Shatha Sabbagh, a journalism student in her early twenties from Jenin in the occupied West Bank, was returning home after buying sweets with her mother and three other relatives when the shooting broke out.
The group fell to the ground, but for Shatha it was too late. “Her eyes were open and she was looking at me,” her mother, Nahid Sabbagh, said, her voice beginning to crack. “Then I saw something coming out of her head. And at that moment I realized I had lost my daughter.”
In recent years, the refugee camp in Jenin where Shatha was shot – a patch of narrow streets that has become one of the main strongholds of Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank – has repeatedly been the target of deadly and devastating raids by Israeli security forces. .
But Shatha's death in late December came amid something even rarer: an operation by security forces of the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank, against camp activists.
Palestinian officials say the operation – now in its sixth week, and the largest launched by the Palestinian Authority in 30 years – aims to restore law and order against “outlaws” in the troubled camp, which has long been out of control. control of the Palestinian Authority.
The operation was also widely interpreted as an attempt by the Palestinian Authority to prove to the international community that it has the capacity to play a role in managing Gaza once the war between Israel and Hamas in the Strip ends – an idea supported by Hamas. The United States, Arab and European countries, but it is strongly opposed by the hard-line Israeli government.
This week, Israel and Hamas finally reached a multi-stage agreement to stop the 15-month-old war and release hostages still being held in Gaza. But it is not clear whether this will lead to a permanent end to the war, with far-right ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government demanding that Israel resume hostilities.
“The Palestinian Authority wants to be seen. . . “Whoever thinks about the next day can set the rules and laws, and can play a role not only in the West Bank but also in Gaza,” said Adnan Al-Sabah, a political analyst from Jenin.
But the deaths of civilians like Shatha, which her mother blames on the Palestinian Authority, and the killing of Palestinian Authority militants, have sparked outrage and threaten to further erode the waning domestic legitimacy of the exhausted Palestinian Authority. Established as a stepping stone toward Palestinian statehood, it is now viewed by many Palestinians as a facilitator of the Israeli occupation.
“The people in the camp had one enemy. Now they have two,” Al-Sabbagh said. “(Israel) and the Palestinian Authority – they are two sides of the same coin.”
The PA operation began in December after gunmen seized two PA vehicles, paraded them around the camp in protest against the arrest of two Islamic Jihad activists, and opened fire on municipal buildings. Since then, Palestinian Authority forces say they have arrested dozens of alleged militants, defused improvised bombs, and confiscated large quantities of weapons and ammunition.
But the situation in Jenin remains volatile. When the Financial Times visited the camp, Palestinian Authority vehicles and checkpoints closed the roads leading to the camp. There were repeated exchanges of gunfire, including the shooting that killed a 50-year-old woman.
Brigadier General Anwar Rajab, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority security forces, said that in addition to restoring law and order, the operation aims to prevent militant attacks that would give the Israeli government a pretext to launch a large-scale operation in the area.
Netanyahu's government, widely seen as the most right-wing in Israel's history, is supported by ministers bent on annexing the West Bank and encouraged by the re-election of Donald Trump.
Rajab said: “We do not want a comprehensive confrontation with Israel.” He added: “We are the ones who will lose in this confrontation.” “We don’t want to let anyone drag us there.”
But others view the recent operation carried out by the Palestinian Authority, which Rajab said included “a few hundred” forces, as largely ill-advised, and claim it left the authority in a bind.
“The Palestinian Authority is not in a position to crack down on the camp using massive force, because if it did, there would be huge losses and its support would fall into the abyss, and it could also spark unrest in other parts of the West,” said Ibrahim Dalalsha, director of the center. Horizon for Political Studies, based in Ramallah:
“But after sending all those forces, if the Palestinian Authority backs down now, it will fall, not only in the eyes of its international and regional partners, but also in terms of internal politics.”
For now, both sides in Jenin appear to be relatively restrained.
During the past six weeks, hostilities have claimed the lives of six members of the Palestinian security services and nine others. The Palestinian Authority said three of them were militants, but according to the United Nations, only one was armed.
By contrast, a major Israeli operation in Jenin last year killed 21 people in nine days, according to Palestinian officials. Israel said at the time that it had killed 14 activists. This week, two Israeli drone strikes in Jenin killed 12 people. According to the latest UN data, Israeli forces have killed 795 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, which was sparked by a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
But although the death toll from the Palestinian Authority operation was relatively low, the fact that Palestinians were fighting each other — even as the Israeli army was launching a devastating assault on Gaza — has sparked widespread self-reckoning.
Al-Sabah said: “What is happening in Jenin is a black page in the history of the Palestinians.” “It shows the world that we don't see eye to eye, that we don't have the same platform, that we don't share the same vision.”
As the operation continued, popular pressure to end it increased. Community leaders in both Jenin and Ramallah appealed to the Palestinian Authority and militants to end the standoff, with further calls following Israeli drone strikes and the announcement of a ceasefire in Gaza. On Friday, efforts were made to mediate an end to the crisis.
“The situation in Jenin will not defeat the Palestinian Authority militarily. The number of its security forces is more than 30,000. He has the weapons and money to maintain his control. “It has international and regional support,” Dalalcha said.
“The problem with the Palestinian Authority is that it has lost its standing with the public, even before this operation. The situation in Jenin made her weaker.”
Mapping and data visualization by Aditi Bhandari and Chris Campbell
