According to the Wall Street Journal, Israel has “never tried anything like what it is doing now: clearing the camps entirely.”
The Israeli army’s aggressive incursion into the occupied West Bank’s refugee camp of Jenin has resulted in the camp being emptied of Palestinians and much of its roads reduced to rubble as the occupation forces continue to patrol on foot and in armored vehicles, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has reported.
Twisting alleyways, previously “crammed full of tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants”, are now “empty,” according to the report.
Jenin Refugee Camp has become uninhabitable due to 68 days of Israeli aggression, with 21,000 displaced and thousands of homes destroyed.
The siege on Jenin Governorate continues, and clashes are intensifying across the West Bank.
As the Israeli military escalates its… pic.twitter.com/nRDiBujeGL
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) March 29, 2025
Schools and mosques show evidence of Israeli gunfire, unshuttered shops “are still full of supplies, and clothes are still hanging to dry.” These are “signs that those who left thought they would soon return.”
‘Indefinitely Stationed’
Only Israeli soldiers “indefinitely stationed” in the camp patrol the camp’s streets, home to 20,000 Palestinians.
The WSJ report noted that the Palestinians who had been forcibly evacuated when Israel launched Operation Iron Wall on January 21, “are coming to believe they may not return for months or years.”
UNRWA has described the operation as “by far the longest and most destructive operation in the occupied West Bank since the second intifada in the 2000s.”
The UN agency said in a statement last week that “tens of thousands” of residents of Jenin, Tulkarm, Nur Shams, and Far’a refugee camps have been displaced, “with uncertain prospects for return amid statements from the Israeli Forces on their intentions to stay in the area in the foreseeable future.”
The WSJ report stressed that Israel has “never tried anything like what it is doing now: clearing the camps entirely.”
‘Aggressive Security Posture’
The report said the action was part of Israel’s “aggressive security posture” following the October 7, 2023, attack, claiming that it is a tactic to “pre-empt new threats.”
“We go inside, kill terrorists, find IEDs and shoot them, and we find weapons,” an Israeli military officer stationed in the Jenin area for the past year, reportedly told the paper.
The report noted that in February, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the occupation forces should be prepared to be there for at least a year, while soldiers in Jenin “said they were told to be there indefinitely.”
Pretext to Destroy Camps
The report noted concern from Palestinian officials and residents who worry that Israel may have “bigger ambitions,” that of using its war against fighters “as a pretext to do away with the refugee camps completely.”
“They are changing the nature and structure of the camp, they are dismantling it,” Kamal Abu al-Rub, Jenin’s governor, told the paper.
Israeli military officials, however, said, according to the report, that “there has been no decision on the final status” of the camp.
“These camps are symbolic of our right to return,” said Hammad Jamal, who leads a committee providing basic services to the camp. “As long as they exist, they are a daily reminder that this issue is still unresolved.”
The army has “reshaped the topography” of the camp, the report noted, with now-dirt roads being widened.
PA and Israel
The Palestinian Authority (PA), which “technically governs the area”, launched an operation into the camp last December, alleging that its aim was “to pre-empt any Israeli operation, which it said would prove ultimately far more destructive.”
Residents of the camp accused the PA “of wanton destruction and collective punishment,” the report noted.
The report added that Israeli and Palestinian security forces “are coordinating behind the scenes.”
Citing Israeli military officials, the WSJ said it has been agreed, for example, that the Palestinian forces “would operate against militants hiding out in Jenin’s hospital, located near the camp.”
(The Palestine Chronicle)
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