Why is the PA raiding Jenin camp, fighting the resistance groups?

There’s fighting in the Jenin refugee camp between Palestinian Authority (PA) forces, who have raided the camp, and Jenin Brigades fighters.

Jenin holds a special place in the hearts and minds of the people living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank.

Here’s what we know so far:

What is happening in Jenin?

After five days of surrounding the Jenin refugee camp, PA forces raided it, exchanging fire with Jenin Brigades fighters.

The PA killed a Jenin Brigades commander named Yazid Ja’ayseh and injured several people.

The PA also killed 19-year-old Palestinian Rahbi Shalabi during clashes with fighters in Jenin.

After the clashes that killed Shalabi and wounded a 16-year-old relative of his, Hamas condemned the PA security forces.

The fighting is ongoing.

What is the Jenin refugee camp?

You may wonder how Palestinians are housed in “refugee camps” in their land.

The answer is that the people who came to Jenin camp in 1953 had been ethnically cleansed from their homes in 1948 by Zionist militias to make way for the establishment of the state of Israel on the ruins of Palestinian villages.

The camp has been a stronghold for armed groups opposing Israel’s occupation for decades, giving it that special place in many hearts and minds.

It has also seen increasing crackdowns by Israeli forces and now the PA, which is involved in security coordination with Israel.

Israel launched a major 10-day operation in the camp and other sites in August, killing and wounding dozens.

During assaults over the years, Israeli forces have destroyed entire neighbourhoods in Jenin, claiming they harbour fighters, and punishing the civilians who live there by killing or arresting them or destroying their homes.

Jenin is one of 19 such refugee camps in the occupied West Bank and has a high poverty and unemployment rate.

Who are the Jenin Brigades?

The Jenin Brigades, aka the Jenin Battalion, is an umbrella group that includes Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades, and Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, according to the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The groups have united against Israeli occupation in the camp, a site of severe repression during and since the second Intifada.

What is the PA?

The Palestinian Authority is a government body that has partial administrative authority over parts of the occupied West Bank.

The PA is dominated by the Fatah party, the group founded by Yasser Arafat.

Wait, so Fatah fighters are fighting against the PA’s forces?

In this fight, Fatah’s armed faction, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Jenin, is fighting against the PA’s raiding forces.

This is not new. In Jenin, Fatah’s armed wing has developed apart from the PA in a way that takes local considerations into account.

In 2022, +972 Magazine wrote that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are now “virtually independent from Fatah [and]…are cooperating with other armed militias in the refugee camps to present a united front against intensifying Israeli incursions”.

“Al-Aqsa Brigades are not connected to the party – neither through financial aid nor political mobilisation,” political analyst Jihad Harb told +972 at the time.

“[I]nside the camp, the families belonging to different parties are now mostly related by marriage, so it is not easy to separate them from each other or from being recipients of attainable resources, such as firearms.”

What is the PA’s issue with Jenin?

The Palestinian Authority arrested several resistance fighters earlier this month.

PA spokesperson Brigadier General Anwar Rajab said this latest operation, called Protect the Homeland, was launched to “eradicate sedition and chaos” in the West Bank.

The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) coalition of resistance groups condemned Ja’ayseh’s killing as “a serious violation of all national norms and traditions … in line with the Zionist agenda that aims to eliminate the resistance in the West Bank”.

The PRC disapprove of the PA’s collaboration on security issues and its conciliatory approach towards Israel.

The Oslo Accords, signed by then-Fatah leader Arafat, led to the 1994 establishment of the PA, meant to ensure that they would handle security in the Palestinian territory.

The move was widely criticised at the time by some Palestinian intellectuals, such as Edward Said, and Palestinian factions, like Hamas, for giving up armed resistance without creating a definite Palestinian state.

Historically, the Jenin Brigades have worked to avoid confronting the PA directly, instead turning their focus to the Israeli occupation.

But the PA has been cracking down recently, including by arresting members of the Brigades and conducting this raid.

How many people have been killed?

At least one person has died and several have been injured.

The PA surrounded the camp five days ago and fighting commenced at dawn on Saturday.

Sources told Al Jazeera that PA forces also surrounded the Jenin Government Hospital, searched ambulances, and stormed Ibn Sina Specialized Hospital.

What is the significance of this event?

Jenin is the centre of the resistance in the West Bank. Nearly every family or house in the town has lost someone at the hands of Israeli forces.

“These groups [in Jenin] started as a community defence mechanism, so the more violent Israel’s raids got and the more systemic, the bigger these groups grew,” Tahani Mustafa, an expert on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera earlier this year.

But the clashes signify a shift in policy after extensive pressure, in what the Jenin Brigades feel is an effort to snuff out armed resistance.

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