Jenin, occupied West Bank – A crowd of people gathered to watch two massive armoured bulldozers rumble into the Jenin refugee camp, tearing apart the asphalt to clear a path for three Israeli tanks.
“This is the first time I’ve seen a tank with my own eyes,” a young man said, his voice a mixture of awe and disbelief, as the sun set over one of the entrances to the camp on Sunday.
Before him, two massive bulldozers rumbled forward, destroying more of the road underneath them. The refugee camp, nearly emptied after weeks of relentless attacks, was bracing for yet another military incursion.
Ahmed, born in Jenin in 2003 at the height of the second Intifada, had witnessed military incursions before. But Israeli tanks had not been seen on the streets of Jenin since 2002, when that uprising began, and it looks like the Israelis are planning to linger.
Ahmed stood among a group of young men and boys on Haifa Street, near one of the camp’s entrances.
“It won’t be easy for them to stay,” he muttered, as the heavy machinery continued its work.
For more than an hour, journalists, locals, and a nearby Israeli military jeep observed in silence as the bulldozers dismantled the roundabout on Haifa Street. Then, as the last pieces of debris were pushed aside, the engines of the Merkava tanks rumbled, and the armoured vehicles began their advance into the city.
A young man standing nearby, when asked whether he expected immediate resistance, shook his head. “I don’t think so. There’s no one left in the camp, not even the fighters.”
The tanks and the stones
Nonetheless, as the tanks pressed forward towards the refugee camp, a familiar scene unfolded.
Groups of Palestinian youth and children, armed with nothing but stones, hurled them at the approaching tanks. In response, the operator of one of the tanks aimed its cannon and turret directly at the crowd of journalists and onlookers. Moments later, the air filled with tear gas, dispersing the young men and children who had gathered.
Israel has been conducting near-daily raids in the occupied West Bank since 2022; its stated aim being the weakening of armed Palestinian resistance groups operating there. Since the war in Gaza began in October 2023, Israel has increased the deadly force it uses in the West Bank, using helicopters, drones and now tanks.
This latest intensification of violence in Jenin began on January 21, but Israeli forces have also attacked elsewhere, including in Qabatiya and Tulkarem. On Sunday, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said that he had instructed the military “to prepare for a long stay in the cleared camps for the coming years, preventing residents from returning and stopping terrorism from regrowing”.
Among those watching the tanks disappear into the camp was one young man who had been displaced just weeks earlier. He stood in silence, his face tense with uncertainty. “Once again, we don’t know what will happen,” he said. “I have a house to stay in for now, but many people have nowhere to sleep tonight.”
Salvaging belongings
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), more than 40,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes in the West Bank, and Israeli forces are refusing to allow them to return.
The blockade to the camp in Jenin follows weeks of siege, during which initially Palestinian Authority forces and then the Israeli military imposed severe restrictions on movement, cutting off water and electricity to the camp.
Many families were forced to flee suddenly, leaving behind their belongings, including a group of women navigating Jenin’s destroyed, mud-filled streets.
Gathered at one of the entrances to the camp, they planned to get back to their homes and grab some of what they had been forced to leave.
Faces tired, shoes muddy, and surrounded by the bags they were going to use to gather their belongings, they waited to be let through.
But they were unsuccessful. The Israeli soldiers who had forced them to flee their homes blocked them from passing through checkpoints they had set up using the rubble they had created by destroying the camp’s streets.
“The officer told us yesterday that we could come back today, but now he’s refusing to let us in,” said one of the women, frustration evident in her voice.
The women did not want to give up and start walking down another access road, dwarfed by the rubble and destruction that filled the narrow, muddy streets. They were warned off trying again, though, with one ominous word: “Snipers!”
Just the clothes on her back
“We’ll be back one day”, Halima Zawahidi, said, her smile contrasting with tired eyes and a slow, shuffling gait caused by her lung cancer.
Halima was born in the Jenin refugee camp and lived her whole life there, but she was forced out of her home by Israeli soldiers on January 22. She fled the violence, with nothing more than the clothes on her back.
The 63-year-old can vividly recall jets flying overhead as the sound of shooting filled the air, bullets flying above their heads.
Israeli forces killed 10 people that day, setting the tone for the weeks to come.
Now Halima, her brothers, sisters and nephews – eight people in total – are all crammed into one room at an educational centre for the deaf, which became a shelter for some 16 families forcefully expelled from the refuge camp.
Other families have been forced to scatter across Jenin city, staying with family or in whatever other spaces they have been able to find.
But, Halima said, this is the biggest and most vicious Israeli attack she has experienced on a camp that has seen more than enough Israeli raids over the past decades.
The Israelis will stay, she added, because she believes they want to expel everyone who lives in the camp, as is apparent from all the destruction.
Halima is hopeful that her house is still partially standing; the windows and doors were blown out, and several walls were badly damaged or fell.
On top of the regular Israeli raids that the refugee camp residents have suffered for years, “we were under siege for 45 days”, Halima said.
“There was no electricity, no water, no roads, shooting. We lived in the dark in the camp,” she added, referring to a raid by the Palestinian Authority forces who besieged the Palestinians in the camp before the Israeli invasion.
Halima has no idea when she will return home, as do none of the other displaced in Jenin.
Israel continues to breach what would have previously been considered red lines, but with few guardrails and a United States administration that appears to be actively supporting its actions, faces few immediate consequences.
Many observers believe that Israel’s ultimate aim is to depopulate the West Bank of its Palestinian population, but in Gaza, where Israel unleashed the full force of its military for 15 months, a similar aim has so far failed.
But even without a strategy, Israel’s military strength directed towards the people of Jenin has upended the lives of thousands, with no end in sight.
“What are they going to do?” asked one resident, Jameela. “Destroy all the camp? Do they want to make a hole in the land and put us in there?”
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