In Jenin, Israel’s Settler Colonialist Past Develops Into Its Settler Colonialist Present

By Roqayah Chamseddine | February 11, 2025 | 4:23pm

Photo by Maja Hitij/Getty Images

Palestine Israel

In Jenin, Israel’s Settler Colonialist Past Develops Into Its Settler Colonialist Present

Jenin, the agricultural town nestled in the northern region of the occupied West Bank and long described as being the bastion of Palestinian resistance, is currently the target of an Israeli military campaign aptly named Operation Iron Wall. The name is a reference to the essay “About The Iron Wall” published in 1923 by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Zionist colonialist and founder of the violently anti-Arab paramilitary terrorist organization Irgun, which was responsible for numerous massacres during the Nakba.

Since the start of the deadly assault on Jenin, which came less than 48 hours after the start of the ceasefire in Gaza, Israel has killed at least 27 Palestinians—10 of them are children. One child, two-year-old Laila Khateeb, was shot in the back of the head by an Israeli soldier while having dinner with her family on January 25.

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The ongoing Israeli terror campaign has resulted in the destruction of over 150 to 180 homes, in one case with a mother and three children still inside. According to Palestinian Civil Defense, there are now an estimated 20,000 Palestinians displaced, and Israeli Forces have detonated a large swath of residential blocks in Jenin’s refugee camp. What the Palestinians of Gaza and the occupied West Bank are now facing is a shared existential threat, one that has wider implications for their right of self-determination.

Jabotinsky’s “About The Iron Wall,” approvingly referenced by Netanyahu in a July 2023 address, describes the indigenous Arab population as looking upon Palestine “with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie.” Jabotinsky goes on to argue that a voluntary agreement from the indigenous Arab population to relinquish their homeland is unattainable, “a delusion,” and that “Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs.”

In Jenin, Tulkarem and other Palestinian towns, we are seeing the settler colonialist past develop into the settler colonialist present.

The Battle of Jenin, which lasted from April 1 until April 12 in 2002, would come to define contemporary Palestinian history and armed resistance in occupied Palestine since the Nakba and the creation of the Zionist entity. The Israeli invasion of Jenin refugee camp resulted in the killing of at least 52 Palestinians during Israel’s “Operation Defensive Shield.” During the infiltration of Jenin refugee camp, Israeli Forces conducted summary executions, intentionally denied Palestinians access to medical aid, and attacked civilians and property.

In one disturbing case, 57-year-old Kamal Zghair, who was wheelchair-bound, was shot and killed and his body was subsequently run over by an Israeli tank. Zghair had attached a white flag to his wheelchair, and was attempting to reach a gas station where he slept. In another case, 14-year-old Faris Zaiban was shot and killed by an Israeli tank while walking to a grocery store. An 8-year-old witness would tell Human Rights Watch that he saw an Israeli tank turn towards them and begin shooting. “I saw Faris falling down. I thought that he had just tripped. But then I saw blood on the ground. I went to Faris, I thought he was just asleep. Two women came and carried Faris to a car. The [IDF] soldiers didn’t say anything before they started shooting. There were no men with us, just boys and women.”

Ameed Faleh, a 4th year BA student of Social Thought, Economy, and Policy at Al-Quds University and member of the Good Shepherd Collective told Splinter that Israel’s “Operation Iron Wall” is being executed as a specific war of attrition waged against Jenin and its camp in the preceding months.

“In this war of attrition, the [Palestinian Authority’s] operation dubbed ‘Protecting the Homeland’ needs to be emphasized, as it only preceded Israel’s by a few days,” Faleh said. “Ever since the Battle of Seif al-Quds in 2021, Jenin had become a center of localized groups of resistance aiming to upend Zionist settler-colonialism in the West Bank. In preceding years to ‘Operation Iron Wall’, Israel conducted major operations to uproot these localized groups, with limited strategic success. What makes ‘Operation Iron Wall’ unique is that the destruction of West Bank resistance groups, like the Jenin Battalion, has been officially included in Israel’s genocidal war goals.”

Faleh described the relationship between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) as being that of “master and puppet,” and that in this relationship the PA is attempting “to uproot resistance in order to bolster a recycled ‘West Bank First’ discourse that aims to delegitimize the narrow spaces of resistance available in the West Bank as being mere outlaws bringing a Gaza-like catastrophe on the West Bank.”

Faleh said that this discourse has a dual purpose: First, “The PA is trying to galvanize public opinion in the West Bank on the side of the PA, and to provide its rentier networks who get salaries from the PA with seemingly ‘logical’ arguments for their political alignments.” Second, “it is trying to assuage Israeli fears of the ‘West Bank powder keg’ through security collaboration, en-masse arrests as well as counter-insurgency operations like the one that we saw in Jenin just before Israel’s onslaught on Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas.”

Today, the people of Jenin are facing a merciless occupier that continues to wage a systemic war, one which has been likened to the war in Gaza, as well as the collaborationist PA, which is encouraging and taking part in its genocidal mission. According to the United Nations, “68 percent of health service points in the West Bank are now unable to function for more than two or three days a week, and hospitals are functioning at only 70 percent of their capacity.”

Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank is being perpetuated not only against the people but against the land, including the destruction of water pipelines, key access routes, and basic infrastructure. Aseel Baidoun, Senior Advocacy and Campaigns Manager for Medical Aid For Palestinians (MAP), explained that reports from doctors in Jenin are almost indistinguishable to those that came out of Gaza.

“The Israeli army is attacking and systematically obstructing medical teams, besieging hospitals, forcing people to flee their homes, and eradicating the resources needed to sustain life,” Baidoun said.

The genocidal Israeli aggression on Jenin, which has gone on for over two weeks, is a clear example of the colonial maximization of suffering, which is designed to produce as much chaos and harm in order not only to make life unbearable but to force a breakdown in public support for Palestinian resistance—and yet, with every deadly military operation, Palestinian resistance takes new forms and whittles away at the apartheid entity, one day at a time.