Under Fire: Report from Jenin Refugee Camp on Israel's Largest West Bank Attack in 20 Years
Israel attacked the Jenin refugee camp this weekend in what some are calling the largest military operation in the occupied West Bank in 20 years. Israel claims to have attacked militants in the camp, but camp residents say they were targeted by airstrikes and ground troops. Palestinian health officials say the massive two-day military offensive killed 12 Palestinians and injured at least 140 more. This continues a pattern of escalating violence by Israel against Palestinians, including attacks by settlers against residents of the occupied West Bank. We speak with Mustafa Sheta, general manager of The Freedom Theatre in Jenin, who shares his firsthand account of the attack and describes it as an effort "to end the concept and the idea of resistance in Palestine." Amjad Iraqi, senior editor at _+972 Magazine_, describes Israel's doctrine of "mowing the lawn" in Palestine and calls this weekend's events part of "the maintenance of an apartheid regime."
= new reply since forum marked as read
972 Magazine in their report .
I stopped posting from there because of the howls of complaints i recieved 
If you dont read it you should .
Haaretz has a good analysis on why :
Jenin Was an Extreme Example of Politics Overriding Military Aims
It seems the main impetus to Netanyahu's decision to launch the operation was the settlers' pressure on the government ■ Why it's irrelevant to compare what happened in Jenin to the destructive Operation Defensive Shield in 2002
by Amos Harel
July 7 , 2023
Toward the end of the two-day military operation in Jenin this week, the person who authorized it showed up to reap the minor political profit that was, after all, gleaned from the event. On Tuesday afternoon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went into the field, namely the Salem Checkpoint north of Jenin. The aim was a brief photo-op. The prime minister arrived at the site accompanied by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, his bureau’s spokespeople and, as usual lately, a correspondent from Channel 14, the premier’s home channel.
Netanyahu was photographed against the backdrop of the adjacent army base, while spouting the standard round of clichés about our courageous boys in uniform, the “many terrorist infrastructures” that were destroyed in the operation, and about our enemies who will undoubtedly be far more cautious from now on. Within a short time the entourage was already headed back to Jerusalem for a meeting with the president of Liberia, George Weah. Three hours later, when the troops started to leave the Jenin refugee camp, a soldier from the Egoz unit, Sgt. Maj. David Yehuda Yitzchak, from the West Bank settlement of Beit El, was killed. The possibility that he was mistakenly shot by other soldiers from the unit is being looked into. The explanations for this will have to be supplied by the Israel Defense Forces’ ranking officers – as far as the politicians are concerned, the story is over.
It’s apparently the way of the world. No decision about a military operation is completely disconnected from events in the political realm. Ariel Sharon, as prime minister, waited almost a year until he felt he had mustered sufficient public support before launching Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank in the spring of 2002. Four years later, the government of Ehud Olmert embarked on the final, folly-ridden move of the Lebanon War – an attempt to seize the entire territory south of the Litani River – even as surveys attested to a precipitous decline in the public’s assessment of the government’s performance. In Israel, soldiers have often been killed in actions that were undertaken for reasons that were not always consistent with state rationale. Similarly, the army’s considerations are not always only substantive. Every key decision made by the General Staff takes into account issues of image and public status.
Yet even so, this time the political use that was made of the IDF looks even more crass than in the past. The Shin Bet security service, and subsequently the IDF’s top brass as well, changed their view recently and decided to support a more extensive military incursion in Jenin, instead of the arrest actions that are frequent but limited in scope. However, it appears that the principal motive for the decision made by Netanyahu and Gallant – which once again did not pass through the security cabinet – was the pressure applied by the settlers on the government, in the wake of the deterioration of the security situation on the roads in the West Bank. And incidentally, it’s far from certain that the Jenin operation will solve that specific problem. Most of the shooting attacks occur on the roads that serve a larger Israeli population, in the Nablus and Ramallah areas.
There was another incident Thursday afternoon, when a Palestinian shot to death a young Israeli next to the Kedumim settlement. The assailant was shot and killed after a chase by the army and the settlements’ security coordinator. The broad representation of the settlers and their vested interests at the cabinet table has contributed to the influence they wield. Nor can Netanyahu afford to continue looking like he’s weak in the face of terrorism, given the way he himself slammed the previous government on this subject.
The slight feeling of nausea was also heightened by the terrifyingly dumb discussion about the operation that was conducted in the social networks. Not that the established media excelled. There were broadcasters and influencers who urged the IDF to triumph, meaning to continue pounding Jenin, without ever having bothered to visit the place themselves. Others did in fact enter the refugee camp under the protection of the IDF, but filed reports that were as misleading as they were militant.
In the course of the operation, Shas MKs, most of whose children have never held a firearm, held a festive reading of Psalms for the soldiers’ success. In the Knesset, the coalition’s efforts to foment a regime coup didn’t let up for a moment. And leaders of the settlers, who had pushed for the operation, were apparently the ones who circulated rumors on a vast scale – on Sunday night, hours before the troops started to move toward the camp – about the decision to launch it. The IDF was furious and even considered postponing the operation, but in the end decided to go ahead, despite losing the advantage of surprise.
On Tuesday, while driving toward Jenin, we passed the public square next to the base where Netanyahu and Gallant had staged their photo-op two hours earlier, far from the pesky questions of the press. It took a minute or to remember why – even though more than 20 years have passed – this place is engraved in the memory.
It was here, one evening in mid-April 2002, that the head of Central Command at the time, Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan, stood and patiently answered tough questions that were hurled at him by reporters from Israel and abroad. The hardest day of Operation Defense Shield had just ended. That morning, 13 reserve soldiers were killed in a deadly ambush of explosive devices and firearms at a site that was later dubbed “the bathtub,” a kind of inner courtyard that was under the control of armed Palestinians. In the evening, after the details became public, Eitan stood there alone: None of the politicians who had grabbed the spotlight for themselves when the army scored successes volunteered to accompany him during failure. So maybe not all that much has changed after all.
Operation Defensive Shield was mentioned time and again this week. But the comparisons drawn between the two events were proven to be fundamentally mistaken after the IDF withdrew from the Jenin refugee camp within two days, making no effort to capture and hold it. The scale of destruction is also not the same. IDF heavy machinery did indeed rip up roads in the camp to uncover explosive devices suspected to be hidden there, under the asphalt. In doing so, they caused serious damage to water and electricity infrastructure – but it’s nothing like the sights of 2002, immediately after the battle in the camp, at the site dubbed “Ground Zero” because of the utter devastation that the IDF left following days of fierce house-to-house fighting.
The relevant point of comparison is a different one. The immense military might that the IDF employed in 2002, at times with brutality, led gradually to a fundamental change in the situation in the West Bank, and finally to the waning of Palestinian terrorism for a decade. The present generation of armed militants are the generation who did not know Defensive Shield. At most, the militants of today were two years old at the time. The argument frequently heard in the IDF and Shin Bet is that another display of force is needed to restore the balance of deterrence and to instill in the Palestinians, especially in closed, gung-ho areas like the Jenin refugee camp, fear of the IDF once again.
There’s something to that, but it’s not a sufficiently comprehensive approach. It doesn’t take into account the basic desire of an occupied people to fight, and certainly to repulse anyone who invades their camp (a desire that is also translated into acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians). And it ignores the contribution of the aggressive settlement policy of the present government and its absolute refusal to return to a peace process, to the growing despair of the Palestinians.
On Wednesday afternoon, Gallant spoke with media correspondents by phone. The defense minister said three interesting things. First, he maintained, the aim of the incursion was to restore the IDF’s freedom of operation in the refugee camp, so that a mission to arrest wanted individuals, which now requires a battalion, can be assigned once more to a company (a tenth of the forces now employed). It’s possible, Gallant admitted, that a few more operations might be needed in the camp to achieve this goal.
Second, he said, he hopes it will be possible to mobilize the Palestinian Authority, with Israeli aid, to repair the damage that the operation inflicted on the camp’s infrastructure. In other words, Israel wants to exploit the operation to bring the PA in through the back door, and get it involved in a region it has long since abandoned and left to the chaotic rule of the armed militants.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, Gallant emphasized that “from the point of view of the security establishment, and from my point of view as defense minister, a functioning PA and Palestinian apparatuses that do their job is an Israeli security interest. If the Palestinians demonstrate responsibility, as has happened in the past, we will enable them to do it.” In other words, Israel will encourage them to assume heightened security responsibility, including in the northern West Bank, where the PA has lost control.
But Gallant’s sensible remarks are liable to be shattered on the bedrock of reality, for reasons that are not necessarily under his control. On Wednesday, the day after the army pulled out of Jenin, senior PA official Azam al-Ahmad visited the refugee camp to assess the damage. Youths in the camp drove him out, threatening violence. Then they chased his convoy to the local Muqata building, the PA’s headquarters in Jenin. His bodyguards had to use teargas to disperse them.
Palestinian pollster Dr. Khalil Shikaki, whose research and analyses Israel views as being very credible, last month published the results of a new survey, which does not augur well. The poll found that two-thirds of the Palestinians in the territories believe Israel will not be around to celebrate its centenary in 2048.
The overwhelming majority also believe that the Palestinian people will succeed in regaining all its land and in returning all the refugees to their homes. The survey shows a further decline, both in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, in Palestinian support for President Mahmoud Abbas and for the Fatah movement he heads. About half of those surveyed think that the collapse of the PA is now effectively becoming a national interest of the Palestinians. Shikaki’s survey projects – and not for the first time – a picture of depression and despair alongside militancy.
Here, oddly enough, they have a common denominator with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. In the Defense Ministry, Smotrich is only the additional minister, alongside the senior figure, Gallant. But when it comes to settlement policy in the territories, it appears that what Smotrich says, goes. Increasingly it is becoming apparent that he is dictating the government’s policy of expansion, which is encouraging the increase of the territory of the settlements and the establishment of new settler outposts. And he also has an ambitious plan with regard to the PA, which flies in the face of what Gallant said. In short, Smotrich is not concealing his intention to bring about the PA’s collapse and Israel’s return to the territories it vacated in the West Bank. Netanyahu has the final say, but when there are central ministers who espouse that extremist approach, it’s hard to see Gallant’s promises being realized.
Source : https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-07-07/ty-article/.premium/jenin-was-an-extreme-example-of-politics-overriding-military-aims/00000189-2c80-d145-a1e9-3ff69e360000?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=Haaretz%2Fmagazine%2FIsrael+and+Middle+East+News
Apologies for posting in full but its behind a paywall .
