Why Palestinian terror organizations in the West Bank are being targeted by PA security forces
Gunfire has rung out for days from the West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp. But this time, it’s not Israeli forces that are facing off against armed groups. It is the forces of the Palestinian Authority clashing with Palestinian gunmen.
The Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank, launched a rare crackdown earlier this month that has sparked one of the worst armed confrontations between Palestinians in years. The PA says it wants to bring law and order to what’s long been a hotbed of terrorism and a place where it has little control.
Its ability to contain terror groups there will reverberate far beyond the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority wants to position itself to take over governance in the Gaza Strip once the war there between Israel and Hamas ends, though Jerusalem objects to this. But confronting Palestinians at a time when many view the authority as a subcontractor for Israel could deepen divisions in Palestinian society.
Fighting has raged in the streets of the camp, and armored cars are seen patrolling. Palestinian security forces have taken over part of a hospital, using it as a base and shooting from inside, according to the United Nations.
At least one gunman from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group and three security force members have been killed, including a captain in the intelligence services whose death was announced Wednesday, according to PA security forces. About 50 people have been arrested.
At least two uninvolved civilians have been killed and some wounded. The fighting prompted the main UN agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, UNRWA, to suspend its services, including schooling. The violence has disrupted safe access for Palestinians to other services, including water and health. It also has complicated the restoration of services destroyed in previous Israeli raids of the camp.
The Jenin refugee camp explained
The urban, built-up refugee camp in the northern West Bank houses Palestinians whose families were displaced in the 1948 War of Independence surrounding Israel’s creation. It has long been a center for Palestinian terrorism and a bastion of armed struggle against Israel. The terror groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas operate freely there, and its streets are regularly lined with posters depicting slain fighters as martyrs for the Palestinian cause.
The Palestinian Authority, which administers the main Palestinian population centers of the West Bank as part of interim peace agreements with Israel from the 1990s, has little presence in Jenin. Many people view the PA forces with suspicion and see them as serving Israel’s interests because of security coordination that has facilitated Israel’s own crackdowns on Palestinian terrorism.
The camp and the adjacent city of Jenin have long been targets of Israel in its stated bid to stamp out terrorism. Since the start of the ongoing war against Hamas, sparked by the terror group’s October 7, 2023, massacre, Israel has raided or carried out airstrikes in Jenin multiple times.
According to the PA health ministry, more than 716 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in that time. The IDF says the vast majority of them were gunmen killed in exchanges of fire, rioters who clashed with troops or terrorists carrying out attacks.
During the same period, 42 people, including Israeli security personnel, have been killed in terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank. Another six members of Israeli security forces were killed in clashes with terror operatives in the West Bank.
Restoring order — and looking to postwar Gaza
According to PA security forces spokesperson Brig. Gen. Anwar Rajab, the raid is meant to impose law and order and restore peace and security. The troops were focused on “eradicating” Iran-backed terror groups that were trying to incite “chaos and anarchy,” he added. The raid will end when those goals are reached, according to the security forces.
But the raid is also shining a spotlight on the Palestinian Authority’s ability to impose order and security in a restive area. With no clear vision for who will administer postwar Gaza, the raid could convince skeptics that the authority has what it takes to rule the coastal enclave. PA President Mahmoud Abbas is considering an agreement with Hamas that would create a committee of politically independent technocrats to administer the Gaza Strip after the war. The committee would report to him.
US President Joe Biden’s administration sees a rehabilitated Palestinian Authority as the best option to govern and secure postwar Gaza. The US has for years invested heavily in training the PA’s security forces, and the administration has seen its reentry into Gaza, after being routed by Hamas in 2007, as a feasible replacement for Hamas.
Israel rejects any role for Hamas in Gaza after the war the terror group started last year, and has also said it does not trust Abbas’s PA to run the enclave.
The incoming Donald Trump administration has not yet laid out its vision for postwar Gaza, but Trump’s first term was overwhelmingly supportive of Israel’s positions.
Palestinians are not strangers to divisions within their society, with the most prominent the rift between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah party. The parties fought bloody street wars in Gaza before Hamas forced Fatah out of the territory, and the sides have failed to reconcile since.
Since then, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority has tried to diminish Hamas’s influence in the West Bank, often with Israel’s help.
Reeling from the years-long internal rift, Palestinians have staged general strikes and protests calling for unity. But the raid could deepen the perception of the Palestinian Authority as a facilitator of Israel’s desires and potentially undermine any popular support for it to return to effectively rule Gaza.
