An extended operation in the Occupied West Bank was carried out by the Israeli Occupation Forces in January 2025, which it called Operation “Iron Wall”. This operation commenced within the context of the temporary ceasefire in Gaza, humiliating, high-profile prisoner exchanges staged by Hamas, and the occupation’s keenness to reestablish its military and security deterrence capability amidst the growing fears amongst its settler base of a “second October 7th” by the West Bank resistance factions. The operation was carried out after a 45-day siege, which targeted civilian infrastructure, blocked main roads leading in and out of Jenin City and the Jenin Refugee Camp, once again using collective punishment tactics on its people, and preventing resistance forces from surrounding towns and cities to support Jenin’s factions.
Forensic Architecture released a report on the 23rd of July investigating the patterns of destruction in Jenin, and what the demolition patterns indicate about how the occupation forces sought to reshape the city. They specifically identify houses, public spaces, and infrastructure slated for demolition to establish new military routes. These demolitions were found to be clearly indicative of subdividing Jenin into smaller, more controllable blocks separated by wide streets easily traversable by armoured military vehicles. (Forensic Archicture, 2025). This form of destruction and strategic reconstruction is far from new; in fact, it exactly mirrors the form taken in the devastation of the occupation force’s attack on the Jenin Refugee camp in 2002. What is also consistent is the willing participation and complicity of the Palestinian Authority and “Israel’s Arab allies in the region in reconstructing the city for the benefit of the occupation’s military rather than any of its Palestinian inhabitants.
After the 2002 Battle of Jenin during the Second Intifada, the United Arab Emirates funded the reconstruction of the camp after it was torn apart by IOF military vehicles and bulldozers (UNRWA, 2002). Moreover, WikiLeaks also revealed the UAE’s coordination with the Americans, within the framework of redesigning the place in a way that would facilitate vehicles’ ability to infiltrate/trespass and combat any future resistance (Wikileaks, 2002). The fruits of this design were clearly evident in the July 2023 incursion, when the Sheikh Zayed Mosque roundabout was a primary infiltration point for the occupation forces and where they faced significant resistance.
In 2002, the Hawashin neighbourhood in the Old City of Jenin was witness to the highest level of destruction, referred to as Ground Zero by the people of Jenin, in which invading forces carried out their policy of systematic destruction of over 400 buildings regardless of whether residents were inside or not. In the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Jenin, a $27 million injection of funding from the UAE made the camp one of the highest recipients of foreign aid during the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The Hawashin neighbourhood formed a significant part of the Old City of Jenin and constituted at least 10 per cent of the camp before its destruction (Human Rights Watch, 2002). The design of the old quarter, or medina, is typical of Arab, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean cities, centred around a mosque or religious institution and its dense, compact buildings. Its most relevant features are narrow labyrinthine streets and alleyways, maximising shade and protection, deterring invaders from navigating the Old Quarter, as well as the streets being too narrow for the movement of motor vehicles, often leading to courtyards and dead ends (Taslaq, 2006).
The proposed design ostensibly sought to create a more “modernised” urban fabric, with wide avenues to increase access to natural lighting and improve ventilation. This was vehemently opposed by Jenin’s Emergency Committee, rightfully concerned with the ongoing and future incursions into the camp that this redesign would facilitate, focus groups carried out as part of this project that residents of the camp wanted the quarter to be rebuilt exactly as it was, and houses be built on their former sites, (a position also held unanimously by the Emergency Committee itself) (Tabar, 2012). Such a strategy of redesigning the urban fabric with the intention of modernisation and the added benefit of facilitating the entry of conventional military and militarised police forces to suppress rebellion is by no means unheard of. Haussmann’s boulevards in Paris, whether or not it was a primary intention of the design or an inadvertent effect, significantly reduced rioters’ ability to block and barricade streets while providing the army greater access and mobility.
UNRWA and the design committee, pushing for the “modernisation” of the camp, ignored the popular consensus of the camp and its representatives and went ahead with their proposal. Even years after the project’s completion, it was a major point of controversy and outrage from Jenin’s people. One of the Emergency Committee’s former members explains:
“Before, the Israeli jeeps and tanks could not enter the camp. Now they have built the camp in such a way . . . that night incursions occur regularly. The jeeps enter very easily and can make their way throughout the camp.” (Tabar, 2012)
One resident whose home was completely destroyed and had, at one point, supported the redesign highlights succinctly how this scheme primarily serves and protects Israeli armoured vehicles more than it does the residents:
“Now the camp is better than before. They opened roads. Before, many homes could not be reached; there is more room and space. Before, we used to fight with our neighbours over space. Now they established order and a system, it is very difficult to build over these roads. A foundation was created. . .. But now the safety is afforded for the army through the roads. Each six houses are surrounded by roads. The army jeeps surround the houses from all sides. Before they could not enter this area.” (Tabar, 2012)
However, the role that the Palestinian Authority played in the 2025 assault differed from all previous aggressions, an unprecedented show of the PA’s “security coordination” with the occupation. Rather than retreating to their headquarters, they had deployed in large numbers in streets throughout Jenin City and Refugee Camp that the occupation forces had not yet infiltrated, setting up roadblocks, pursuing resistance fighters and preventing them from reaching their comrades. In their pursuit of resistance fighters, the PA had gone as far as trespassing into hospitals, clinics and medical centres to search for and arrest the injured fighters.
Jenin’s people were also displaced in unprecedented numbers as they were forced to flee following Israeli evacuation (Leave or Die) orders in areas designated for destruction. Up to 3,100 families, totalling over 20,000 people in Jenin alone, were forced down a designated narrow corridor toward Wadi Burqin. Israeli occupation forces set up surveillance systems with facial recognition technology. At new impromptu military checkpoints, civilians were arrested under false pretences and were disappeared into the occupation prisons. This mirrors their policies on those Palestinians displaced in the Gaza Strip. These arrests are especially targeted at the families and neighbours of the resistance fighters, granting the occupation leverage against the resistance and applying collective punishment to their popular base of support.
After the battle of the summer of 2023, the camp reaffirms its resistance project and, in the context of the Al-Aqsa Flood battles in 2024 and 2025, confronts the existential Israeli threat. With the occupation’s war minister Yoav Gallant vowing to “mow the lawn” in the West Bank, a phrase infamously used in Israel’s rhetoric during the wars of aggression against Gaza during the period of the siege of the last nearly two decades (Middle East Eye, 2024). Today, we are faced with political messaging and posturing that differ from those of the 2002 and 2023 battles and their historic contexts (Middle East Monitor, 2025), in terms of (what was assumed at the time) the suppression of the resistance, both its will and means in Jenin. The previously mentioned financial support by Israel’s Arab allies since 2002 and the outstanding efforts undertaken to protect the Israeli occupation from external threats, whether establishing a land corridor to counteract Yemen’s naval blockade (Alisa Odenheimer, 2024), or to repel missile and drone operations launched from Yemen, Iraq, or Iran (to the extent that this was colloquially referred to as the Arab Dome, in reference to Israel’s own Iron Dome) (Fatima, 2025) all contribute to Israel’s perception of its own impunity on the regional level. Assurances from the surrounding Arab countries contribute to Israel’s perception of its impunity as it carries out the genocide in Gaza and the annexation and settlement of the occupied West Bank.
As we said, however, the context of this battle differs from that of previous battles; we must not delude ourselves about the status quo after this round; Israel will not attempt to pretend that it will allow rebuilding from a humanitarian standpoint and explicitly aims to dull the camp’s capacity and willingness for resistance. However, the reality is that the resistance is becoming fiercer and more determined by all means. As long as the occupation refuses to learn from the last century of Jenin: a long history and a model of resistance replicated and taught to successive generations, then its banner will be inherited and passed on without interruption.
Works Cited
Alisa Odenheimer, B. M., 2024. Red Sea Attacks Force Firms to Test New Land Routes Via the UAE and Saudi Arabia. [Online]
Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-02/land-routes-via-uae-saudi-arabia-tested-to-bypass-houthi-menaced-red-sea
Fatima, S., 2025. The Arab Dome: How Regional Powers Are Shielding Israel and Enabling Genocide. [Online]
Available at: https://foej.in/the-arab-dome-how-regional-powers-are-shielding-israel-and-enabling-genocide/
Forensic Architecture, 2025. Jenin – Systems of Spatial Control, s.l.: Forensic Architecture.
Human Rights Watch, 2002. Israel, The Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Authority Territories, S.L.: Human Rights Watch.
Middle East Eye, 2024. Israeli army vows to continue ‘mowing the lawn’ in the occupied West Bank. [Online]
Available at: https://www.middleeasteye.net/live-blog/live-blog-update/israeli-army-vows-mowing-lawn-occupied-west-bank
Middle East Monitor, 2025. Israel wants to turn the occupied West Bank into rubble like Gaza, says Haaretz. [Online]
Available at: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250108-israel-wants-to-turn-occupied-west-bank-into-rubble-like-gaza-says-haaretz/
Tabar, L., 2012. The “Urban Redesign” of Jenin Refugee Camp: Humanitarian Intervention and Rational Violence. Journal of Palestine Studies, 41(2), pp. 44-61.
Taslaq, A. S. M., 2006. Architectural and Urban Planning Characteristics of Palestinian Refugee Camps; Case Study of the Jenin Camp in the “West Bank”. College of Graduate Studies – National Najah University.
UNRWA, 2002. UNRWA begins UAE partnership with $27 million donation to rebuild Jenin camp. [Online].
Wikileaks, 2002. Public Library of US Diplomacy. [Online]
Available at: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/02AMMAN2396_a.html
Maps and Figures:
Source: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Maps No. 2, 3, 4 portray:
I. Division of building blocks, their sizes and their relationship to the degree of permeability of space.
II. Clarity of paths and roads and the separation between them.
III. Closed movement paths and their dead-ends.
Maps source: Determinants of Urban Formation of the Palestinian Refugee Camp:
A Case Study of Jenin Camp in the Occupied West Bank
“Over 140 buildings, most multifamily dwellings, were completely destroyed (green) in Jenin, and more than 200 others (red) were seriously damaged. Hawashin district, where more than 100 buildings were razed, is at the centre of the map.”
Source: Human Rights Watch
