Inside Israel’s Military Operation in a West Bank Refugee Camp
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WSJ
Mar 31, 2025 08:49 AM IST
Israeli forces are trying a new tactic in a major hub for militants: emptying them out.
JENIN, West Bank—For decades, narrow, twisting alleys crammed full of tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants have been a central theater for the cat-and-mouse game here between Israeli security forces and militants. Now, they are empty.
Inside Israel’s Military Operation in a West Bank Refugee Camp PREMIUM
Inside Israel’s Military Operation in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Israeli bulldozers, looking for hidden explosives, have reduced much of the roads to sand and mud. The fighting and controlled demolitions by Israel have reduced many buildings to rubble. A century-old Ottoman train station is now a heap of debris. Others, including schools and mosques, are pockmarked with bullet holes. The shops left unshuttered are still full of supplies, and clothes are still hanging to dry, signs that those who left thought they would soon return. Only Israeli soldiers, indefinitely stationed here in Jenin, patrol its streets on foot and in armored vehicles.
Neither the soldiers nor the Palestinians know how long the situation will continue.
In recent years, Israel’s military has conducted hundreds of raids into the camp, and dozens in the past year alone.
Streets were largely empty and buildings damaged during a visit to Jenin last week.
For Israel, the camp, where impoverished descendants of Palestinian refugees of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war live, has long been seen as a constant breeding ground and place of shelter for Palestinian militancy. For Palestinians, the camp is a center of resistance to Israel and a symbol of the group’s core collective trauma: the mass displacement of Palestinians during the war.
But Israel has never tried anything like what it is doing now: clearing the camps entirely. It is part of Israel’s aggressive security posture following the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, actively working inside enemy territory to pre-empt new threats. It also seeks to remedy lessons learned from the war in Gaza, in which Israel’s decision to cede ground allowed Hamas to regroup multiple times in areas where it had already been defeated.
“When I started, there were a lot of operations for two or three days,” said an Israeli military officer stationed in the Jenin area for the past year. “We go inside, kill terrorists, find IEDs and shoot them, and we find weapons.
Once each operation is over, the militants regroup and rearm. Now, the officer said, “We’re trying to make sure they won’t have time to recover.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz in February said soldiers should be prepared to be there for at least a year. Soldiers in Jenin said they were told to be there indefinitely.
Amir Avivi, a former senior Israeli military official close to the government, said it appeared the government didn’t yet have an endgame for the operations in Jenin. For now, he said, the government is focused on the war in Gaza and a potential confrontation with Iran.
“In some cases they have a tendency to keep things obscure and let the forces figure it out without any clear direction,” Avivi said of the government. “I think this is what’s happening.”
Palestinians who left Jenin are coming to believe they may not return for months or years. Several large sites have been designated to house them meanwhile, including the Arab-American University campus, 6 miles southeast of Jenin.
Kamal Abu al-Rub, Jenin’s governor, said the school closed sometime after the war in Gaza began, leaving thousands of dormitories vacant. The university didn’t respond to a request for comment. When The Wall Street Journal visited the campus in early March, families were busy moving in and cleaning up dusty units.
Palestinian officials and residents worry that Israel has bigger ambitions, using its war against militants 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,” said Abu al-Rub at his office in Jenin, the city that includes the camp.
Israeli military officials said there has been no decision on the final status of the camp.
The Journal visited the Jenin camp in an exclusive tour with the Israeli military on Tuesday. Three Israeli armored vehicles drove right through the city to reach the camp without encountering any resistance.
“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 operation in Jenin, which began in January, has expanded into other cities in the northern West Bank.
Financed by Iran and armed with M16 rifles stolen from Israel, militants in Jenin have grown in power and sophistication. Israeli troops have found tunnels connecting hide-outs, similar to Gaza though smaller in scale, and destroyed nascent rocket-manufacturing sites.
Forcing the militants out of their Jenin camps ensures they are no longer able to organize, Israeli military officials said. As individuals now spread around surrounding villages and out of their hiding spots, militants have been much easier for Israeli and Palestinian security forces to find and arrest.
Israel is also reshaping the topography of the camp. It has used its tractors to widen the now-dirt roads, allowing Israeli forces to use armored cars in areas previously inaccessible to them.
The military showed the Journal two mosques in the Jenin camp where it said militants had created shooting positions to attack Israeli troops. Someone had scrawled on a door in red spray paint the Arabic words Kata’ib Jenin—the Jenin Brigades, a popular militant group.
The Israeli military said this mosque in Jenin was used by Palestinian militants.
Broken glass from a window litters the floor of one of the mosques visited.
In a separate mosque, a large banner mourning Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader assassinated by Israel last year in Tehran, was laid on the red carpet, now covered in mud by the boots of Israeli soldiers. A window in a storage room had a stack of cinder blocks placed on the sill, which soldiers said was evidence militants had used the position to fire on Israeli troops in a street below.
The militants’ most effective weapons, say Israeli military officials, are improvised explosive devices that they can detonate remotely with a phone call once Israeli soldiers are close enough.
The militants place cameras throughout the camp to follow the Israelis’ movements, the official said. Soldiers pointed out one such camera hanging from a United Nations school window. Five Israeli soldiers have been killed by IEDs in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023. Only one soldier has been killed in the current operation, during a shootout.
The U.N. says more than 900 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the war in Gaza began. Abu al-Rub, the governor of Jenin, said 29 people have been killed in Israeli operations since January in Jenin. Israel says most of those killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank were militants.
For years the Palestinian Authority, which technically governs the area, had been reluctant to enter the Jenin camps because of the militants. It eventually did launch a counterterrorism campaign there in December last year 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.
Now PA officials there are accusing Israel of the same.
Blood stains the floor of a building in Jenin, where the local governor says dozens of people have been killed in Israeli operations this year.
“I believe Israel’s intention is to weaken the Palestinian Authority and make Jenin unsuitable for living so people will leave on their own,” said Abu al-Rub.
Still, Israeli and Palestinian security forces are coordinating behind the scenes. They agreed, for example, that the Palestinian forces would operate against militants hiding out in Jenin’s hospital, located near the camp, according to Israeli military officials.
Palestinians who left the camp are trying to resume their normal lives. In early March, children played on a patio overlooking the Arab-American University campus while they waited their turn for a haircut from Jamil Mirei, who ran a barbershop underneath his family’s apartment in the camp.
Mirei, 19, said he fled after the PA raided their home in December, arresting one of his brothers and injuring another with a stray bullet. He said he wasn’t aware of any members of his family being involved with militant groups, and that he left in such a hurry he took little more than his clippers.
No one can afford to pay him for his haircuts anymore, but he said he does it just to pass the time.
“It reminds me of my normal life,” he said. “It makes me feel like I’m myself again.”
Military vehicles have churned up the surface of streets in the camp.
Write to Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com and Feliz Solomon at feliz.solomon@wsj.com
Inside Israel’s Military Operation in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Inside Israel’s Military Operation in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Inside Israel’s Military Operation in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Inside Israel’s Military Operation in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Inside Israel’s Military Operation in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Inside Israel’s Military Operation in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Inside Israel’s Military Operation in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Inside Israel’s Military Operation in a West Bank Refugee Camp
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