Final month, because the Israeli military began pulling out of Gaza below 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 duplicate Gaza within the West Financial institution. However the Gazafication of Jenin and different refugee camps within the West Financial institution is certain to fail, simply as comparable brutal methods have failed up to now.
There’s a purpose 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 accommodate 8,000 Palestinians violently expelled from their houses by Zionist forces, has been an incubator of resistance for many years.
Through the first Intifada, it grew to become one of many nuclei of Palestinian organising and resistance. The youth who had identified nothing however occupation grew to become 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 town, murdering 52 Palestinians, destroying lots of of houses, 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 technology 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 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 not less than 10 Palestinians, destroyed houses 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 turn into a hub of resistance for a purpose. Refugee camps should not 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 technology to technology, the place little kids inherit their mother and father and grandparents’ need to return house.
Youngsters develop up seeing their neighbourhoods raided, associates detained or murdered, similar 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.
Youngsters 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 purpose. Traditionally, Jabalia has been the biggest 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 warfare, the Israeli military launched a number of assaults on the camp, every time following the identical brutal template: large 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 a large marketing campaign of air strikes that devastated Jabalia. Some 90 p.c of buildings are estimated to have been destroyed.
But the resistance continued, 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 way of destruction. It has killed greater than 45 Palestinians, together with two-year-old Laila al-Khatib, forcibly displaced 20,000, demolished whole blocks, besieged a hospital, and minimize off 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 assume it could now?
This navy technique exposes Israel’s elementary blindness. It sees resistance as one thing tangible – fighters to get rid of, tunnels to destroy, leaders to assassinate, weapons to grab. However in Palestine’s refugee camps, resistance flows by way of generations like blood by way of veins. It lives within the tales handed down, within the cussed insistence on dignity below 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 non permanent 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 way of checkpoints, within the defiant smile of an elder rebuilding their house yet one more time, and within the collective refusal to just accept displacement as future.
For this reason the Gazafication of Jenin will fail. You possibly can kill revolutionaries, however you can not kill the revolution. You can not bomb an thought into submission. You can not kill the need to be free.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
