View of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank on April 12, 2022. VICTORINE ALISSE / COLLECTIF HORS FORMAT POUR LE MONDE
It is eerily quiet in the Jenin refugee camp. The armed Palestinian groups that are powerful in these alleys are hiding. Fasting in Ramadan baffles locals. Waiting for the Israeli soldiers is wearing on their nerves. Since last week, the army has been launching raids in the major city in the north of the West Bank almost daily, preferably at dawn and on the outskirts of the camp. She is reluctant to penetrate the heart of this wretched concrete agglomeration where 33,000 descendants of Nakba refugees are crammed, the forced displacement of 700,000 Palestinians at the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.
Naftali Bennett’s government has given the military carte blanche. They are making arrests and “making their presence known” after a series of four terrorist attacks that have ravaged Israeli cities since March 22, killing 14 people. Two of the attackers are from the Jenin camp. Their families, the Palestinian Authority and the army all agree that they acted without orders, support or networks.
“These are ordinary Palestinians,” says Jenin Governor Akram Rajoub, angry Palestinians who felt humiliated by Israel and responded to the army’s daily attacks on their community. Soldiers killed 18 civilians in the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem, between January 1 and the March 22 attack, according to the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Three of them carried out isolated attacks on Israelis.
Akram Rajoub, Governor of Jenin (West Bank) April 12, 2022. VICTORINE ALISSE / COLLECTIVE HORS FORMAT FOR THE WORLD
A city under siege
Mr. Rajoub asserts that his city is now “under siege” and the victim of “collective punishment” which he equates with “terrorism”. The army has partially closed the border crossing that connects the areas occupied since 1967 with Arab cities in northern Israel. It closes around the holes in the wall enclosing the West Bank. Normally, almost 20,000 Jenin residents pass there every day to work illegally in Israel.
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The Israeli authorities issue ID cards to legal workers in a bid to calm the situation. They also allow women and children to pray at holy sites in Jerusalem on Fridays, but not young men. However, Jenin is under particular pressure: local traders and Palestinian tourists who are Israeli citizens are no longer allowed through. Usually the latter make the city come alive. This month of Ramadan he misses her very much. Iftar, the breaking of the fast, is very sombre.
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