Final month, because the Israeli military began pulling out of Gaza beneath the ceasefire settlement, it introduced an “operation” within the occupied West Financial institution metropolis of Jenin and its refugee camp. For 3 weeks now, it has been terrorising the Palestinian individuals there, utilizing fighter jets, helicopters, tanks, drones, and bulldozers to kill and destroy.
Emboldened by the world’s indifference, the Israeli authorities is clearly trying to copy Gaza within the West Financial institution. However the Gazafication of Jenin and different refugee camps within the West Financial institution is sure to fail, simply as related brutal methods have failed previously.
There’s a cause why Israel picked Jenin for the beginning of its renewed bloody assault on the West Financial institution. The camp, which was established within the aftermath of the Nakba to deal with 8,000 Palestinians violently expelled from their properties by Zionist forces, has been an incubator of resistance for many years.
Through the first Intifada, it turned one of many nuclei of Palestinian organising and resistance. The youth who had identified nothing however occupation turned its voice, its fist, its coronary heart.
Through the second Intifada, Jenin as soon as once more served as a hub of the resistance. In April 2002, the Israeli military invaded the town, murdering 52 Palestinians, destroying tons of of properties, and displacing greater than 1 / 4 of the inhabitants.
Israel declared victory then, claiming to have crushed “terror”. But, from the ruins of Jenin, a brand new era rose, carrying on the unshakeable will to withstand.
Within the 2020s, armed resistance exercise intensified in Jenin and different refugee camps within the West Financial institution. This culminated in one other brutal Israeli assault on the town in July 2023, simply months earlier than the outbreak of the genocide in Gaza. The operation concerned the deployment of fighter jets, armed drones, tanks, bulldozers, and 1000’s of troops. The Israeli military killed no less than 10 Palestinians, destroyed properties and infrastructure, and displaced 1000’s. And but, resistance re-emerged as soon as once more and responded to calls from Gaza for mobilisation.
Jenin has develop into a hub of resistance for a cause. Refugee camps will not be merely locations the place the displaced survive – they’re the beating hearts of Palestinian consciousness. These are locations the place the injuries and trauma of the Nakba are handed from era to era, the place little kids inherit their dad and mom and grandparents’ want to return house.
Kids develop up seeing their neighbourhoods raided, associates detained or murdered, identical to 10-year-old Saddam Rajab from Tulkarem who was shot within the stomach by an Israeli soldier on January 28 and the ambulance carrying him was blocked by Israeli troops at a checkpoint. Saddam died 10 days later.
Kids in refugee camps know the steep value of combating for freedom, and as adults, they nonetheless select to pay it anyway.
Within the Gaza Strip, refugee camps like Jabalia have additionally been main strongholds of Palestinian resistance for many years for a similar cause. Traditionally, Jabalia has been the most important refugee camp in Palestine, housing 100,000 individuals. In 1987, it produced the spark that ignited the primary Intifada. It has been repeatedly focused by Israeli navy assaults which have left behind mass casualties and destruction.
After the beginning of Israel’s genocidal conflict, the Israeli military launched a number of assaults on the camp, every time following the identical brutal template: huge bombardment, home demolitions, and displacement of civilians. Every time it claimed to have dismantled the resistance, solely to return a number of months later for one more “clearing operation”.
Within the fall, the Israeli military launched an enormous marketing campaign of air strikes that devastated Jabalia. Some 90 p.c of buildings are estimated to have been destroyed.
But the resistance endured, launching operations that resulted in important Israeli navy casualties.
The continuing assault on Jenin makes use of the identical failed playbook to “dismantle” resistance by means of destruction. It has killed greater than 45 Palestinians, together with two-year-old Laila al-Khatib, forcibly displaced 20,000, demolished total blocks, besieged a hospital, and lower off the town from the remainder of the West Financial institution.
Wholesale destruction didn’t work in Jenin earlier than and it didn’t work in Gaza, so why does Israel suppose it will now?
This navy technique exposes Israel’s basic blindness. It sees resistance as one thing tangible – fighters to remove, tunnels to destroy, leaders to assassinate, weapons to grab. However in Palestine’s refugee camps, resistance flows by means of generations like blood by means of veins. It lives within the tales handed down, within the cussed insistence on dignity beneath siege, within the resolve to rebuild what has been destroyed.
Historical past has already written this story. In Jenin, in Jabalia, in each refugee camp throughout Palestine, generations have remodeled areas of momentary refuge into everlasting monuments to an thought that can’t be killed. With every invasion, with every demolition, with every try to interrupt the need of those communities, the resolve solely strengthens. It lives within the decided step of a kid strolling to high school by means of checkpoints, within the defiant smile of an elder rebuilding their house one more time, and within the collective refusal to simply accept displacement as future.
For this reason the Gazafication of Jenin will fail. You may kill revolutionaries, however you can not kill the revolution. You can’t bomb an thought into submission. You can’t kill the need to be free.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
