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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://popularresistance.org/inside-the-wasps-nest-the-rise-of-the-jenin-brigade/">popularresistance.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Inside The 'Wasps’ Nest': The Rise Of The Jenin Brigade</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">By Mariam Barghouti, Mondoweiss.- November 12, 2022<br></div>
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<img src="cid:ii_lag0wz230" alt="image.png" width="392" height="221"><br><p>Above Photo: Palestinian militants from the Jenin Brigade take
part in a press conference, in Jenin refugee camp on March 1, 2022.
Ahmed Ibrahim / APA Images.</p>
<h2>Jenin refugee camp has been turned into a “liberated area” by armed resistance factions.</h2>
<p><strong>Now the resistance hopes the Jenin model will spread to other parts of the West Bank.</strong></p>
<p>“Look, we are defending ourselves,” he says, in a voice both clear
and firm, apparently anticipating the question. “I first became wanted
[by Israel] two years ago,” he tells <em>Mondoweiss.</em></p>
<p>Pistol always on hand, his stature is imposing, his gait upright. Abu
Daboor, 28, stands at the entrance of Jenin refugee camp. The brown
flesh of his hands contrasts with his black top and dark sweatpants.
Behind him, past the roundabout and through the barricades at the
entrance of Jenin Refugee camp, a clumsy graffiti reads, “the wasps’
nest welcomes you.”</p>
<p>Established in 1953, the 0.42 square kilometers comprising the camp
is home to almost 12,000 Palestinians, many of whom are originally from
areas near <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/jenin_refugee_camp.pdf">Haifa and Nazareth</a>, north of historic Palestine.</p>
<p>Jenin refugee camp is widely known among the Israeli security
apparatus as “the wasp’s nest,” a term that with the start of the year
has been re-popularized, especially during the first months of the
ongoing Israeli <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/tag/operation-break-the-wave/">military onslaught</a> on bastions of Palestinian resistance.</p>
<p>It is almost 3:00 a.m., and the watchmen of the camp are patrolling
the streets nearby, ready to protect the camp from Israeli invasions.
Despite the late hour, the men are alert to any unfamiliar face, fearing
they may potentially be undercover Israeli special forces on an
assassination mission. This year, more than 16 resistance fighters have
been targeted and assassinated in Jenin alone, the result of a return to
the decades-old Israeli policy of “<a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2022/10/four-youth-killed-in-the-last-24-hours-amidst-ongoing-israeli-wave-of-extra-judicial-assassinations/">liquidation</a>”.</p>
<h3>Cooperation Of The Armed Factions In Jenin</h3>
<p>“This is the first time I have seen such targeted attacks,” Yara Eid,
a student and activist that reported from Gaza during Operation
Breaking Dawn, told <em>Mondoweiss</em> back in August. She was
referring to the Israeli strikes against leaders of the Palestinian
Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza. The Israeli onslaught on Gaza, which <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2022/10/four-youth-killed-in-the-last-24-hours-amidst-ongoing-israeli-wave-of-extra-judicial-assassinations/">took the lives of 51 Palestinians</a>, 17 of whom were children, was motivated by the PIJ’s role in funding armed groups in the West Bank.</p>
<p>One of the main groups that was founded by the PIJ was the Jenin Brigade, <em>Katibet Jenin</em> in Arabic. Although the Brigade initially functioned as a Jenin branch of <em>Saraya al-Quds</em> (the
Al-Quds Brigades, the PIJ’s armed wing), the Jenin Brigade has now
evolved into a more complex and politically unaffiliated formation. It
operates as an umbrella organization for a diverse set of armed groups,
and the political and factional ideologies of the various fighters in
the Brigade have taken a backseat to the immediate objective of
protecting the camp and repelling Israeli incursions.</p>
<p>“Each faction operates on its own,” 43-year-old Abu Mujahed, the
camp’s spokesperson for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade (Fatah’s armed wing)
told <em>Mondoweiss</em> from a home that had harbored the two Palestinian escapees from the <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2022/09/we-are-living-in-graves-and-our-demand-is-freedom-the-gilboa-prison-break-one-year-later/">Gilboa Prison break</a>, Munadel Nufeiat and Ayham Kamamji. “But when the army invades, we are all on the ground,” he said.</p>
<p>By “we,” Abu Mujahed refers to all of the armed political organizations, regardless of political faction. Since <em>Saraya al-Quds</em> and
the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade operate in tandem, Israel is no longer
interested in targeting, or isolating, one faction at the expense of
another. The effect this has had for Palestinians is to erode, if not
dissolve, factional rivalries. This has not, however, meant the
dissolution of factional affiliation.</p>
<p>For fighters, being part of a faction is not necessarily about
ideological agreement or a political line, but rather becomes a means of
operating within the safety of membership. “I get my legitimacy, my
cover…from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade,” Abu Mujahed says.</p>
<p>“We have directly informed the leadership that we will not forgo the
rifle,” Abu Mujahed continued. Glancing occasionally at his phone for
word of an Israeli invasion of the camp, he turns back to me and says
defiantly: “we are with armed resistance.”</p>
<p>As resistance fighters refuse to operate clandestinely or
underground, they allow for a transparency that carves a space for
political diversity and battle-unity. This continues to allow resistance
groups to flaunt their presence in the streets — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz2mnvizmDw">to their fellow Palestinians</a>, but also to the globe — as a legitimate armed group resisting an <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/10/commission-inquiry-finds-israeli-occupation-unlawful-under-international-law">illegal Israeli occupation</a>.</p>
<h3>A Liberated Palestinian Area</h3>
<p>With dawn prayers just two hours away, the streets of Jenin refugee
camp are still. The shadows of the camp loom over the heads of the
scouts moving within the camp. Everyone else is in their homes, knowing
that an Israeli military raid is more than likely to occur.</p>
<p>In June, the Israeli military’s social media account <a href="https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1537834970819006464">described</a> Jenin
as “a stronghold for the world’s deadliest terrorist groups.” This
language is reminiscent of the precursors to the 2002 invasion of the
West Bank, when Israel launched <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2017/05/remembering-operation-defensive/">Operation Defensive Shield</a> against Palestinian towns, villages, and cities. <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2022/04/remembering-jenin-20-years-after-in-the-shadow-of-ukraine/">Jenin and Nablus</a>, located in the northern West Bank, bore the brunt of the attack.</p>
<p>The primary objective of the operation was to “strike Palestinian
terrorist infrastructures and put an end to the wave of terrorist
attacks against Israeli citizens,” according to the official Israeli
army website. Yet, almost two decades after the brutal invasion — which
caused more harm to non-combatants and civilians, especially children —
resistance continues to rise out of Jenin and elsewhere.</p>
<p>Like the <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2022/11/the-story-of-the-lions-den/">Lions’ Den</a> operating
out of the Old City in Nablus, Jenin refugee camp has become a
neighborhood of wanted men left to fend for themselves and to protect
their townspeople amid attacks by the Israeli military and special
forces.</p>
<p>Abu Daboor stands with his arms crossed at the entrance of the camp.
The young fighter shows his pistol for a moment and tucks it away.
“Look, I consider Jenin refugee camp as a liberated Palestinian area,”
he says with enthusiasm.</p>
<p>During Israeli army operations and raids on Palestinian cities and
towns, a soldier can often be heard shouting from the speakers attached
to the army vehicle declaring the area as “a closed military zone.”</p>
<p>This <a href="https://law.acri.org.il/en/protestright-subject/closed-military-zone/">illegal practice</a> acts
as a precursor to a violent crackdown on Palestinians in the area.
During the years of the Second Intifada, and after it, Israeli soldiers
would commonly threaten via loudspeakers that “whoever is roaming will
be killed*.*”</p>
<p>Yet for the first time, Jenin refugee camp cannot be turned into a
closed military area and invaded by Israeli forces freely and without
impediment. “Jenin is a liberated area. We hope it extends to the rest
of Palestine, as the small liberated areas spread,” Abu Daboor told <em>Mondoweiss</em>,
hoping that such a strategy would gradually win **“one bit back at a
time.” This is where the power of the Jenin model lies, in inspiring
Palestinians, if not by success, then by lessons learned from past
failures.</p>
<p>Amid the violent crackdown on Palestinian resistance in <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2022/10/israeli-army-launches-massive-overnight-assault-on-nablus-6-palestinians-killed/">Nablus</a> and <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2022/11/in-a-bloody-24-hours-four-palestinians-killed-by-israeli-forces/">Jenin</a>,
a new “disruption brigade” has taken shape in Ramallah and Al-Bireh.
This comes at a time when Palestinian youth from Ramallah, Nablus,
Bethlehem, and many other areas of the West Bank are finding new means
of confrontation.</p>
<h3>A Resistance Movement Emerges Under The Leadership’s Nose</h3>
<p>Before the assassination of the <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2022/02/israeli-forces-kill-2-palestinian-teens-in-24-hours-5-palestinians-in-a-week/">three resistance fighters</a> from
Nablus on February 8, the Jenin Brigade was already triggering Israeli
anxiety around the specter of Palestinian armed confrontation with the
army.</p>
<p>“I am not going to lie to you,” Abu Mujahed said. “There is no real
strategy here. We are going with the flow, to be frank,” he remarked
with disarming candor. “All of this, it’s a collective popular wave.”</p>
<p>Palestinian resistance fighters are neither separate from the broader
Palestinian community, nor isolated from their generational peers. In
one hand, they carry the gun, and in the other, they pursue unity of
struggle and forge bonds of comradeship.</p>
<p>“Our approach is to increase and reinforce Palestinian resistance and
national unity,” Abu Mujhad says. Yet as Palestinian resistance groups
in Jenin and Nablus embody political unity in their struggle against
colonialism, unity at the political level remains ever distant.</p>
<p>The interactions observed between Palestinian leaders and
representatives from both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA)
showcase a widening disconnect from the Palestinian lived reality, as
well as the diplomatic frameworks under which leaders operate, in order
to ensure their own factional survival, relevance, or control.</p>
<p>“After being released from Israeli prisons, I was targeted by the
PA,” Abu Daboor recalls, noting that he had spent almost five years in
Israeli prisons throughout his twenties. “I was first targeted by the PA
a year and a half ago, and the PA tried to kill me twice before.” Abu
Daboor’s tone turns sour, as he recounts the drive-by shooting incident
that targeted him last year.</p>
<p>Since the marked rise of Palestinian resistance against illegal
Israeli settlement expansion, the PA and Hamas leadership have released
public statements of support for the resistance.</p>
<p>Yet both have to varying degrees stood by and allowed the targeted
assassinations of resistance fighters to take place. This was the case
with Hamas’ lack of intervention during the recent Gaza attack — when
Israel targeted PIJ offices in Gaza and <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2022/08/10-palestinians-one-child-killed-in-israeli-airstrikes-on-gaza/">assassinated PIJ senior commander Tayseer Al-Jaabari</a>, Israel was sure not to harm any of the Hamas offices in the building shared with the PIJ.</p>
<p>The PA has taken this many steps further, directly participating in
quelling the resistance and doing Israel’s dirty work. This was the case
with the <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2022/09/pa-arrests-resistance-fighters-in-nablus-many-injured-and-one-man-left-dead-after-clashes/">PA’s arrest of two members of the Lions’ Den</a> in Nablus back in September.</p>
<p>The Palestinian population’s aspirations to live independently,
freely, and with control over their own fate, is the primary driver
behind this period of armed confrontation. But while the spotlight is
now on the armed groups, the Palestinian population at large has engaged
in open confrontation with Israeli authorities. The impunity of settler
violence and persistent settlement expansion only adds fuel to the
fire, and bubbling beneath the surface is a sea of collective unrest.</p>
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