Symbolic West Bank refugee camp lies in ruins after Israeli campaign

JENIN, West Bank — After spending 15 months in an Israeli prison, Mustafa Sheta set out for Jenin with his brothers. They said a lot had changed while he was in prison.

The warriors who once ran away and engaged in gunfights with Israeli soldiers every day? Gone. The vibrant population of the refugee camp that gave Jenin its reputation as the capital of martyrs? Gone. Was Sheta running the Theater in the camp where he trained as an internationally recognized beacon of Palestinian cultural resistance? Gone.

It turned out that Jenin, known as the city that never surrendered, surrendered.

“I’m shocked. The concept of resilience in Jenin is really important to the people. Where are the fighters, the Palestinian Authority, the grassroots organization, the local leaders?” Sheta said.

“I felt like we lost the war, like we were losing this war.”

Jenin has become a perfect model for how Israel has largely taken control of the northern West Bank in its long-running campaign called Operation Iron Wall.

Israel has deployed soldiers, tanks, helicopters and even air strikes on Jenin and other cities for more than 300 days; This has left a trail of destruction that has triggered what aid groups call the most severe period of displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank (initially more than 40,000, now down to about 32,000) since Israel occupied the territory in 1967. In a report published on November 20, Human Rights Watch alleged that the actions of Israeli forces constituted war crimes. And crimes against humanity.

Refugee camps, which were established by Israel in 1948 as tent camps for Palestinians, but over the decades turned into slums that Israel sees as a node of militancy, are particularly subject to Israel’s anger.

Three of these (Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps) were depopulated and almost entirely occupied by the Israeli army for nearly nine months, with soldiers systematically demolishing homes.

Of these, the Jenin camp, which has legendary status among Palestinians, suffered the worst in 2002 when a 10-day battle between militants and Israeli forces led to devastation for many people there compared to Gaza.

For Palestinians, who see the camp and the surrounding city of Jenin as symbols of resistance to occupation, it has become an example of the sense of hopelessness and fatigue that comes from a struggle to establish a Palestinian state that has never seemed more fruitless.

Sheta, the theater’s general manager, had staged politically themed works from December 2023 until March this year, when he was arrested without charge. The Freedom Theater became famous for staging adaptations of works such as George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani’s tragic novel “Men in the Sun,” about three men escaping from refugee camps.

Even though the theater has regrouped elsewhere, it is not the same. “We think that the Israeli army arrested the theater because we were not in the camp,” he said. “Our soul is there.”

Using satellite data from October, the United Nations estimates that more than half of the buildings in the camp (about 700 structures) were destroyed or damaged, with entire residential blocks razed or blown up. Many streets were either torn apart or closed due to the 29 sets erected by Israeli forces; Many other streets were widened by bulldozers to create corridors intended to facilitate future military operations.

A Palestinian woman walks past a wall riddled with bullet holes in the Jenin camp in February. In the months since then, the population of the camp has decreased.

(John Wessels/AFP/Getty Images)

The Israeli military says the aim of the operation in the camps is to eliminate militant infrastructure, including explosives factories, weapons depots and tunnels. It also aims to root out groups such as the Jenin Battalion, a loose alliance of fighters from different factions including Fatah, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The Jenin Battalion fought primarily with Israeli forces but also clashed with the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank and cooperates with Israel on security issues; Many Palestinians view the authority as corrupt and impotent.

But residents and Palestinian officials say any resistance in the camp was crushed shortly after the operation began in January, and Israel’s ongoing occupation remains a secret for about 14,000 people who have been deported and have no idea when or if they will be allowed to return.

“There is no Jenin Battalion anymore. Not a single person is alive. They killed them one by one,” said Shadi Dabaya, 54, sitting among a group of men at the main entrance of the Jenin camp. They remained silent as the Israeli armored vehicle roared by; its antenna dangling over the shoulder that blocked the street.

Israeli soldiers march behind a tank in a camp for Palestinian refugees in Jenin in February. In the months since then, the Israeli army has cut off access to the camp.

(John Wessels/AFP/Getty Images)

“We hear that they are constantly shooting,” Dabaya said, pointing at the Israelis. “They turned the camp into a training area.”

Dabaya added that no residents were allowed to visit. In September, Israeli soldiers shot and killed two 14-year-old boys as they tried to enter the camp to retrieve some of their belongings. The Israeli military told the media that the children approached the soldiers, “posed a threat to them” and did not comply with orders to stay away; He said the shooting was under review.

“With all this destruction, even if the Israelis withdraw from the camp tonight, we will need months to be able to live there; all the infrastructure is destroyed,” said Mohammed Al-Sabbagh, head of the camp’s Public Services Committee.

For now, he said, families are concentrated in a block of 20 buildings containing one-room dormitories about six miles from the camp. But months after moving there, the Palestinian Authority is unable to pay the $63,000 monthly rent, as Israel cuts tax revenues and takes other measures that choke its finances.

“Even those who accept these terrible conditions, squeezed into a small room reserved for a single student with their families, will find themselves on the street,” Al-Sabbagh said.

The worst part was that he had no idea if his house was still standing.

“If we knew what the Israelis were doing, we could at least figure out what to do on our own.”

The impact of the operation in Jenin spread far beyond the camp. Residents of the area claim that Israeli soldiers, who once roamed the streets around the city with armored vehicles for fear of attack, now patrol almost every day unhindered and raid shops and houses at will.

Areas near the camp were also evacuated. A Palestinian Authority official, who declined to give his name for security reasons, said 1,500 residents of these areas have been forced to leave so far.

“These people have nothing to do with the camp, but they were forcibly removed from the camp,” he said.

One of the affected neighborhoods is Jabriyat, an affluent area overlooking the camp that feels like a ghost town, where villas bear the dusty patina of abandonment.

Hiba Jarrar, one of the last residents of her street in Cebriyat, said, “All of us living around the camp are paying the price for this.” From his balcony, he pointed to a building that Israeli soldiers had recently seized.

“There is no resistance, zero. Palestinians do not fire a single bullet. A soldier can raid any house on his own because he feels safe,” said the woman, adding that in the past, when she heard gunshots, she assumed that Palestinians and Israelis were fighting. now he knows it only comes from Israeli soldiers.

“You know what’s sad?” he said. “If there was someone fighting the Israelis right now, people here would tell them to stop. They just want to live. They’re desperate.”

A Palestinian man carries a child along a road destroyed by Israeli forces during a large-scale military operation in the eastern city of Jenin, near the Jenin refugee camp.

(John Wessels/AFP/Getty Images)

Palestinian officials said that despite repeated requests, Israeli officials had not given any indication of when they would leave the camp, and all attempts to facilitate visits to the camp had been rejected.

“What is happening in the camp is not a necessary security privilege. There is nothing that requires the Israelis to do what they did,” said Palestinian Authority Security Forces spokesman Brig. General Anwar Rajab added that his forces were able to provide security and that Israel was undermining their authority with its actions.

Rajab echoed the sentiments of residents, analysts and aid workers who see Israel’s offensive as a larger plan to reorganize the camps as ordinary city neighborhoods rather than refugee shelters. Such a rebranding would essentially eliminate the idea that Palestinians are refugees.

“It targets a community by changing the topography on the ground,” said Roland Friedrich, director of West Bank affairs for UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. He added that Israeli officials in local media said that once Operation Iron Wall is completed, “the refugee issue will no longer be expressed geographically.”

Another measure in the same direction is Israel’s refusal to allow UNRWA to return to the camp, according to a Palestinian Authority official who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Among those hoping to return one day is Sheta, who went to the embankment at the camp’s entrance after being released from detention; it was the closest place to the theater, which was founded in 2006 by Zakaria Zubeidi, a former Palestinian fighter from Jenin, and a left-wing Israeli actor and Swedish activist.

He said his prison was a period of routine beatings and humiliation, with soldiers strip-searching detainees, recording them with their phones and taunting them. He said Israelis view Palestinians as “not even humans, not even animals, less than nothing.”

He “returned to use the same tools” he used to resist Israeli occupation before his arrest, but acknowledged that people in Jenin had changed. “Their priorities are different. Some have lost confidence in the Palestinian cause,” he said.

Some in the community thought he was “crazy” for his involvement in non-violent methods. But “if you lose your cultural front, you lose your identity, your heritage, your roots with this land,” he said. He also added with a tired smile, if his methods were not effective, why did the Israelis arrest him?

“This at least proves to me that my work bothers them, right?”