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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Sowing Chaos - This is Why Israel is Invading Jenin, again</h1>May 22, 2024</div>
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<img src="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Jenin_Invasion_QNN.png" alt="" title="Jenin_Invasion_QNN" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" width="438" height="294" style="margin-right: 25px;">
Israeli occupation forces invading Jenin. (Photo: via QNN)
<p><strong>By <a href="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/writers/robert-inlakesh" title="Display all articles for Robert Inlakesh">Robert Inlakesh</a></strong></p>
<blockquote>
<h3><span>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. </span></h3>
</blockquote>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<h4><strong>Jenin Brigade</strong></h4>
<p><span>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’. </span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<h4><strong>Lions Den</strong></h4>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<h4><strong>Sowing Chaos</strong></h4>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>On November 29, Israel assassinated two founders of the Jenin
Brigade, Muhammad Zubeidi and Wissam Hanoun, which triggered reactionary
operations in revenge. </span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<h4><strong>Latest Invasion</strong></h4>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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.</span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><span>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. </span></p>
<p><em>(The Palestine Chronicle)</em></p>
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<p><img src="https://www.palestinechronicle.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Robert-Inlakesh.png" width="180" height="180" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p>
<p><span><em>– 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. </em></span></p></div>
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