abu Muhamad, who was interviewed by Israeli journalist Eran Zinger on KAN public radio. “We have to live in peace and calm,” he reiterated, assuring that what is clear is that “it cannot continue like this.”
JANA BERIS
FOR THE TIME
JERUSALEM
