“Israel’s broad operation in Jenin is not a one-time event,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the troops began the withdrawal Tuesday night. “We will not allow Jenin to go back to being a city of refuge for terrorism.”
Camp residents, however, warned that the depredations would only fuel more violence, while Israeli analysts, too, warned this would not be the last time.
“We could see similar activities even tomorrow,” said former deputy head of Israel’s national security council Itamar Yaar, adding that the operations were not intended to achieve deterrence against future attacks “but to limit the terrorists’ capabilities.”
Fathya al-Sadi, a 69-year-old widow, said that she spent all of Monday, the first day of the incursion, hiding at the back of her house with son, grandchildren and dozens of her neighbors, some of whom feared their houses were on Israel’s target list.
“The children were screaming, I had to hug them all the time,” she said, adding that finally at one point an Israeli soldier broadcast from the ruined streets and exhorted residents to leave.
“He said ‘get out, get out, get out! We will protect you,’” she recalled. She filled a few plastic bags and backpacks, and made her way between soldiers and military vehicles to her brother’s apartment outside the camp in Jenin city itself, where she and her family slept on the floor until Wednesday morning.
Upon her return to the camp, she found that her home was still intact, but a neighbor’s was partially destroyed by an airstrike, its wall pockmarked with bullet holes. A charred appliance workshop nearby was surrounded by demolished cars.
Israel has claimed that all 12 of the Palestinian men killed were combatants. Amid the fighting, some 4,000 residents of the camp fled on Monday night, according to Jenin mayor Nidal Al-Obeidi.
Israeli authorities have not addressed the estimated 100 injured Palestinians, many of whom were being treated and needed to be evacuated a second time from the hospital when Israeli forces hit the medical wards with tear gas and bullets.
How much the fighting capabilities of Jenin’s militants had been affected was not immediately clear. The camp in particular has become a hub of militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as more local ones, involved in the violence resistance to Israel’s occupation. The Palestinian Authority, meant to govern this area, has virtually no presence.
By midday on Wednesday, a group of men in black, some wearing black masks, almost all carrying automatic weapons, walked back through the gates of the camp after escaping during the operation.
Some had never left, as well, one of the fighters told The Washington Post late Tuesday in the final hours of the incursion.
The 29-year-old, who declined to give his name because he is wanted by Israel, spoke near the crowded hospital outside the camp gates. He would soon return, he said, describing tunnels and other clandestine passageways that allowed militants to hide from the soldiers while moving in and out.
“The Israelis think they control the camp, but it is easy to move around,” he said.
Rubin reported from Tel Aviv.