JENIN REFUGEE CAMP — Israel on Wednesday ended a two-day operation in the Jenin refugee camp that left 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier dead, forced thousands from their homes, and sparked new tensions between locals and the Palestinian Authority meant to be governing them.
Memes on social media ridiculed the Palestinian Authority, saying that if it was not going to fight the Israelis, it could at least hand out ammunition.
“We have to put our trust in God, not in the PA,” one protester said of the authority. They spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
In the aftermath of the Israeli raid, the Jenin refugee camp — long a haven for militant groups — was in shambles and bristling with tension. Masked men in black clothing with the insignia of local militias escorted bodies of the dead through the camp, firing their weapons into the air and chanting, “The martyrs are beloved by God.” Participants in one procession shouted for Palestinian Authority representatives to leave.
Israel said the incursion, the largest in two decades and among the few in that time to involve airstrikes, resulted in the seizure of hundreds of weapons and hundreds of thousands of dollars in “terror funds.” The operation was necessary, Israel said, because the Palestinian Authority had abandoned the camp to militants.
For more than a year, Israel has tried to clamp down on new militant groups across the West Bank, especially in the Jenin camp and the surrounding area, home to many of the 50 Palestinians who have attacked Israelis in recent months.
“If Jenin will return to terrorism, then we will return to Jenin,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday. “It will happen much quicker and much larger than what might be thought.”
Itamar Yaar, a former deputy head of Israel’s national security council, said the mission will give the Palestinian Authority a chance to reassert its control. “Based on this military success, Israel could engage with the PA, and the PA could have a very important role,” he said.
But anger at the Palestinian Authority is soaring in Jenin. Many scoffed at Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s declaration that he will cut all security coordination with Israel in response to the raid. They pointed to the scars throughout the camp left by the two-day operation — churned asphalt and mangled cars, windows and doors smashed in by military bulldozers. Bullet casings and burned tires littered the streets; water and power supplies were cut.
On a steep hill, a small crowd gathered by a partially collapsed wall of al-Ansar Mosque. The Israel Defense Forces said that the mosque had been harboring militants and that after a fierce firefight, soldiers went in and found bombmaking materials, explosive devices and the entrance to a tunnel used by militants. The tunnel was still visible Wednesday amid sandbags and rubble.
An Israeli military spokesman condemned the use of a house of worship as a base of militant operations. But if any of the neighbors here shared that anger, none said so publicly Wednesday.
“People know that what the fighters are doing serves a purpose that will help eventually,” said Ishmael Hussam, 24, a Jenin camp resident. “We grew up here with violence. We support the resistance.”
Israel has claimed that all 12 of the Palestinian men killed were combatants. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant pointed to the lack of civilian casualties as one of the mission’s successes.
“Just as we acted in Gaza two months ago in a precise operation against Islamic Jihad, so, too, did we act against all of the terror organizations in the Jenin refugee camp, and that is something that we know how to copy and paste everywhere else,” he said. He referred to a May campaign of purportedly “pinpoint” Israeli military airstrikes in the Gaza Strip; 10 civilians were killed in that operation.
Israeli authorities have not addressed the estimated 100 Palestinians injured during the operation, many of whom were still being treated. Some were forced to evacuate the hospital Tuesday afternoon when a firefight broke out nearby and bullets struck the walls.
Tear gas fired into the hospital courtyard by Israeli troops caused a stampede of Palestinians into the medical wards, said Gabriel Naumann, with the international aid group Doctors Without Borders.
“People were throwing up. Some became unconscious,” said Naumann, who said he also had vomited because of the gas. “We had to close the ER for about an hour. We were treating patients on the floor back here.”
Israel has repeatedly asserted that it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. But the bloody battles being fought and the weapons being used on the streets of Jenin are reminiscent of the Palestinian uprising from 2000 to 2005, known as the second intifada. So far, 2023 is on pace to be one of the deadliest years for West Bank Palestinians, with more than 150 fatalities. For Israelis, it is the deadliest year in more than a decade, with at least 29 killed.
Fathya al-Sadi, a 69-year-old widow in the Jenin camp, said she spent all of Monday, the first day of the incursion, hiding at the back of her house with her son, grandchildren and dozens of her neighbors, some of whom feared their houses were on Israel’s target list.
“The children were screaming; I had to hug them all the time,” she said. At one point, an Israeli soldier broadcasting from the ruined streets exhorted residents to leave, she added.
“He said, ‘Get out, get out, get out! We will protect you,’” she recalled. She filled a few plastic bags and backpacks and made her way between soldiers and military vehicles to her brother’s apartment outside the camp in Jenin city, where she and her family slept on the floor until Wednesday morning.
They were among some 4,000 of 12,000 camp residents who fled Monday night, according to Jenin Mayor Nidal al-Obeidi.
When al-Sadi returned, she found that her home was still intact but that a neighbor’s had been heavily damaged by an airstrike.
Nearby, Fadi Shibly swept bullet casings from the floor of his badly damaged house, which was used by Israeli soldiers as a firing position. In the same compound, a relative, Hussein Shibly, stood in a blackened bedroom of his two-story home. A missile had slammed through the window while he and some 50 family members and neighbors sheltered downstairs.
“They targeted us because they said one of our youths was in the resistance,” Hussein said, spreading his hands. “He is not.”
How much the fighting capabilities of Jenin’s militants had been degraded was not immediately clear, said Adi Carmi, a former official in Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service.
“Israel will need to wait and see if it’s bought itself some time,” he said. “But what is clear is that Israel will need to do what it needs to do to show the terrorists that Jenin cannot be a safe haven.”
But on Wednesday, a group of militants walked through the gates of the camp — some wearing black masks, almost all carrying automatic weapons — returning to fight.
Many never left, a 29-year-old fighter told The Washington Post in an interview late Tuesday during the final hours of the incursion, describing tunnels and other clandestine passageways that allowed militants to hide from the soldiers while moving in and out.
“The Israelis think they control the camp, but it is easy to move around,” the man said, declining to give his name because he is wanted by Israel.
He spoke near the crowded hospital outside the camp gates, wearing a white T-shirt covered in blood from carrying his brother, an 18-year-old bomb technician, to an ambulance.
“We will never break,” the man said. “We are ready.”
correction
An earlier version of this article misidentified a resident of the Jenin refugee camp. He is Fadi Shibly, not Hussein Shibly. The article has been corrected.
Rubin reported from Tel Aviv.