We have heard threats that Jenin will be turned into Jabalia (in the Gaza Strip), says a resident to the newspaper Haaretz, after several days of Israeli attacks.
It is clearly what the Israeli government wants, to satisfy Smotrich and Ben-Gvir.
One of these right-wing Israeli politicians, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has resigned as security minister in protest against the ceasefire in Gaza. The other, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has also expressed strong dissatisfaction with Israel laying down its arms. But he is still sitting.
"Part of the war goals"
Politically, Smotrich is probably the last lifeline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has. If the finance minister also jumps off, new elections are likely to be held.
Analysts and sources in Israeli media therefore see a new tough military line on the West Bank as a kind of bone to the settler right that wants Israel to annex the entire Palestinian area.
After Gaza and Lebanon, we have today begun to change the security strategy in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), said Smotrich the other day, and described it as a political merit for his faction:
This is part of the war goals that were raised by the government at the request of (Smotrich's party) Religious Zionism on Friday.
"Buffer" for Israel
He himself lives in the Israeli settlement of Kedumim, illegal according to international law, a few miles south of Jenin on the West Bank. Extremist settlers are often armed and accused of their own violent offensives against Palestinians, but Smotrich describes them as a shield:
This aims to protect settlements and settlers, as well as the security of all of Israel, which the settlements act as a security buffer for.
The military operation simultaneously opens a new chapter in the Palestinian power struggle between secular al-Fatah, which leads the limited self-government on the West Bank, and Islamist Hamas, which has power in Gaza.
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Jenin's old refugee camp is a stronghold of the so-called Jenin Battalion, radical militiamen belonging to, among others, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. At the beginning of December, al-Fatah's Palestinian Authority (PA) launched a military action against the battalion, a step in, as The Times of Israel describes it, "showing US President Donald Trump that PA can maintain order on the West Bank, while also wanting to take over Gaza from Hamas after the war there".
Now that Israel has instead taken over the offensive, question marks are growing around whether PA has achieved anything – except to get the blame among Palestinians for the violence and death that has become everyday life on the northern West Bank.
Jenin is a Palestinian city on the northern West Bank with around 50,000 inhabitants. It contains a neighborhood with the same name that is formally a refugee camp. This neighborhood is roughly the same size as the Old Town in Stockholm, has around 15,000 inhabitants, and has become known as a stronghold for Islamist militiamen.
In connection with the recent outbreaks of violence in Jenin, a majority of the refugee camp's inhabitants have been driven away, according to aid organizations. At least a dozen people have been killed.
