Many formally supportive Arab neighbors have tired of the Palestin- ians’ disfunction. Morocco, Sudan, and several Gulf
states enjoy peace and flourishing eco- nomic and tourist traffic with Israel after signing the Abraham Accords in 2019.
Palestinians, noted former Israeli
Foreign Minister Abba Eban, “never miss an opportunity to miss an oppor- tunity.” The despair of failure, and the
anger it spawns, is evident in the cur- rent generation of Palestinian mili- tants reared in the rubble of Jenin yet nurtured on tales of heroics against Israeli forces and the fantasy of a Mid- dle East that has passed them by. They were young kids during
the violence of the Second Intifada. They’ve grown up wanting to be more violent and radical than their fathers. They are young, violent, fluent in
TikTok, and cognizant of the value of spreading violence on social media. They learned their tactics — and propaganda capabilities — online, but had ample stores of weapons that were either smuggled from across the bor- der, given to them by other Palestin- ian factions, or simply stolen from the Israeli military. The Jenin Brigades are not fun- damentalist, even though they rely upon religious slogans and imagery to recruit new members; they do not have a political doctrine. “Their sole ideology of this new
force is wanting to instigate a battle that will lead to Israeli dead, as well as the deaths of their civilians, that could be used to inflame the Palestinian street and spark a war, their war, that they can fight in,” observed retired Israel National Police Superintendent Gil Kleiman, a noted international counterterrorism consultant. They are decentralized and com-
partmentalized with little use for a conventional command hierarchy. Some Israeli security officials liken
them to turf-minded but heavily armed criminal street gangs.
The onset of COVID-19 delayed
the initiation of full-blown hostilities. But once the pandemic dissipated, the Jenin Brigades were ready to strike.
They launched lethal attacks
across Israel, shooting up bars and street corners. The Israeli response was one of
preemptive deterrence and arrest operations deep inside Jenin — espe- cially the city’s refugee camp, home to 12,000 people crammed into a fifth of a square mile. The terrorists booby-trapped the
camp’s narrow alleyways with obsta- cles and explosives, hoping to turn Israeli arrest operations into bloody pitched battles that could be used to rally the Palestinian street into a full- scale intifada. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF)
calls the Jenin refugee camp the “Wasp’s Nest.” The U.S. funded and, in some cases,
trained Palestinian Authority security services, but they have been unable or unwilling to stop the armed factions from operating inside the city.
The PIJ and its offshoots threaten
the Palestinian Authority’s rule and its legitimacy, but the young, media- savvy gunmen are too popular for the weak government in Ramallah to challenge. As a matter of mutual expediency,
the Palestinians and Israelis share intelligence in an effort to tamp down the PIJ’s challenge to the Palestinian Authority’s rule and to help Israel nip future terrorist activity in the bud. In February, CIA Director Bill
Burns visited Israel and the Pales- tinian Authority, and the tensions alarmed him. Speaking before the Georgetown
School of Foreign Service, Burns said that the current state of fighting is starting to resemble the Second Intifada. “I was a senior U.S. diplomat 20
years ago, during the Second Inti- fada, and I’m concerned — as are my colleagues in the intelligence com- munity — that a lot of what we’re see- ing today has a very unhappy resem- blance to some of those realities that we saw then too,” Burns added.
APRIL 2023 | NEWSMAX 37
VIOLENCE Palestinians inspect a damaged house in Jenin, while a gunman fires into the air during the funeral of young man killed by Israelis during a raid on a refugee camp in the city.
HOUSE©REUTERS / NASSER ISHTAYEH/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100
