The Battle of Jenin, took place in the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on April 1–11, 2002. The Israeli military invaded the camp, and other areas under the administration of the Palestinian Authority, during the Second Intifada, as part of Operation Defensive Shield.
Israeli forces employed infantry, commando forces, and assault helicopters. Palestinian militants had prepared for a fight, booby trapping locations throughout the camp, and after an Israeli column walked into an ambush, the army began to rely more heavily on the use of armored bulldozers. On April 11, Palestinian militants began to surrender. Israeli troops began withdrawing from the camp on April 18.
Despite reports of a widespread massacre numbering hundreds of casualties by some Palestinian officials, subsequent investigations found no evidence to substantiate it, and official totals from Palestinian and Israeli sources confirmed between 52 and 54 Palestinians, including civilians, and 23 Israeli soldiers as having been killed in the fighting. Israel did not allow emergency workers into the camp after the battle with Palestinian militants had ended, drawing condemnation from a UN envoy. The battle led to widespread destruction of the camp, as at least 140 buildings were completely destroyed, and severe damage was caused to 200 additional buildings rendered uninhabitable or unsafe.
Naming
According to Palestinian writer Ramzy Baroud, the event is "known by many as the Jenin massacre".
Background
The Jenin refugee camp was established in 1953 within Jenin's municipal boundaries on land that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) leased from the government of Jordan, who at the time ruled the West Bank until 1967. Covering an area of 0.423 square kilometers, in 2002, it was home to 13,055 UNRWA registered Palestinian refugees. Most of the camp's residents originally hail from the Carmel mountains and region of Haifa, and many maintain close ties with their relatives inside the Green Line. Other camp residents include Palestinians from Gaza and Tulkarm who moved into the area in the late 1970s, and those who came from Jordan after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.
Camp militants repelled attempts by PA seniors to exercise authority in the camp. In a February 2002 show of force, residents burned seven vehicles that were sent by the governor of Jenin and opened fire on the PA men. Ata Abu Rumeileh was designated the chief security officer of the camp by its residents. He oversaw access to the entrances to the camp, instituted roadblocks, investigated "suspicious characters" and kept unwanted strangers away.
Known to Palestinians as "the martyrs' capital", the camp had some 200 militants, included members of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Tanzim, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas. By Israel's count, at least 28 suicide bombers were dispatched from the Jenin camp from 2000 to 2003 during the Second Intifada. One of the key planners for several of the attacks was Mahmoud Tawalbe, who worked in a record store while also heading the local PIJ cell. Israeli army weekly Bamahane attributes at least 31 militant attacks, totaling 124 victims, to Jenin during the same period, more than any other city in the West Bank.
Prior to the undertaking of the Israeli operation the IDF Spokesman attributed 23 suicide bombings and 6 attempted bombings against civilians in Israel to Palestinians from Jenin. Major attacks and suicide bombings perpetrated by Palestinian militant groups from Jenin included the Matza restaurant suicide bombing, a Palestinian suicide bombing of an Israeli Arab-owned restaurant in Haifa, Israel which has been called a massacre and resulted in the deaths of 16 Israeli civilians, and over 40 more civilians being injured.
Prelude
Days prior, a suicide bombing attack on a Passover celebration in Netanya resulted in at least 30 casualties and 140 wounded. Israel's Operation Defensive Shield began on March 29 with an incursion into Ramallah, followed by Tulkarem and Qalqilya on April 1, Bethlehem on April 2, and Jenin and Nablus on April 3. By this date, six Palestinian cities and their surrounding towns, villages, and refugee camps, had been occupied by the IDF.
Limited Israeli forces had entered the camp along a single route twice in the previous month; they encountered heavy resistance and quickly withdrew. Unlike other camps, the organizations in Jenin had a joint commander: Yosef Ahmad Rayhan Qabha, known as "Abu Jandal," an officer in the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces who had fought in Lebanon, served in the Iraqi Army, and who had been involved in several encounters with the IDF. He set up a war room and divided the camp into fifteen sub-sectors, deploying about twenty armed men in each. During the battle, he began calling himself "The Martyr Abu Jandal".
After an IDF action in Ramallah in March resulted in television broadcast footage that was considered unflattering, the IDF high command decided not to allow reporters to join the forces. Like other cities targeted in Defensive Shield, Jenin was declared a "closed military zone" and placed under curfew before the entrance of Israeli troops, remaining sealed off throughout the invasion. Water and electricity supplies to the city were also cut off and remained unavailable to residents throughout.
Booby-trapping of homes and buildings
Since the previous Israeli withdrawal, Palestinian militants had prepared by boobytrapping both the town and camp's streets in a bid to trap Israeli soldiers. Following his surrender to Israeli forces, Thabet Mardawi, an Islamic Jihad fighter, said that Palestinian fighters had spread "between 1000 and 2000 bombs and booby traps" throughout the camp, some big ones for tanks (weighing as much as 113 kilograms), most others the size of water bottles. "Omar the Engineer", a Palestinian bombmaker, said that some 50 homes were booby trapped: "We chose old and empty buildings and the houses of men who were wanted by Israel because we knew the soldiers would search for them." More powerful bombs with remote detonators were placed inside trash bins in the street and inside the cars of wanted men. Omar said that everyone in the camp, including children, knew where the explosives were located, and noted that this constituted a major weakness to their defenses, since during the Israeli incursion, the wires to more than a third of the bombs were cut by soldiers guided by Palestinian collaborators.
Evacuation orders and start of fighting
According to Efraim Karsh, before the fighting started, the IDF used loudspeakers broadcasting in Arabic to urge the locals to evacuate the camp, and he estimates that some 11,000 left. Stephanie Gutmann also said that the IDF used bullhorns and announcements in Arabic to inform the residents of the invasion, and that the troops massed outside the camp for a day because of rain. She estimated that 1,200 remained in the camp, but that it was impossible to tell how many of them were fighters. After the battle, Israeli intelligence estimated that half the population of noncombatants had left before the invasion, and 90% had done so by the third day, leaving around 1,300 people. Others estimated that 4,000 people had remained in the camp. Some camp residents reported hearing the Israeli calls to evacuate, while others said they did not. Many thousands did leave the camp, with women and children usually permitted to move into the villages in the surrounding hills or the neighbouring city. However, the men who left were almost all temporarily detained. Instructed by Israeli soldiers to strip before they were taken away, journalists who entered Jenin following the invasion remarked that heaps of discarded clothing in the ruined streets showed where they were taken into custody.
As the fighting started, Ali Safouri, a commander of the Islamic Jihad's Al-Quds Brigades in the camp, said: "We have prepared unexpected surprises for the enemy. We are determined to pay him back double, and teach him a lesson he will not forget. ... We will attack him on the home front, in Jerusalem, in Haifa, and in Jaffa, everywhere. We welcome them, and we have prepared a special graveyard in the Jenin camp for them. We swore on the martyrs that we would place a curfew on the Zionist cities and avenge every drop of blood spilled upon our sacred land. We call on the soldiers of Sharon to refuse his orders, because entering the [Jenin] camp... the capital of the martyrs' [operations], will, Allah willing, be the last thing they do in their lives".
The Israeli command sent in three thrusts consisting mainly of the reservist 5th Infantry Brigade from the town of Jenin to the north, as well as a company of the Nahal Brigade from the southeast and Battalion 51 of the Golani Brigade from the southwest. The force of 1,000 troops also included Shayetet 13 and Duvdevan Unit special forces, the Armored Corps, and Combat Engineering Corps with armored bulldozer for neutralizing the roadside bombs that would line the alleys of the camp according to Military Intelligence. The 5th Infantry Brigade did not have any experience in close quarters combat and did not have a commander when Operation Defensive Shield started, since the last commander's service ended a few days earlier. His substitute was a reserve officer, Lieutenant Colonel Yehuda Yedidya, who got his rank after the operation began. His soldiers were not trained for urban fighting. Anticipating the heaviest resistance in Nablus, IDF commanders sent two regular infantry brigades there, assuming they could take over the Jenin camp in 48–72 hours with just the one reservist brigade. The force's entry was delayed until April 2 due to rain and delays with transporting equipment.
Battle
Israeli forces entered Jenin on April 2. On the first day, reserve company commander Major Moshe Gerstner was killed in a PIJ sector. This caused a further delay. By April 3, the city was secured, but the fighting in the camp was just beginning. Israeli sources say that the IDF incursion into the camp relied primarily on infantry to minimize civilian casualties, but interviews with eyewitnesses suggest that tanks and helicopters were also used in the first two days. Captured Palestinian fighters subsequently told their interrogators that they had anticipated greater use of Israeli air power, not expecting the Israelis to risk heavier casualties in house-to-house fighting. Ata Abu Roumileh, a Fatah leader in the camp, later said that it was only when his forces saw the Israelis advancing on foot that they decided to stay and fight. Thabet Mardawi recalled that "I couldn't believe it when I saw the soldiers. The Israelis knew that any soldier who went into the camp like that was going to get killed."
To reach the camp, a Caterpillar D-9 armored bulldozer drove along a three-quarter-mile stretch of the main street to clear it of booby traps. An Israeli Engineering Corps officer logged 124 separate explosions set off by the bulldozer.
On the third day, the Palestinians were still dug in, defying Israeli expectations, and by then seven Israeli soldiers had been killed. Mardawi later testified to having killed two of them from close range, using an M-16. As the IDF advanced, the Palestinians fell back to the heavily defended camp center – the Hawashin district. AH-1 Cobra helicopters were used to strike Palestinian positions on rooftops using wire-guided missiles, and about a dozen armored D-9 bulldozers were deployed, widening alleys, clearing paths for tanks, and detonating booby traps. Palestinians said that Israeli troops rode atop the bulldozers and fired rocket propelled grenades.
On April 6, Mahmoud Tawalbe and two other militants went into a house so as to get close enough to a tank or armored D-9 bulldozer to plant a bomb. Tawalbe and another militant were killed during the action. A British military expert working in the camp for Amnesty International reported that a D9 driver saw him, and subsequently rammed a wall down onto him and one of his fighters. The Islamic Jihad website announced that Tawalbe had died when he blew up in his booby-trapped home on the Israeli soldiers inside it, and that he "had thwarted all attempts by the occupation to evacuate the camp residents to make it easier for the Israelis to destroy [the camp] on the heads of the fighters." On that same day, IDF attack helicopters reportedly increased their missile attacks, which slowed but did not cease the next day.