Rights and Accountability 12 January 2025
Palestinian security forces gather at the site of a protest against clashes between Palestinian security forces and militants in the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin on 21 December 2024.
APA imagesIt has been over a month since the Palestinian Authority launched a deadly military operation in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank.
So far, at least 14 people, including six members of the PA forces, have been killed during the operation, which is purportedly targeting armed Palestinians in the camp with the aim of disarming them.
But just like the Israeli assaults on which it appears to be modeled, the violence and siege tactics indiscriminately harm local residents.
Those killed among Palestinian residents of the camp include a father and his teenage son, as well as a female Palestinian journalist.
Refugee camps in the northern occupied West Bank, including Nur Shams camp in Tulkarm, al-Faraa in Tubas, Balata in Nablus and the Jenin refugee camp, have seen the emergence of armed Palestinian groups to counter Israeli encroachment and land grabs and defend camp residents from Israeli attacks.
Since Israel began its genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023, it has also carried out repeated raids on the refugee camps in the West Bank.
The raids have included aerial bombardments, the destruction of roads and essential infrastructure like water and electricity, and the killing of both armed Palestinian fighters and civilians, including children.
The deadly campaign in Jenin appears to be a bid by the Palestinian Authority to demonstrate its loyalty and effectiveness to its Israeli overlords, as well as the incoming US administration under President-elect Donald Trump.
The PA has since its creation in the mid-1990s maintained close cooperation with Israeli occupation forces under the banner of “security coordination.”
Baked into the Oslo accords under which the PA was created is its obligation to fight Palestinian resistance – which Israel terms “terror” – on Israel’s behalf.
Gaza fantasy
The PA’s renewed demonstration of loyalty comes amid reports of its ambition to be involved in governing Gaza in a post-ceasefire scenario.
This apparently competes with similar Emirati ambitions.
The United Arab Emirates discussed with the United States the possibility that it would participate in a “provisional administration” until a “reformed” PA is able to govern, Reuters reported last week, citing a dozen foreign diplomats and Western officials.
“The UAE will not participate in any plan that fails to include significant reform of the Palestinian Authority, its empowerment, and the establishment of a credible roadmap toward a Palestinian state,” a UAE official told Reuters.
The PA felt marginalized by Emirati ambitions, which appeared more aligned with Trump’s wishes. This frustration prompted the PA to launch the large-scale, deadly raid in Jenin, rather than a smaller operation in Tulkarm initially recommended by the US, according to to the publication Middle East Eye, citing unnamed officials, both current and former, from Egypt, the US and Israel.
For the PA, Emirati or American ambitions to be realized in Gaza, Israel would first need to achieve its declared military objectives – an outcome that remains far-fetched.
Such plans don’t always go as expected, and may prove as short-lived as the ill-fated $230 million pier off Gaza’s coast, which was built by the United States under discreet objectives before the project was abandoned and the pier partially drifted ashore in Ashdod, southern Israel.
Israel’s extremist right-wing politicians publicly undermine the PA, despite its close collaboration with Israel.
The military campaign in Jenin is a clear example of acting at Israel’s behest, and Israel and the US appear content with the PA’s deadly performance.
“Israel has been surprised by the determination shown by Palestinian security forces during the fighting,” The Wall Street Journal reported, citing an unnamed Israeli “security” official.
The PA is now requesting that the US approve a four-year $680 million plan to train its forces and boost its ammunition and armored vehicles, unnamed American and PA sources revealed to the publication Middle East Eye.
All this weaponry is solely to be used against fellow Palestinians.
PA “officials requested in the meeting that their needs for armored vehicles and ammunition be met urgently in light of the difficulty of the clashes and their inability to resolve the situation in the Jenin camp,” a source told Middle East Eye.
The request, made in mid-December during a meeting with US officials in the PA ministry of interior in Ramallah, came with expressions of frustration from the Palestinian side over the US’s failure to fulfill its commitments, including arming PA forces and approving funding for PA prisons in Nablus and Bethlehem.
In the areas of occupied territory where the PA has nominal control, Palestinian forces are only allowed to arrest other Palestinians. They cannot touch Israeli soldiers or settlers who attack Palestinians.
PA prisons anywhere in the West Bank are predominantly used for jailing Palestinians who dare to resist Israel’s military occupation.
This means in practice that the PA exists to protect Israel and its settlers, and to police Palestinians on Israel’s behalf. The PA’s key role in suppressing Palestinian protest and resistance to Israel’s military occupation is one reason why the US and European states fund it.
“The PA’s request for additional funding and arms made sense because the US has been pressing the PA for months to ramp up security operations in the occupied West Bank,” the publication reported, citing a former US intelligence official.
Israeli tactics
Mirroring Israeli military tactics during raids, PA forces sealed off the camp’s entrances and stationed themselves inside homes and a hospital in the Jenin refugee camp.
Nearly 2,000 camp residents were forcibly displaced to nearby areas.
The remaining Palestinians in the camp “have been struggling to meet basic needs,” the UN monitoring group OCHA reported. Grocery stores are running out of supplies and residents have had little access to water.
Over 60 percent of the Jenin refugee camp’s population is affected by faulty water networks, which have been damaged by successive Israeli assaults, and the PA’s assault has halted repair work.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) was forced to suspend its services in the camp for nearly three weeks.
Four UNRWA schools have been shuttered in the camp since 9 December, leaving 1,600 students out of school for weeks.
For nearly two weeks, an UNRWA health center in the camp was temporarily occupied by armed Palestinians.
The PA raid resulted in significant infrastructural damage, with nearly 30 homes burned and water tanks and generators damaged.
UNRWA was also forced to suspend solid waste management, leading to accumulating waste.
A young Palestinian journalist, 21-year-old Shatha Sabbagh, was killed after being shot in the head outside her home on 28 December.
OCHA said it “remains unclear whether she was shot by Palestinian forces or armed Palestinians” but the journalist’s family was unambiguous in laying blame on the PA.
Palestinian Authority forces seized an anti-tank weapon during their raid and handed it over to the Israeli army, Israel’s Channel 14 reported.“We can congratulate the security authorities,” said the Israeli journalist Hillel Biton Rosen.
Over the course of the raid, Palestinian Authority forces said they arrested nearly 250 individuals and defused around 250 improvised explosive devices, which are often planted by resistance groups along the roads.
These devices have been more widely used by the armed resistance in the northern areas to resist Israeli invasions into their refugee camps and neighborhoods. During successive Israeli raids through the camps, bulldozers ravage through the streets, destroying civil infrastructure, commercial stores and residential areas.
This damages water and sewage networks and impedes movement, including ambulances trying to reach the injured.
Though this destruction of critical infrastructure is carried out under the guise of uprooting explosive devices from roads, Palestinians have interpreted these practices to be vengeful policies of collective punishment.
Earlier this month, the PA ordered all operations by the Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera in the occupied West Bank halted.
After a decision by the PA’s culture, interior and communications ministry, several Al Jazeera websites were also shut for four months.
PA security personnel handed an official order to Al Jazeera staff before shuttering the Ramallah office.
The footage of the interaction was a repeat of the situation in September when Israeli soldiers on live broadcast arrived at the network’s Ramallah office and handed the bureau head, Walid al-Omari, a notice to shut it down.
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