Inside the brutal siege of Jenin

On Aug. 28, Israel launched “Operation Summer Camps,” the largest military invasion witnessed in the northern West Bank in over two decades. In Jenin, Israeli forces first moved into the city before imposing a full-blown siege on the refugee camp within hours; the army simultaneously carried out operations in Tubas, Nablus, Ramallah, and Tulkarem.

Since 2021, the Israeli military has repeatedly targeted Jenin refugee camp under the pretext of fighting armed resistance groups. Most of the victims of these assaults have been non-combatant Palestinian civilians and minors, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)…

Four days into the operation, the camp had largely become a ghost town, with Palestinians forced to remain inside their homes as Israeli soldiers turned buildings into military bases and dispatched snipers across various rooftops. Civilians, including children, elderly, and chronically ill, have been denied access to water, food, and medicine as part of the total siege on the camp.

Local Palestinian residents and journalists say that this current assault is the most intense and violent in years, with at least 19 Palestinians killed in Jenin, including minors. This comes amid a dramatic increase in Israeli military operations and settler violence across the West Bank after October 7, which have killed nearly 700 Palestinians in the territory — 185 in Jenin alone — in brutal ways.

Although members of the press were denied access to the camp, the sounds of explosions and machine gunfire echoed throughout Jenin. Large numbers of Israeli D-9 bulldozers, armored personnel carriers, and armored jeeps moved through the city’s streets. The skies of Jenin were buzzing with drones; it was unclear whether these were surveillance drones or the lethal quadcopters, which Israel has commonly deployed both in Gaza and the West Bank.

At the start of the operation, the military also imposed a full lockdown on Jenin Governmental Hospital, the only public general hospital in the city. The Israeli Border Police, or Magav, was tasked with maintaining control of entry and exit to the hospital and declared the immediate surrounding area a “closed zone by military order.”

It is still unclear how long the Israeli military intends to continue Operation Summer Camps. The governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu Al-Rub, reportedly tried to coordinate a ceasefire with the army to allow urgent aid into the refugee camp, but his efforts were denied.