[News] Sowing Chaos - This is Why Israel is Invading Jenin, again

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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Sowing Chaos - This is Why Israel is Invading Jenin, againMay 22, 2024
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Israeli occupation forces invading Jenin. (Photo: via QNN)

*By Robert Inlakesh
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/robert-inlakesh>*

On the cusp of a major invasion of Rafah in the besieged Gaza Strip, the
Israeli military has set its sights on the Jenin refugee camp and its armed
resistance groups.

Following on from a series of violent assaults in the months prior, against
the Nur Shams refugee camp and its surroundings, Israel seeks to
collectively punish the people of the West Bank for the emergence of armed
groups.

Since October 7, Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed at least 510
Palestinian in the West Bank and the lion’s share of those murdered have
been in the north of the illegally occupied territory.

While Israel’s official propaganda narrative is that they are attacking
Gaza with the sole purpose of eliminating the Palestinian Resistance
movement Hamas and retrieving its prisoners who were seized by Palestinian
armed groups on October 7, the fact that the death toll in the West Bank
has grown exponentially undermines this argument greatly.
*Jenin Brigade*

In May of 2021, following what is often called the Palestinian Unity
Uprising, a small armed formation began to emerge from the Jenin Refugee
Camp and by September of that year declared itself the ‘Jenin Brigades’.

This was the first time that the West Bank had witnessed the growth of
armed resistance movements since the Second Intifada in the early 2000’s,
despite their being occasional flare ups during which Palestinians would
launch a series of lone armed attacks against their occupiers; the most
notable case of this came in late 2015 to early 2016 in the form of the
Knife Intifada.

The Jenin Brigades at first seemed to only pose a minor agitating threat to
Israeli occupation forces, as they were only a few dozen fighters and had
been completely confined to defending Jenin when the Israeli military
raided. The resistance at that time was limited to the use of
semi-automatic rifles.

In early 2022 the Jenin Brigades began to grow in numbers, after Israeli
forces had raided and murdered both civilians and fighters, encouraging
more residents from the refugee camp to take part in the armed struggle.

The group was under the primary banner of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad
(PIJ) movements armed wing, Saraya al-Quds, despite it being clear that
there were many fighters from the Fatah affiliated al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades
and the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP). What also occurred in early 2022 was the emergence of
other armed groups, operating primarily out of Nablus.
*Lions Den*

By October of 2022, the Lions Den armed group had emerged in a major way,
operating out of the Old City of Nablus and was headed by a group of young
Palestinian men in their 20’s from varying political factions.

The situation then became more complicated when the likes of Balata Refugee
Camp also formed its own resistance factions. It wasn’t long before Jenin
Refugee Camp then began to look as if it was an area in which the
Palestinian Authority (PA)’s forces no longer had full security control.

As tensions continued to escalate inside the West Bank, where Israeli
occupation forces created a new environment of violence in which hundreds
of Palestinians were being murdered each year, in 2023 the armed resistance
had developed to a point that it looked irreversible.

In Jenin, both the city and refugee camp, the PA’s Security Forces had lost
control. This is a situation that they desperately did not want to occur
elsewhere and the US Biden administration even attempted to step in by
proposing they train a specially designated PA armed force to fight the
resistance groups. Luckily this proposal never materialized.

While the resistance had spread to Tubas, Tulkarem, Nablus and the Aqabat
Jabr refugee camp near Jericho, the Israeli occupation forces had proven
ineffective at stopping the groups from growing in size through their
frequent invasions; during which they would murder many civilians as well
as fighters.

The one case in which the Israelis managed to have some success was in the
case of the Lions Den, they managed to assassinate almost everyone who was
affiliated with the PFLP, Hamas and PIJ, leaving the groups leadership in a
compromised state.

Headed by Oday al-Azizi, who was an active member in the PA’s Security
Forces, the Lions Den had the ability to maintain contact with the
Palestinian Authority and secured a temporary deal where he was arrested by
the PA in order to shield him from arrest or assassination by the Israelis.

The initial series of assassinations and major Israeli assaults on the Old
City of Nablus proved effective at minimizing the effectiveness of the
group, which still exists but is less present today than it was a year ago.
*Sowing Chaos*

In Jenin the strategy has been to arrest and murder everyone serving as a
go-between connecting the PA’s Security Forces and the Jenin Brigades, this
has involved targeting those affiliated with the resistance group who are
also members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the PA’s Security Forces
itself. The purpose in doing this is to sow chaos in Jenin.

On November 29, Israel assassinated two founders of the Jenin Brigade,
Muhammad Zubeidi and Wissam Hanoun, which triggered reactionary operations
in revenge.

Then, in December, Israeli occupation forces launched a full-scale invasion
of Jenin, claiming it was going after Hamas fighters, during which it
murdered over a dozen Palestinians.

Each time, Israeli forces have raided Jenin and its refugee camp, they have
made a point in desecrating mosques, murals, roads, civilian
infrastructure, attacking journalists, medical workers and eliminating art
work, in addition destroying cultural, local and national symbols.
*Latest Invasion*

Israel’s recent invasion of Jenin refugee camp came after a special forces
unit, affiliated with the border police, was discovered and fired upon by
the Jenin Brigades.

Israeli forces then called in backup and were supported by the army, they
would go on to murder primarily civilians, including Mahmoud Hamadiya, a
14-year-old student, a local teacher named Allam Jaradat and Wissam Bakr,
the head of the Jenin Hospital’s surgery department who was murdered in
front of the hospital itself. More than a dozen others were also injured.

The Israeli army claims that these invasions, like had previously taken
place in Nur Shams refugee camp a few weeks prior, are designed at
combating “terrorists” and are part of their alleged fight against Hamas.
However, it is clear that the groups are oriented towards defending their
camps, not launching unprovoked attacks and have only expanded as a result
of the occupation army’s violence against them.

If these raids and invasions were truly about protecting Israelis, they
wouldn’t feature attacks on hospitals, medical workers, ambulances, the
destruction of civilian roads, looting of banks, desecration of mosques and
memorial sites, including graveyards.

The charge that they are targeting Hamas is also a blatant fallacy, as the
armed wing of Hamas only has a very limited role in the West Bank and are
rarely ever the target of their attacks.

*(The Palestine Chronicle)*

*– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He
focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this
article to The Palestine Chronicle. *
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