For more than a week, the sprawling Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank has echoed to the sound of heavy gunfire – with masked snipers on roof tops and muffled explosions within its warren of alleyways.
But the combat has not involved the Israeli military, which has launched countless raids in recent years against what it calls terrorists in the camp, a stronghold of resistance to the Israeli occupation.
This fight, according to report by CNN, is between Palestinians: the security forces of the Palestinian Authority and militant groups aligned with Hamas who say the PA has sold out to Israel.
The authority, which is supported by the West, launched its largest security operation in years to dislodge the militant groups in an attempt to show that it can handle the security situation in the West Bank as it eyes control over a post-war Gaza.
But the operation appears only to have stiffened resistance and alienated many of the thousands of civilians who live there. And they have gained little ground, with militants still in control of much of the camp.
The authority’s security forces have tried to arrest dozens of men they describe as outlaws trying to “hijack” the camp, which was established for Palestinians uprooted from their homes after Israel’s creation in 1948 and is now a built-up area that is home to some 25,000 people.
Hamas describes the fighters in the camp as the “resistance” – a coalition of militant groups that sees the authority and its security forces as doing Israel’s bidding.
The militant factions include the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Qassem Brigades, who fight under the banner of the Jenin Battalion.
The authority says that its forces have “advanced in very important ways” in the camp. But they have little of the technology and weaponry the Israeli military can bring to bear, and on Sunday a member of the Palestinian Presidential Guard was killed by militants’ gunfire.
Then on Monday, a member of the Palestinian Security Forces was killed, according to a spokesperson. A police sergeant was killed by gunfire from “outlaws in Jenin camp,” according to Brigadier General Anwar Rajab.
The PSF had blocked all entrances to the camp, according to the journalist, who added that even paramedics were unable to get into the camp. Social media video showed diggers piling earth across streets leading from the camp.
One militant leader was also killed, as have three teenagers, the youngest of them 14. Each side blamed the other for their deaths.
The flare in violence caps off a deadly year in the area. Israel conducted a days-long raid in Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas, in the northern West Bank, in September, killing at least 39 people and leaving widespread destruction, according to the authority’s health ministry and United Nations. Among them were at least nine militants, according to public statements from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
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