4 Inconvenient Realities of Israel’s Jenin Operation

The breathless, nonstop media coverage of Israel’s recently concluded military operation in the West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp is understandable. Dubbed Operation Home and Garden by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) (a strange name for a major incursion that killed 12 Palestinians, injured at least 100 others, displaced—at least temporarily—as many as 3,000 Palestinians from their homes, and killed one Israeli soldier), the raid was the largest and longest IDF operation in the West Bank since the Second Intifada and involved attack drones, tanks, a brigade-sized force, and elements of an engineering corps.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant portrayed the operation as a tactical success and said its objectives had been “fully achieved.” The IDF reported that 1,000 weapons were confiscated, six explosives-manufacturing facilities were dismantled, and 300 suspects were questioned, 30 of whom were arrested. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also made clear the operation was “not a one-off” and vowed to “eradicate terrorism wherever we see it.”

Yet beneath the rhetoric and confiscated weapons inventory lies a more complex reality. Even before the Jenin incursion—and now certainly after—Israelis and Palestinians remain trapped in a volatile, bloody cul-de-sac with little prospect of a way out. Several inconvenient truths guarantee it.

1. There is no security with (or without) the Palestinian Authority

Over the past two years, Israel has faced a recurring problem in northern West Bank cities such as Nablus and especially Jenin: Loosely organized armed groups supported by Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad have emerged to resist Israeli forces and carry out attacks against Israelis in both the West Bank and Israel proper.

Whatever influence the Palestinian Authority and Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party once exercised in Jenin has eroded. And Israeli raids, especially since March 2022, have further diminished the PA’s influence and boosted that of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Without the return of the PA’s security presence in Jenin—a veritable impossibility in current circumstances—it’s only a matter of time before these armed groups reconstitute themselves, expand, and likely regenerate elsewhere.

Much of the Palestinian public sees the PA as an enabler, if not an active defender, of the Israeli occupation through its security cooperation with the IDF and Israeli intelligence as well as its inability to protect Palestinians from Israeli raids. It has no standing and no credibility to reassert its security presence in the Jenin camp. Indeed, when two Fatah party members showed up at the funerals of those killed in Jenin, camp residents booed them and demanded they leave the cemetery.

Tensions between Hamas and Fatah make the PA’s return to areas where Hamas’s influence has grown impossible. And Abbas, now in the 18th year of a four-year presidential term, has watched his poll numbers and credibility plummet. Corruption, mismanagement of the Palestinian economy, his canceling of Palestinian elections in 2021, the failure to end Israel’s occupation, and his centralization of power have brought his standing and that of the PA to an all-time low. And even when Abbas, now age 87, passes from the scene, the struggle within Fatah and between Hamas and Fatah to dominate the Palestinian national movement could usher in a period of prolonged instability.

As the PA deteriorates, Israel will face the unpalatable choice of either assuming greater security for areas of the West Bank that are slipping beyond the PA’s control or watching Hamas and other radical groups fill the vacuum and increase their sway. Should the PA collapse, Israel might have no choice but to reoccupy large parts of the West Bank. Under those circumstances, Israel would have to assume responsibility for dealing with the Palestinian population or watching these areas descend into chaos.

2. Terrorism has no capital

The IDF asserts that more than 50 recent terror attacks emanated from the Jenin area, and Gallant opined that in the past two years, Jenin has become a “production site” for terrorism. True enough. But Tamir Hayman, the former head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, makes a powerful point: “Terrorism has no capital.” Instead, he writes, terrorism is “rooted in the hearts and minds of the people, and it is not about one physical site whose dismantlement solves the problem.” Just one example: Earlier this week, a Palestinian from the West Bank rammed his vehicle into crowd of Israelis in Tel Aviv, exited the vehicle, and stabbed another wounding eight.

And Israeli counterterrorism, as necessary as it is, has consequences: It breeds more anger, resentment and gives rise to more martyrs and heroic narratives of struggle that are certain to generate more violence, militancy, and terror. In the wake of Israel’s withdrawal from Jenin, Palestinians seemed defiant, claiming victory, attacking the PA for its weakness, and praising those martyred in the Israeli incursion.

Increasing numbers of young Palestinians are leaving farewell messages welcoming martyrdom and exhorting conflict with Israel in the event they are killed. “Why is a 13-year-old child thinking of his death before he is thinking of his future?” a Palestinian school counselor asked recently. A poll conducted in March by the respected Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki found that 68 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza support the formation of armed groups, such as the Lions’ Den, and 87 percent believe that the PA does not have the right to arrest members of these groups.

One of Israel’s major concerns is that the increased militancy in Jenin might spread to other areas of the West Bank farther south, eroding PA control in places closer to the PA’s main headquarters in Ramallah and where its influence is stronger. There are credible reports of resistance emerging in Nablus and villages in the Ramallah countryside. These areas have until now stayed out of the fight, but the images from the Jenin operation provide fertile ground for radicalizing an entire generation that has lost hope in the future.

3. The Israeli government has no political strategy

Israeli security and intelligence officials would be the first to admit that without a broader political effort to address the political, psychological, and demographic challenges posed by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is—at best—the potential for a temporary lull in terrorist activity from Jenin and maybe a strengthening of Israel’s deterrence.

Anonymous Israeli “senior political sources” insisted to reporters that the goal of the latest Jenin operation was to “prepare the ground for the return of the Palestinian Authority to Jenin.” But is there actually any serious thinking going on at the top of the Israeli government about how to restore PA control in these areas, boost its political credibility, or ameliorate the conditions of the occupation that make Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s appeal so compelling—let alone to address the underlying causes of the conflict?

On the contrary, the opposite is being done. Through its ongoing efforts to annex the West Bank in everything but name, the Israeli government is undercutting the PA and boosting Hamas’s stock. By withholding tax revenues; expanding settlement activity; refusing to engage in any discussion about a political settlement; failing to restrain settler rampages against Palestinian civilians; and confiscating Palestinian land, the Israeli government humiliates and undermines the Palestinian Authority, tarring it with the brush of enabling the Israeli occupation while demanding it expand security cooperation.

Meanwhile, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are also trying to discredit the PA and extend their influence throughout the West Bank. Hamas in particular is pursuing a “not in my backyard” approach—seeking to open fronts in the West Bank and Jerusalem while maintaining stability and avoiding confrontation with Israel in Gaza that would undermine its popular support there.

Indeed, it doesn’t take much imagination to argue that the government’s annexationist ministers and Hamas are pursuing complimentary policies to further their own agendas. Israeli settlers and their ideological representatives in the Netanyahu government would love to see the IDF assume broader security responsibilities for much of the West Bank—indeed, according to Israeli media, the settler constituency inside and outside the government pressed for a far more expansive operation than the one that just ended in Jenin—and Hamas would benefit from the blow that would deliver to an already crumbling PA.

4. No deus ex machina is coming to fix everything

Years ago, the Israeli analyst and activist and former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a “shepherds’ war” between intimate adversaries. In a way, the conflict has in fact become a localized affair. It surely resonates for Israelis and Palestinians and for two Arab states that share contiguous borders with Israel: Egypt and Jordan. And it has to some degree impacted Israel’s relations with the countries that have signed onto the Abraham Accords and will surely play some role (how much is unclear) in efforts to get a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

But for the vaunted international community and the United States, it has lost its centrality. Beyond rhetorical expressions of support and occasional United Nations resolutions and conferences, there’s not a single member of the United Nations that’s willing to make the redemption of Palestine or pursuit of a two-state solution a central feature of its foreign policy.

Despite its settlement policies and the occupation, Israel enjoys more international legitimacy and broader diplomatic reach than at any time since its independence. A few more years of the most fundamentalist and extremist government in Israel’s history might change that, though that’s far from certain.

As for the Biden administration, domestic politics, other foreign-policy priorities, and the very real possibility (perhaps certainty) that any serious initiative would fail has kept its enthusiasm for involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian issue under control. Israelis and Palestinians have been left to their own devices. Their proximity and worst tendencies, instincts, and politics almost guarantee their situation is likely get worse before it gets even worse. The words of W.B. Yeats’s poem “Second Coming” come to mind: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”