Since December 6 2024, the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) security forces have imposed a siege on the Jenin refugee camp and its residents. The stated goal of this operation, codenamed “Protection of the Motherland”, is to rid the Jenin refugee camp of its ‘outlaws’, by which they mean resistance fighters belonging to the Jenin Brigade.
The siege started after the brigade responded to the PA’s unprovoked arrest of two of its leaders – Ibrahim Tubasi and Imad Abou al Haija – by expropriating PA service cars as a ransom in exchange for their prisoners. Since then, at least eight Jenin camp residents, including a Brigade combatant, Yazid Ja'ayseh, and a journalist, Shaza al Sabbagh, as well as three children, have been martyred by the PA.
These killings increased the total number of Palestinians killed by the Palestinian Authority to 19 since the eruption of the Al Aqsa Flood battle. On the other hand, resistance fighters in Jenin have successfully eliminated six PA security agents. It has also been reported that 237 PA security agents have been arrested for refusing to take part in this onslaught against their own people.
The Jenin camp, the second largest refugee camp in the West Bank, has been known as a hotbed for resistance activities throughout its history. In 2002, resistance factions in the camp were dealt a heavy blow when the Jenin camp was targeted by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in a massive military operation. This operation saw the use of both ground and air raids, with tanks, military aircrafts and other heavy military equipment, which led to the martyrdom of hundreds of Palestinians.
The Jenin Brigade
In recent years, Jenin’s resistance managed to coalesce around the “Jenin Brigade”, an armed, independent resistance group with close ties to the Saraya al Quds, but whose membership extends to all the camp’s residents regardless of their political affiliation. Founded in September 2021, it was the first of many resistance brigades that appeared in different areas across the West Bank, including Nablus, Tulkarm and Tubas. The martyr Bassel al Araj spoke about the role of the resistance in Jenin city and in the Jenin governorate. “Resistance is a continuous endeavor”, al Araj says, talking about what he calls the ‘Triangle of Fire’ surrounding Jenin. This metaphorical triangle was formed by the resistance cells active in the area throughout history. Over many decades , from the 1936 revolt until the present, these resistance cells have remained steadfast, waging armed operations against settlers in the area. These operations finally culminated in the evacuation of all four Zionist settlements in Jenin and its surroundings during the Second Intifada. Resistance is a continuous endeavor because it will always force concessions from the enemy.
The Jenin brigade has proven to be both the most effective and the most feared brigade in the West Bank. Nicknamed “the Wasps’ Nest”, the Jenin refugee camp, with a total area of just 0.42km², has become impenetrable to the IDF. There, the brigade is able to face off the enemy’s military might and technological superiority with very light weaponry, such as automatic rifles, handmade anti-tank barriers and IED’s, in a textbook example of urban Guerilla Warfare.
“Just before the end of summer, a resistance fighter ambushed an occupation patrol in an alley overlooking the main street, throwing a grenade at their jeep. The explosion injured several soldiers, and the jeep crashed into a nearby wall. The injured soldiers' cries were followed by random gunfire, and reinforcements soon arrived, announcing a curfew over loudspeakers...
(...)
Despite the fear, the food tasted better than anything we had since the occupation began, as we felt a sense of pride under the protection of the resistance's guns.
After the first two days of the curfew, people began to venture outside, sitting by their doorsteps in the narrow alleys deep within the camp, where the occupation forces couldn't easily reach them without being intercepted by the resistance fighters lurking in the camp's corners. I saw many resistance fighters, unrecognizable in their keffiyehs, armed and stationed behind walls and corners.
I noticed some of our neighbors sitting around a corner, drinking tea, smoking rolled cigarettes, and discussing their fears and feelings. They expressed a sense of dignity and pride, long suppressed by the occupation, but also apprehension about the uncertain future. Would the situation remain the same, or would the camp be stormed by a large force, shelled, or even burned to the ground with its inhabitants inside? Opinions varied, but the dominant sentiment was the necessity to stand firm. The common refrain was, "What do we have to lose? We only have our chains and the UNRWA houses. Why fear?" Every conversation ended with the same conclusion: "A minute of living with dignity and pride is better than a thousand years of a miserable life under the boots of the occupation."
Above is an excerpt from the martyr Yahya Sinwar's “The Thorn and the Carnation”, a work of fiction based on his own experiences growing up in the refugee camps. In this excerpt, Sinwar describes the general attitude of Gaza's Jabalia camp's population during Israeli raids and sieges. He also writes about the people's avid support of the Popular Palestinian Resistance and its operations targeting the IDF, despite the violent repercussions they would entail. This support for the resistance and its actions is fueled by the sense of humiliation and subjugation perpetuated against the Palestinians by their occupiers. This, combined with the planned dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Israeli occupation, had them reach a stage in which they had nothing to lose, which explains their choice of armed confrontation with their oppressors. Sinwar mentions how those who are most affected by the Zionist raid against the camp, are those living at its extremities, while those living at the heart of the camp are kept safe by the armed resistance fighters. This same situation applies in Jenin camp, where the IDF consistently fails to penetrate, halted by the traps and ambushes set up by the Jenin Brigade fighters, whenever there is a raid underway. Today, these same tactics are used to counter the PA attack against the camp, which is a failed military operation by all metrics. In response, the PA security forces have sought vengeance from the camp's residents, by attacking medical facilities, burning civilian homes, as well as arresting and torturing Palestinians who criticize them all across the West-Bank, reproducing their Zionist overlords’ colonial practices.
Outlaws and guerilla fighters
It is of no surprise that the PA security agents raiding the Jenin camp have been documented to be using US-made gear, including heavy military equipment like RPGs.
This aggression carried-out by the “Dayton security services” is not a one-time, spontaneous attack, but a thoroughly planned onslaught that falls under the framework of the “Fenzel plan.” The Fenzel Plan is a 2023 joint US-Israel plan designed to quash Palestinian resistance cells active in the West Bank. It was named after the current US security coordinator of the Israel-Palestinian Authority, Michael Fenzel. In this context, the Palestinian Authority effectively acts as an Israeli proxy, serving the Zionist agenda in the West Bank.
Brigadier General Anwar Rajab, the official spokesperson of the Palestinian Authority security services, and the man leading the PA’s propaganda efforts to demonize the resistance in Jenin, has stated:
“There are no resistance fighters in Jenin, there is only a group of mercenaries and outlaws”.
The PA’s propaganda machine seeks to delegitimize the resistance in Jenin, by likening fighters to ISIS or accusing them of being Iranian proxies. Perhaps the best response to Rajab’s statements and to other unfounded claims, came in the form of an inscription on a wall in al Aroub refugee camp, located north of al Khalil (‘Hebron’), reading: “Shoutout to the Jenin Brigade, the outlaws violating the US-Zionist legal order.”
This shameful statement issued by the PA spokesperson also elicits a response by none other than martyr Bassel al Araj, who had written an article titled “Exiting law and entering revolution”. In this article, al Araj says:
“The similarity between the revolutionary and the outlaw consists in their decision to deviate from accepted ‘systems’ and ‘laws’ . The outlaw’s transition to national or political action—organized or spontaneous—is a smooth one. It is not marred by the same complexities of the transitions of members of the bourgeoisie, for example, which require a rejection of their social class and of the rituals, customs, and material comfort it provides. The outlaw, by way of his experience in the fields of theft and fraud, masters ways of operating outside of that law, acquires skills to deal with arrest and investigation, and carries out operations that require high degrees of prior planning. These experiences are similar in their practical logic to resistance action, even if the end goals differ.”
“In many cases, the outlaws become figures of agitation in societies that persist in a state of submission, as they are the most capable of existing outside of the system that imposes humiliating conditions on the living. They also possess sufficient knowledge to live and sustain themselves outside of the dominion of unjust law. They set for themselves strict rules that organize their world with just traditions, granting the human being their dignity and the right to live a decent life in return for fulfilling one’s duties. For example, if one of the outlaws confesses to the authorities or informs on one of his companions, this is sufficient to end his trajectory with the group.
Because outlaws are at the bottom of the social pyramid, their world is explicit. They are not fooled by authority’s tricks and lies, nor are they subject to its discourses, tools of mediation, and manufacturing of public opinion. The world in which they find themselves is one that is pristine in its reality, with all its hardships, miseries, poverty, and injustice. One thus finds that they hold justice in the highest regard and that they are the most contemptuous of its absence.”
The PA effectively acts as enforcers of Israel’s colonial law against their own people, and criminalizes all those who dare to violate said law. What is happening in Jenin is a desperate attempt to prove to their American and Zionist overlords that they are capable of ‘policing’ the resistance factions and all those who actively refuse to be subjugated by the occupation in the West Bank.
On the other hand, the “outlaws” and “bandits” making up the resistance in PA-controlled areas have legitimacy because they sprang from a popular base, which reciprocally supports them. Indeed, the Jenin brigade, just like any other armed Palestinian resistance group, would not be able to compensate for its military inferiority in comparison to the IOF or even to the PA security forces, if it wasn’t for the widespread popular support from the people of the camps. On that point, Al Araj rightly quotes Che Guevara:
“The guerrilla fighter counts on the full support of the local people. This is an indispensable condition. And this is clearly seen by considering the case of bandit gangs that operate in a region; they have many characteristics of a guerrilla army, homogeneity, respect for the leader, bravery, knowledge of the terrain …”
Al Araj goes on to mention many revolutionary and anti-colonial figures. Some of these figures, such as Algerian revolutionary martyr Ali La Pointe, gained their political consciousness while in colonial prisons. The legal apparatus and repressive sets of laws typically implemented by colonial authorities make it so that any form of political activity or expression contradicting the colonial order becomes unlawful. Thus it is the colonized people’s duty to revolt against this legal apparatus and violate its unjust laws:
“The beginning of every revolution is an exit: an exit from the social order that power has enshrined in the name of law, stability, public interest, and the greater good. Every social and economic authority necessarily intersects with and is an extension of political authority. This is how these heroic figures can be understood and appreciated by the general public, who are overpowered, as though by instinct. From there, we understand the hostility of social, economic, and political authority towards these figures, and its use of the law as a tool to tarnish their image and criminalize them. We therefore also understand the smooth transition from the outlaw into the revolutionary—the one who resists.”
Bassel al Araj once said that “the Palestinians consider that any confrontation with the Palestinian Authority is not a confrontation with their fellow countrymen, but a standoff against a tool of the (Zionist) occupation”. Who else is better placed to make this assertion than the revolutionary thinker and militant who was imprisoned and tortured in PA jails at the behest of the IDF? Bassel al Araj, Musab Shtayyeh and countless others who have been, and many of whom still are imprisoned in PA jails, are living proof that the Palestinian Authority is an extension of the Zionist Entity. Because of this, it is inevitable that the path to liberate Jerusalem passes through Ramallah.
