September 8, 2024

Jenin, the Cradle of Steadfastness

In the wake of the largest Israeli invasion into the Northern West Bank in two decades, construction vehicles and equipment are already arriving from different areas in the West Bank to begin rebuilding the infrastructure that was destroyed by the recent Israeli incursion. Over the course of 72 hours, the Zionist occupation set fire to Jenin’s farmers markets, obliterated 70% of the city’s streets, and stopped water access to 80% of its residents.

Israel’s latest invasion of Jenin was intended to quell the wave of resistance  in the West Bank that has grown in correspondence with the occupation’s  genocide on Gaza over the past year. It is not Israel’s first attempt at  destroying the city, either. In April of 2002, during the Second  Intifada, occupation forces entered the Jenin Refugee Camp and murdered at least 52 Palestinians in a matter of hours. They cut off electricity, water, food, and medical supplies, and flattened the camp in its entirety, what remained was barely a few empty structures, their windows blown through. But in two years, the camp would be rebuilt in a negotiation between its residents, UNRWA, and the Red Crescent.

In the aftermath of that massacre, Jenin was forgotten as a site of  sympathy for the Western world, but the memories of struggle were  fostered and sharpened in the camp. Established in 1953 on the heels of the Nakba, Jenin Refugee Camp consisted largely of children and families displaced from neighboring villages in Occupied ’48, brought together by dispossession and united by the project of return. Resistance in the camp is not simply a byproduct of the harsh living conditions—it is, rather, the credo upon which the camp was originally founded, the north star that has guided its people for three generations and counting toward the promise of liberation and return.

Jenin will be rebuilt as many times as necessary, until the hour that Palestine is liberated. As a number of children, standing amidst the rubble of a home from the camp, told Palestine TV earlier this week: “We are steadfast in our land. We are not leaving.”