Fighting between Palestinian Authority security forces and local terror groups in the Jenin refugee camp stretched into its fifth week.
Eyewitnesses told The Press Service of Israel on Sunday of intense clashes in the Damaj neighborhood where a PA heavy vehicle was struck, forcing PA forces to fire at least one rocket propelled grenade.
“This is the most violent day,” a local resident told the Israeli News Agency. “The use of RPGs was last seen in the early days of the conflict.”
The ongoing operation has taken a heavy toll on the camp’s infrastructure. Water, electricity, and internet lines have been cut off for most of the day in large parts of Jenin. Residents tell of children distributing bread, water, and milk between houses under curfew.
“Dozens of houses have been completely burned, deliberately set on fire by PA soldiers,” another resident told TPS-IL.
Palestinian Authorirty officials in Jenin confirmed that PA forces faced heavy resistance from Palestinian Islamic Jihad gunmen, leading some personnel to retreat. “This is without a doubt the peak in the battles since they broke out,” a PA official told TPS-IL. “The Palestinian Authority forces fired RPGs, burned houses, and even Qurans, after repeatedly laying siege to alleys, neighborhoods, houses, and hospitals.”
Casualty reports indicate at least 15 people have been killed in the now 40 days of fighting, including six members of the PA and Islamic Jihad commander in the camp, Yazid Ja’aysa.
“Seventy to eighty names remain on the Palestinian Authority’s wanted list after nearly 300 arrests,” an Arab source told TPS-IL. PA forces have also uncovered weapons caches including items reportedly stolen from Israeli military bases.
Abbas’s ‘Do-Or-Die Campaign’
Publicly, the Palestinian Authority explains the operation as a fight against “lawbreakers” and against Iranian and Islamic State influence, while one spokesperson stressed that Ramallah “is not fighting the ‘resistance,’” but against militias who have made life “unbearable” for Jenin residents.
But a senior PA official explained to TPS-IL during the initial raids that the crackdown was part of a broader strategy to demonstrate PA authority’s ability to maintain governance as Ramallah eyes eventually administering the Gaza Strip.
One senior Fatah official described the crackdown to TPS-IL in December as a “do-or-die campaign” for Abbas, who is determined to dismantle what he calls “resistance nests” in the refugee camp.
Previous Israeli counterterror operations in 2023 and 2024 in the Jenin camp uncovered a tunnel shaft, a rocket launcher, large amounts of weapons and bomb-making laboratories. As of 2023, just over 24,000 registered refugees were living in the camp that Arabs have dubbed “The Martyr’s Capital.”
An Arab diplomat later told TPS-IL that the PA’s raids were insufficient and that Arab leaders are urging US President-elect Donald Trump to replace Abbas.
PA Arabs have not held national elections since 2005 and Abbas is now in the 19th year of what was supposed to be a four-year term. Since then, Abbas, 89, has cancelled several attempted elections amid Fatah-Hamas disagreements, most recently in 2021. The most major disagreement is that Hamas would likely win.
A public opinion survey released in mid-December, found 71% of PA Arabs were dissatisfied with the leadership of PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
