Jenin camp.. A special geography in a burning history

The Jenin camp after the battle of April-April 2002 was a material that dominated media coverage, and inspired drama makers (films and series), researchers, writers, and novelists whose heart opened, so they wrote a lot about the camp. Indeed, that camp battle was the subject and focus of postgraduate theses in more than one Palestinian university. and non-Palestinian.

With the passing of the years, events and other places dominated the news bulletins, and the people of the camp became preoccupied with their lives and tried to live as much as they could. They paid a huge bill of blood. Between 2000-2006, 1% of the camp's population was martyred, and every prisoner behind bars, and another who is released reminds them of that stage they lived through.

Two decades later, the Jenin camp returned to the fore after the formation of the "Jenin Brigade" and the assassination of Sherine Abu Aqleh, a correspondent for Al-Jazeera channel, who visited Jenin and the camp as part of her profession many times, and covered events in different places for many years, so that she was destined to eliminate the camp's land in May 2022.

As if the camp, with its symbols, insists on always attending, and the events continued until the camp witnessed an invasion that reminded the Palestinians and the world of the 2002 invasion, on July 3 and 4, 2023, and it lasted 40 hours, and resulted in 12 martyrs and 100 wounded, some of whom were in difficult condition, with great destruction of infrastructure and homes. And the displacement of nearly 4,000 camp residents, many of whom are women, children, the elderly, and the sick.

Why Jenin camp?
I will not delve into the details of what happened, as the screens of satellite channels and news websites are full of this, and the political and military analyzes from various parties are rich in what spares me from much talk?

However, there was an aspect that few took away from the (ideal) utopia or circled around it, which is why the Jenin camp receives such attention? Countries are rushing to rebuild what was destroyed by the occupation, and important satellite channels are racing to cover its events, and before that, why, for the second time, is a situation or a special case of resistance to the occupation crystallizing inside the camp that is unique in the West Bank?

This leads to another question: Why did the rest of the regions, including the vicinity of Jenin camp, not have a situation similar to that of the camp? Including other refugee camps that had connections with the occupation in previous stages? Why is the Jenin camp the unique icon that continues so far?

These questions make us look from another angle; Due to its importance and its immersion in the roots and essence of the steadfast state of defiance of the occupation, while the coverage often focused on the phenomenon or manifestations of the situation.

Jenin camp in a special geography
In a hurry, and as a reminder, not the definition, because a lot has been published about this; The Jenin camp is located west of the city of Jenin, adjacent to Marj Bani Amer, one of the most fertile plains of the Fertile Crescent, and located in the north of the West Bank, which was occupied after the defeat of 1967 and belonged to Jordan civilly, militarily and politically, of course.

UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees) established the camp on the lands of Jenin in 1953 and its area is currently less than half a square kilometer (a new adjacent area of ​​14 dunums was added to the camp as part of the donation of the late UAE President Sheikh Zayed Al Nahyan to rebuild what was destroyed by the occupation in the 2002 invasion ) Its population is currently about 12 thousand people, and to note that there are other estimates of the population that are higher than this figure taken from the Central Bureau of Statistics in Palestine, and it is not far from the social reality, because it takes into account that the residents of the neighborhoods surrounding the camp are from the north (Al-Zahraa ) and the West (Al-Hadaf and Wadi Burqin) and the South (Al-Jabriyat), the overwhelming majority of whom were residents of the Jenin camp and are related to it because they hold the status of Palestinian refugees according to the Palestinian definition and United Nations resolutions, in addition to, of course, the social, economic, political and other ties.

Jenin camp is adjacent to the government hospital (Martyr Dr. Khalil Suleiman Hospital), which was established a few years after the establishment of the camp during the Jordanian administration, and bore its current name, because the director of the Red Crescent Center, Dr. Khalil Mahmoud Suleiman, was martyred in the first week of March 2002. During an Israeli military operation called "A Journey in Colors" that targeted a group of camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and failed in the Jenin camp; Dr. Khalil was riding an ambulance and entered the camp to evacuate the wounded, when a force from the occupation army fired a shell that completely burned his body when he was in his seventies.

Dr. Khalil hails from the town of Arraba, southwest of Jenin, and lives in a house in the city of Jenin, not far from the camp to the east.

And he recounted this event to indicate that the blood of those who are not from its residents from different segments of the occupation fire is spilled on its land. When the occupation makes no difference between a resistance fighter like Youssef Qabha (Abu Jandal) from the town of Ya`bad, or a doctor like Khalil Suleiman, or a journalist like Sherine Abu Aqleh.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no area like the Jenin camp that has this distinction or privacy, where the blood of people from different regions mixes and entered it for different reasons, and what unites them is the injustice and aggression of the occupation.

On the western side of the Jenin camp is a cemetery where the bodies of the martyrs and the dead are buried, and this prompted some young men to joke with a defiant tone against the enemies: Beware of the camp, for the first is a hospital and the last is a cemetery!

There are no large separating spaces between the camp houses of the UNRWA administration, its customs and laws, and the houses of the nearby city of Jenin, of the municipality of Jenin, as there is a clear overlap in the areas adjacent to the camp.

Jenin and a history of conflict with the invaders
Jenin is a relatively small city, but it is ancient (Canaanite) and witnessed many events. What we care about is the resistance to the invaders, and they are the reason for the lack of long periods of stability and calm in Jenin. The people of Jenin and its villages resisted Napoleon's French campaign and inflicted heavy losses on his army - accompanied by the Ottomans - so he ordered the burning of the city!

During the period of the British Mandate, Jenin had rounds and rounds, and Jenin is only mentioned in association with the name of the martyr Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam, who was martyred in the woods of the nearby town of Ya`bad in 1935. When the great revolution broke out in 1936, Jenin, its people, and its mujahideen had distinctive imprints in fighting the British and attacking the Jewish colonies.

The British demolished large parts of its buildings in retaliation for the killing of a senior English officer at the hands of a Mujahid from the town of Qabatiya (Ali Abu Ein) in 1938.
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