Israel launched a massive invasion of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank on January 21, 2025, just two days after a shaky ceasefire was reached in the Gaza Strip.

Soldiers raided hundreds of homes in the West Bank city in what the Israeli military called an "anti-terrorism" operation aimed at regaining control there. Many analysts believe the raid was an attempt by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to appease far-right members of his coalition who oppose the ceasefire.

Whatever the motivation, the offensive was devastating to many of the camp's residents. According to reports of the raid, the Israeli military destroyed infrastructure, closed entrances to local hospitals and forced the displacement of about 2,000 families. Indeed, life is difficult for the residents of this densely populated camp - home to some 24,000 Palestinian refugees. The West Bank director of UNRWA, the United Nations agency responsible for refugees, recently described conditions in the camps as "almost uninhabitable."

The focus of Israel's latest actions is not new. The Jenin refugee camp, located on the western edge of the town of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, is the scene of frequent violent clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants.

Violence has escalated since the attack on October 7, 2023, when Hamas gunmen invaded Israel, killing around 1,200 people. The camp has faced multiple large-scale military operations by the Israeli army, including drone strikes, ground attacks and air strikes, causing widespread damage. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers have burned Palestinian cars and property, with 64 such attacks taking place in the Jenin region alone since October 7, 2023. The Palestinian Authority, which oversees security in parts of the West Bank in coordination with Israel, also attacked Palestinians in December. local militants.

These events have deepened political tensions in the West Bank and exacerbated the economic and humanitarian crisis. According to the United Nations, more than 800 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the October 7 attack, more than a quarter of them from the Jenin area; during the same period, some Israeli civilians were also killed in the West Bank.

As a scholar of Palestinian history, I view this recent event as the latest chapter in a long history of Palestinian displacement and resistance to Israeli occupation. Understanding this history helps explain why the Jenin refugee camp in particular has become a target of Israeli offensives and a center of Palestinian armed resistance.

Camp conditions

Jenin is a historic agricultural town that has long been the center of the Palestinian resistance movement. Arab militants successfully repelled Israeli attempts to capture the town during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

At the end of the war, the town became a refuge for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from Israeli territory. Jenin and the hilly interior of Palestine known as the West Bank were annexed by Jordan.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency established the Jenin refugee camp in 1953 in the west of the city. Since then, the agency has provided basic services to camp residents, including food, housing and education.

Camp conditions have been difficult. In the camp's early years, refugees had to wait in long lines to receive food rations, and for decades their cramped homes lacked electricity or running water.

Jenin refugee camp soon became the poorest and most densely populated of the 19 refugee camps in the West Bank. Given its location close to the "Green Line," the armistice line that is Israel's de facto border, camp residents expelled from northern Palestine can actually see the homes and villages they were expelled from. But they were prevented from returning.

The rise of militancy

Jenin, along with the rest of the West Bank, has been occupied by Israeli forces since 1967.

The Israeli occupation of Jenin has exacerbated the difficulties of these refugees. As stateless Palestinians, they are unable to return to their homeland. But they also cannot live freely in Jenin under Israeli occupation. Human rights groups have long documented what they call "systemic oppression," which includes discriminatory land seizures, forced evictions and travel restrictions.

Seeing no other way out, many young refugees in the camps turned to armed resistance.

In the 1980s, groups such as the Black Panther Party, affiliated with the Palestinian nationalist organization Fatah, launched attacks against Israeli targets in an attempt to end the occupation and liberate their ancestral lands. During the First Intifada, the Palestinian uprising that lasted from 1987 to 1993, Israeli forces repeatedly raided the Jenin refugee camp in an attempt to arrest members of militant groups. In the process, Israeli forces sometimes demolished family members' homes and arrested relatives. This clear act of collective punishment reinforces the belief among many Palestinians that the Israeli occupation can only end through force.

The Oslo peace process of the 1990s - which included a series of meetings between the Israeli government and Palestinian representatives - led some former militants to hope for a negotiated end to the occupation. But residents of Jenin refugee camp remain marginalized in the West Bank and cut off from Israel, and their lives have seen little improvement even after the 1995 transfer of executive power from Israel to the Palestinian Authority.

Independent projects such as Freedom Theater have provided some relief to refugee children in the camps, but it has not been enough to overcome the crushing poverty they face or the violence at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers. When the second intifada broke out in 2000, many teenagers in the camps joined militant groups. Among them is Free Theater co-founder Zakaria Zubeidi, who joined the Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Like young people in the 1980s, they concluded that only armed resistance could end the occupation.

Cycle of violence?

In April 2002, the Israeli army invaded the Jenin refugee camp in the hope of eliminating such armed groups. Fierce clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian youths took place inside the camp, cementing Jenin's reputation among Palestinians as the "city of resistance."

A lack of progress in peace talks since then, Israeli settlement building on occupied land - considered illegal under international law - and the entry of hardline Israeli politicians into government have fueled discontent in the camps. Opinion polls show growing support among Palestinians for armed resistance.

In order to protect the camp from Israeli invasion, a group of local residents formed the Jenin Brigade in 2021. Although its founders were affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the group soon attracted activists from across the political spectrum. Members obtained weapons, patrolled the streets and repelled Israeli military incursions. By 2022, they declared parts of the camp "liberated" from Israeli occupation.

Israel appeared alarmed by the increase in armed activity and weapons stockpiles in the camp and significantly stepped up its attacks in 2022. It was during this attack that Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by an Israeli soldier.

On July 3, 2023, the Israeli army invaded Jenin again and withdrew after two days of heavy aerial bombardment and ground incursions that killed 12 Palestinians and injured more than 100 people.

The latest offensive is likely to far exceed this death toll, with at least 10 killed in the first day of fighting. But the militancy associated with the camp is built on decades of Israeli resistance and defiance of occupations that Israel has had little success in eradicating. Again, this time around, I believe that with the recent death and destruction, this combativeness within the camp will only increase.

This article is an updated version of a story first published by The Conversation on July 5, 2023.