(Reuters) -The city of Jenin, a Palestinian militant stronghold in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has become a new front for Israel days after it reached a ceasefire deal with Hamas that suspended a 15-month-old war in Gaza.
Israeli forces began an operation in a volatile refugee camp adjacent to Jenin less than a week after the Gaza ceasefire took effect, killing at least nine Palestinians and injuring 40.
Here’s what you need to know about Jenin.
REFUGEE CAMP
Jenin is a small city in the hilly far north of the West Bank, near the border with Israel, and contains a teeming, concrete and cinder-block urban refugee camp by the same name.
About half of the camp’s 18,000 people fled after the latest Israeli raids, Jenin’s deputy mayor told Al Arabiya TV.
Jenin produced many of the suicide bombers who spearheaded the second Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, between 2000 and 2005. To curb it, Israeli armoured forces carried out devastating raids in the city where militants had an array of light weapons and a growing arsenal of explosive devices.
FADING PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY
Jenin used to be a bastion of 88-year-old Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, a rival of Hamas, which started the war in Gaza with an attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies.
But Fatah has lost ground to the more militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Their growing presence has arisen in part from inaction by the security forces of Abbas’ Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank and says Israel has undercut its credibility on the street.
In a bid to show they could take part in ruling post-war Gaza, in line with demands by some Arab states, PA security forces conducted a weeks-long operation to reassert control over the city Jenin prior to the Israeli offensive on Jan. 21.
A BATTLEGROUND SINCE 2000s
Jenin was the scene of some of the worst violence during the second Intifada, which began after the collapse of U.S.-backed peace talks in 2000 and mushroomed into an armed conflict between Israel and Palestinian militant groups.
In April 2002, Israel carried out a major armoured assault on the Jenin refugee camp, part of a wider West Bank operation.
A U.N. report said 52 Palestinians had been killed, as many as half of them civilians, while Israel lost 23 soldiers there.
A BATTLEGROUND DURING GAZA WAR
Between May and June 2024, Israeli forces killed at least 13 Palestinians and wounded 38 in attacks in Jenin. Israel said in August it killed two senior Hamas militants in an airstrike on their car in the city.
In September, Israeli forces left Jenin after a nine-day operation, one of the biggest in the occupied West Bank in months, leaving a mass of damaged buildings and infrastructure.
At least 21 people were killed in Jenin in the operation. Many were claimed by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah as members of the armed factions, but a number were uninvolved civilians.
In January, before the Israeli military announced its latest push, it killed at least nine Palestinians in airstrikes on the camp.
POST GAZA CEASEFIRE
Three days after the ceasefire went into effect, Israeli chief of staff Herzi Halevi said the military must be ready for “significant counterterrorism operations” in the West Bank.
Next day Israel’s military said it began the counterterrorism operation “Iron Wall” in Jenin, acting two weeks after a shooting blamed by Israel on gunmen from Jenin.
Hamas, based in Gaza, soon after the announcement called on Palestinians in the West Bank to escalate fighting against Israel. Israel’s defence minister said forces were applying lessons learned in Gaza to the Jenin operation.
France has called on Israel to show restraint. The foreign minister of Jordan, which borders the West Bank, said the region could not afford another war in the occupied West Bank.
(Writing by Nayera Abdallah, Editing by William Maclean)
