The journey of the Palestinian who opened fire at a street-side bar in Tel Aviv last week, killing three young Israeli men and sending the city into lockdown, began a two-hour drive away in an impoverished refugee camp deep inside the occupied West Bank.
Twenty years after Jenin saw one of the biggest battles of the second Palestinian uprising, Israel is once again launching near-daily raids into the camp and trading fire with local fighters. Decades of dispossession, poverty and violence have only deepened the camp’s reputation as a bastion of armed struggle against Israeli rule.
Tires, gutted appliances and other rubble are piled up near the entrances to the camp, which is transformed into a fortress at night, when the raids usually occur. Narrow roads wind through a confusion of squat concrete homes built on a hillside, some adorned with portraits of slain Palestinians and the flags of armed factions.
Palestinian assailants have killed 14 Israelis in a series of attacks in recent weeks, and clashes at a major Jerusalem holy site on Friday have raised tensions further.
Last Thursday, Raad Hazem, a 28-year-old from the Jenin camp, attacked the bar in central Tel Aviv and eluded a massive manhunt for hours before police shot and killed him near a mosque. A large poster celebrating Hazem as a martyr to the Palestinian cause was hung over the main entrance to the camp after the attack, praising him for “imposing a curfew” on the seaside metropolis.
Israel has launched a wave of arrest raids across the West Bank, igniting clashes with Palestinian militants. At least 25 Palestinians have been killed, many of whom had carried out attacks or were involved in the clashes, but also an unarmed woman and a lawyer who appears to have been killed by mistake. Twelve were from in or around Jenin.
The renewed violence came as little surprise to Ahmed Tobasi, the artistic director of the Freedom Theater, which was co-founded by a famous militant and offers drama classes, performance facilities and a safe space for young Palestinians in the camp.
“What do you expect from a child who grows up in a refugee camp, who sees army raids morning, noon and night?” he said. “His father’s a prisoner, his brother’s a prisoner, his mother has been detained, his friends are prisoners or martyrs.”
“There’s no opportunity to be anything else,” he said.
The camp is home to Palestinian families who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. Like other camps across the Middle East, it has grown into a crowded, built-up neighborhood where a UN agency provides basic services.
Jenin emerged as a militant stronghold during the 2000-2005 intifada, when Palestinians launched scores of suicide bombings and other attacks against civilians, and Israel imposed closures and carried out deadly raids.
