Shatha Sabbagh, a journalism student in her early 20s from Jenin in the occupied West Bank, was returning home from buying sweets with her mother and three other relatives when the gunfire erupted.
The group dived to the ground, but for Shatha, it was too late. “She had her eyes open and she was looking at me,” her mother Nahed Sabbagh said, her voice beginning to break. “And then I saw something coming from her head. And in this moment, I realised that I had lost my daughter.”
In recent years, the refugee camp in Jenin where Shatha was shot — a warren of narrow streets that has become one of the main strongholds of Palestinian militant groups in the West Bank — has repeatedly been the target of deadly and destructive raids by Israeli security forces.
But Shatha’s death in late December took place in the middle of something far rarer: an operation by the security forces of the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank, against the camp’s militants.
Palestinian officials say the operation — now in its sixth week, and by far the biggest the PA has mounted in its 30-year existence — is designed to restore law and order against “outlaws” in the restive camp, which has long been beyond the PA’s control.
Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.
The operation has also been widely interpreted as an attempt by the PA to demonstrate to the international community that it has the capacity to take on a role in administering Gaza once the war between Israel and Hamas in the enclave is over — an idea backed by the US, Arab and European states, but vehemently opposed by Israel’s hardline government.
Israel and Hamas this week finally reached a multiphase deal to halt the 15-month war and free the hostages still held in Gaza. But it is not clear whether it will lead to a permanent end to the war, with far-right ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government demanding Israel resume hostilities.
“The PA want to show . . . whoever is thinking about the day after that they can set rules and laws, and that they can play a role not only in the West Bank but also in Gaza,” said Adnan Alsabah, a political analyst from Jenin.
But the killing of civilians such as Shatha, which her mother blames on the PA, and the PA on militants, has sparked outrage, and threatens to further erode the dwindling domestic legitimacy of the enfeebled PA. Founded as a stepping stone to a Palestinian state, it is now viewed by many Palestinians as a facilitator of Israel’s occupation.
“The people in the camp used to have one enemy. Now they have two,” said Sabbagh. “[Israel] and the PA — they’re two sides of the same coin.”
The PA’s operation began in December after militants seized two PA vehicles, paraded them around the camp in protest at the arrest of two Islamic Jihad militants and fired shots at municipal buildings. Since then, the PA’s forces say they have arrested dozens of alleged militants, defused improvised bombs and seized large amounts of weapons and munitions.
But the situation in Jenin remains volatile. When the Financial Times visited, approaches to the camp were blocked off by PA vehicles and checkpoints. There were repeated exchanges of gunfire, including one that claimed the life of a 50-year-old woman.
Brigadier General Anwar Rajab, spokesman for the PA’s security forces, said that in addition to restoring law and order, the operation was meant to prevent attacks by militants that would give the Israeli government a pretext for launching a massive operation in the territory.
Netanyahu’s government, widely regarded as the most rightwing in Israeli history, is propped up by ministers determined to annex the West Bank, and who have been emboldened by the re-election of Donald Trump.
“We don’t want a comprehensive confrontation with [Israel],” Rajab said. “We will be the ones who lose in this confrontation. We don’t want to allow anyone to drag us there.”
But others regard the PA’s latest operation, which Rajab said involved “a couple of hundred” troops, as far less calculated, and argue that it has left the authority in a bind.
“The PA is not in a position to crack down on the camp using massive force, because if they did that, there would be mass casualties and its support would drop off a cliff, and that could also trigger unrest in other parts of the West Bank,” said Ibrahim Dalalsha, director of the Ramallah-based Horizon Center for Political Studies.
“But having sent all those troops, if the PA backs down now, it will fall, not only in the eyes of its international and regional partners, but also in terms of domestic politics.”
For now, both sides in Jenin appear to have been relatively restrained.
Over the past six weeks, the hostilities have claimed the lives of six members of the Palestinian security services, and nine others. The PA said that three were militants, but according to the UN, only one was armed.
By contrast, a major Israeli operation in Jenin last year killed 21 people in nine days, according to Palestinian officials. Israel said at the time that it had killed 14 militants. This week, two Israeli drone strikes in Jenin have killed 12 people. According to the latest UN data, Israeli forces have killed 795 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza.
Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.
But even though the death toll from the PA operation has been relatively low, the fact Palestinians have been fighting each other — even as Israel’s military has been carrying out a devastating assault on Gaza — has provoked widespread soul-searching.
“What is happening in Jenin is a black page in the history of Palestinians,” said Alsabah. “It is showing to the world that we are not in agreement, that we don’t have the same platform, that we don’t share the same vision.”
As the operation has dragged on, public pressure for an end has grown. Community leaders in both Jenin and Ramallah have appealed to the PA and the militants to end the stand-off, with further calls in the wake of the Israeli drone strikes and the announcement of a ceasefire in Gaza. On Friday, an effort was under way to mediate an end to the stand-off.
“The Jenin situation is not going to defeat the PA militarily. It has more than 30,000 security forces. It has the guns and money to maintain its control. And it has international and regional support,” said Dalalsha.
“The problem for the PA is that its standing with the public was lost, even before this operation. And the situation in Jenin has rendered it weaker still.”
Cartography and data visualisation by Aditi Bhandari and Chris Campbell
Source link
