In the northwest corner of the occupied West Bank, wedged against the edge of Jenin city, lies one of the most storied — and most besieged — refugee camps in Palestine. Jenin refugee camp was established in 1953 to shelter Palestinians displaced during the Nakba of 1948, when more than 700,000 people were expelled from or fled their towns and villages. Today, UNRWA registers roughly 24,000 refugees living in the camp’s one square kilometre of dense concrete and narrow alleys — descendants of families from Haifa, Nazareth, Beisan, and dozens of other depopulated localities who were promised a temporary stay that has now lasted more than seven decades.
That compressed geography — and the political consciousness it has produced — has made Jenin a recurring flashpoint in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Understanding what is happening there in 2024 and 2025 requires knowing what came before.
The 2002 Invasion and Its Contested Aftermath
During Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002, Israeli military forces launched a major incursion into Jenin camp following a wave of suicide bombings inside Israel. The battle that followed was among the most intense of the Second Intifada. When it ended after roughly eleven days of fighting, large sections of the camp’s centre had been flattened by Israeli bulldozers and Apache helicopter strikes. Palestinian fighters had rigged alleyways with explosives; Israeli forces lost 23 soldiers in a single ambush on April 9 — one of the deadliest days for the Israeli military in decades.
Palestinian officials initially alleged a massacre of hundreds of civilians. A subsequent United Nations fact-finding mission, UN Secretary-General Report A/ES-10/186, documented 52 Palestinian deaths — the majority combatants, though a number of civilians were also killed — along with the destruction of approximately 140 homes and damage to more than 200 others. The report documented serious concerns about Israeli forces impeding medical access and delaying the entry of humanitarian workers. Human Rights Watch, in its 2002 report Jenin: IDF Military Operations, found evidence of individual killings that may have constituted wilful killings in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and documented the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields by Israeli soldiers.
The camp was rebuilt, largely with funding from Arab donors and UNRWA. But the political memory of 2002 — the resistance, the losses, the bulldozed streets — became foundational to Jenin’s identity in the years that followed.
The Rise of the Jenin Brigade
The relative withdrawal of the Palestinian Authority’s security apparatus from Jenin camp — a product of the PA’s political weakness and the camp’s deep distrust of Oslo-era security coordination with Israel — created space for a new generation of armed fighters. By 2021 and into 2022, a loose coalition of militants affiliated with Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades had coalesced under the umbrella name the Jenin Brigade (also referred to as the Jenin Battalion or Katibat Jenin).
The group gained notoriety for producing improvised weapons, including semi-automatic carbines manufactured locally, and for repelling repeated Israeli special-forces arrest operations. Israeli forces conducted near-nightly incursions into Jenin city and the camp through 2022 and 2023, resulting in a rising casualty toll. According to OCHA oPt data, the Jenin governorate consistently recorded among the highest numbers of Palestinian fatalities in the West Bank during this period. The Jenin Brigade became a model — and an inspiration — for similar armed formations that emerged in Nablus and Tulkarm.
‘Home and Garden’: The 2023 Large-Scale Operation
On July 3–4, 2023, Israel launched what it called Operation Home and Garden — the largest single Israeli military operation in the West Bank in at least two decades. More than 1,000 Israeli soldiers, accompanied by drone strikes and armoured bulldozers, entered Jenin camp over a roughly 48-hour period. UNRWA reported that the operation forced the displacement of approximately 3,000 to 4,000 camp residents — nearly a fifth of the population — who sheltered in schools and with relatives in the city. At least 12 Palestinians were killed, including a 16-year-old boy, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Israeli forces said they killed several armed militants, dismantled explosives, and destroyed tunnel infrastructure.
The physical damage was significant. UNRWA documented destruction to water networks, electricity infrastructure, and roads within the camp. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs noted that Israeli military bulldozers caused damage to camp infrastructure comparable, in proportion, to what had been seen in Gaza during earlier operations. The episode drew condemnation from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who called for an independent investigation. Israel’s military said the operation was a necessary counterterrorism measure.
Sustained Raids in 2024–2025 and Gaza-Style Displacement
Operation Home and Garden proved not to be an endpoint but a template. Through late 2023 and across 2024, Israeli forces conducted recurring large-scale raids into Jenin camp — often lasting multiple days, involving drone strikes, armoured vehicles, and the systematic bulldozing of roads and infrastructure. Fighters reorganised between operations; Israeli forces returned repeatedly.
By January 2025, the scale and character of the operations had intensified further. Israeli forces launched what officials described as an extended clearing operation targeting Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams camps simultaneously. UNRWA and OCHA reported mass displacement from Jenin camp — with estimates of more than 40,000 people displaced from the camp and surrounding areas at various points, as residents fled both the fighting and the systematic destruction of roads that made return impossible. Camp infrastructure — sewage lines, electricity cables, water pipes — was torn up by military bulldozers, a pattern that human rights organisations including Al-Haq described as rendering the camp uninhabitable in the short term.
The language being used by observers grew increasingly stark. UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini stated in early 2025 that what was occurring in Jenin bore the hallmarks of the kind of forced displacement more commonly associated with Gaza. Human Rights Watch documented the destruction of civilian property and infrastructure and called on Israel to halt what it characterised as unlawful demolitions. Israel’s government framed the operations as essential to dismantling militant infrastructure and said fighters had deliberately embedded themselves within the civilian population.
For the families sheltering in UNRWA schools and relatives’ apartments — people whose grandparents were already refugees from 1948 — the question of whether and when they could go home to the camp has become newly, painfully uncertain. Jenin’s residents are, by definition, people who have already lost one home. The prospect of losing the neighbourhood that replaced it, however inadequate, carries a particular weight that no military briefing fully captures.
Sources
- United Nations Secretary-General, Report of the Secretary-General prepared pursuant to General Assembly resolution ES-10/10, UN Doc. A/ES-10/186 (2002)
- Human Rights Watch, Jenin: IDF Military Operations (2002)
- UNRWA, Jenin Camp Profile and emergency situation reports (2023–2025)
- OCHA oPt, Humanitarian Situation Reports — West Bank, Jenin (2022–2025)
- Al-Haq, statements on Jenin operations and infrastructure destruction (2024–2025)
- UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, statements on Operation Home and Garden (July 2023)
- Palestinian Ministry of Health, casualty data (2023–2025)
- UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, public statements (January–February 2025)
