The Palestinian Authority carried out one of the most extensive security operations in its history, pursuing armed activists in the city of Jenin’s West Bank. For weeks, the forces of authority have slowly progressed on the densely populated bastion of activists, said Palestinian officials.
When the Israeli army launched its own large -scale raid in January, the authority was to abandon its operation.
But this is not the case.
Instead, when dozens of activists have fled to neighboring villages, the Palestinian security forces plunged to arrest them, officials said. “We have made very significant progress in strengthening the law and the order,” said Brig. General Anwar Rajab, the spokesman for the authority’s security forces, said in a telephone interview.
The authority, which limited the powers of power in the West Bank occupied by Israeli, has ceded for years largely the fight against activists in Israel. But while the questions turn to know if it can take governance and security in Gaza, the group’s leaders seem eager to demonstrate that they will not hesitate to fight – even if it means the anger of the Palestinians who say that the authority encourages an operation which destroys large parts of the West Bank and moves tens of thousands of people.
Jenin, and in particular Jenin camp, a sprawling district built for refugees following the 1948 Israeli war, had become a paradise for armed fighters supported by Iran in Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic jihad. Over the years, they have become more sophisticated in their ability to develop explosives and obtain advanced weapons, such as M16 rifles Table of Israel smuggling.
Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas has led an attack on Israel which sparked the war in Gaza, Israel has made dozens of raids in the West Bank, including with air strikes, killing many civilians. Israel says he exercises these raids in accordance with international law. The authority mainly avoided a direct confrontation with the activists, trying to encourage them to surrender.
But in December, the authority decided to take more energetic measures. The security forces arrested an Islamic jihad agent when he picked up tens of thousands of dollars smuggling in the West Bank, according to Palestinian officials.
The New York Times spoke to more than a dozen Palestinian officials of Jenin operations. They all talked under the cover of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations and operational plans.
The activists responded by diverting two government trucks and parading in the city, in a scene captured in video and widely shared on social networks. The episode was a striking representation of the weakness of authority: it was wide and the trucks were draped in the flags of Islamic jihad and Hamas.
The head of authority, Mahmoud Abbas, was so enraged that he thought he had to act immediately after seeing the video, according to Palestinian officials.
The authority has deployed elite forces and armored vehicles; He set up checkpoint and engaged in daily battles of firearms with camp activists. More than a dozen people have been killed, including six security officers, a journalist, a woman and three teenagers. This has also led to the displacement of thousands and generalized losses of water and power.
Hundreds of people were arrested, said General Rajab at a press conference in January, although he was not clear how many armed men were.
The authority was prudent to make precipitated movements on the militants, suspicious who could lead to a large number of civilian deaths, according to officials. After weeks when authority has struggled to progress in its operation, Israel made a descent into Jenin.
It has been largely assumed that the authority’s operations ended, but the Palestinian security leaders stayed in Jenin, leading intelligence -based arrest operations in neighboring villages, some of the Palestinian officials said. The chiefs recently brought back to Ramallah, the administrative seat of the authority, but the arrest operations continue around Jenin, the officials said.
In the days following Israel in the city, the security forces of the authority arrested 120 armed men who had left the camp, General Rajab said on Wednesday.
The extent to which authority and Israel coordinated on this operation is not clear. The two parties have long shared information and worked to avoid meeting, have said several Palestinian officials, a policy that many Palestinians have criticized.
General Rajab only said that authority was “what she needed to do” in Jenin. Faced with the criticism of the Palestinians, the authority said that many activists have criminal history.
Lieutenant-Colonel Nadav Shoshani, a spokesperson for the Israeli army, said in a briefing in January that Israel and the authority had maintained conflict protocols “to ensure that we did not enter”, but he had not entered into detail on the way in which it worked in the Jenin.
The recent Israel Operation has imposed some of the most serious damage for years, tearing the roads, demolishing dozens of buildings and killing more than 25 people in the wider Jenin region, according to the Ministry of Health of Authority, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel Katz, Israeli Defense Minister, has promised that the military will remain long -term, alarming among the officials of the authority.
The Israeli army said it had killed dozens of activists in several cities in the north of the West Bank.
The authority refused to move away from his operation in Jenin, arguing that she must seize all opportunities to master the activists, that he has accused of having given Israel a pretext to destroy the city.
This has hardly increased its position among the residents of the West Bank, which largely considers it as a corrupt entity which ends with Israel. Many Palestinians also consider Jenin’s armed groups to fight for them against the forces occupying West Bank.
“These are the two sides of the same medal,” said Shadi Abu Samen, 47, a resident of the Jenin camp, referring to Israel and authority.
In New York Times telephone interviews, Jenin Islamic Jihad Brigade militants said they had taken up arms to face Israeli soldiers who raised their neighborhood. Abu Mohammed, a member of the brigade, said that he believed that authority and Israel pursued a similar objective: “eradicating resistance and its mind”.
“They want us to go, but we will not accept it,” said Abu Mohammed, 33, using his war name.
The Times spoke to Abu Mohammed before the last operation of Israel in Jenin and has since not been able to join him.
Some Palestinian analysts have declared that the emphasis on security would not be sufficient if Israel or authority did not want to also improve living conditions.
“We are talking about a place that lacks as much basic resources,” said Ibrahim Dalalsha, director of the Horizon Center, a Palestinian research group in Ramallah. “Any security operation must be accompanied by a social, economic, development operation.”
Civilians paid a clear price for operations. Almost all residents of the Jenin camp have been moved in the past two months, according to the United Nations.
“We are living a violent storm,” said Hilal Jalamneh, 50, a camp resident. “The last hope that we are trying to stick is now gone.”
