In his first visit to the Jenin refugee camp in almost 20 years (he was in the city in 2012), Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) conveyed a message of control of the situation, launched an appeal for the unity of his people and, above all, he expressed his support a week after the largest Israeli operation against armed groups in the northern West Bank in two decades.
The 48-hour Israeli military incursion into the Jenin refugee camp, which left 12 militiamen dead and a hundred wounded and one soldier dead, was condemned by all Palestinian factions, including the most important: Abu Mazen’s Fatah, the Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad, with enormous power in this small West Bank enclave.
“Jenin is the icon of struggle, perseverance and defiance. She stood firm in the face of aggression and occupation and made many sacrifices for the good of the homeland,” said the president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), who after laying a wreath at the graves of nine dead militants, he praised their “patriotic role”. from Ramallah in a Jordanian helicopter and under a large deployment of ANP security personnel. The veteran leader promised help to the refugee camp after the operation (including drones) that caused numerous and severe material damages. Although he was not there for long, he was able to see the aftermath of the Army’s passage on streets with the asphalt completely raised in an action that Israel justified to detect and defuse explosives planted by the Palestinians.
MOMENT OF GREAT TENSION His visit coincides -and it is not by chance- with a moment of great tension. The northern West Bank is steadily approaching chaos and instability after nine years of paralysis in the peace process and 16 months marked by attacks, incursions and armed clashes, the rise of militiamen and the loss of control, popularity and legitimacy of the The ANP also does not maintain direct contact with the new government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which for its part has increased the approval of houses in the colonies in its first semester in power.
In his first visit to the Jenin refugee camp in almost 20 years (he was in the city in 2012), Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) conveyed a message of control of the situation, launched an appeal for the unity of his people and, above all, he expressed his support a week after the largest Israeli operation against armed groups in the northern West Bank in two decades.
For months, the Israeli authorities have been demanding that the PNA regain control of Jenin and Nablus, Palestinian armed strongholds, and have warned that “otherwise we have no choice but to act to stop terrorist attacks against our citizens and soldiers.”
SECOND INTIFADA The Jenin refugee camp was the protagonist of one of the most important episodes of the Second Intifada. After a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings, Israel launched the Defensive Wall operation in 2002, occupying areas that were under the control of the PNA after the Oslo Accords. At least 52 Palestinians (between militants and civilians) and 23 Israeli soldiers died in the raid on the Jenin refugee camp, which 21 years later is again “the bastion of armed resistance against the occupation” (according to the Palestinians) or ” the capital of terrorism” (according to the Israelis). For all its symbolism, Yenin has been the setting chosen by Abu Mazen to launch a message of unity in the face of the split embodied since 2007 in two separate entities at a political and geographical level: the West Bank of Al Hamas’s Fatah and Gaza. “We are a single authority, a single State, a single law and a single security and stability,” he said before warning: “We will cut off the hand of anyone who hinders the unity and security of our people.”
And if something unites the Palestinians it is Jerusalem, Abu Mazen was clear when he pointed out that “it is the capital of the State of Palestine and not Abu Dis. We will remain firm and we will remain in our land.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project