In Jenin’s centre and at the main entrance to the city’s refugee camp, the ground shook with the boom of explosions; rounds of artillery and machine gun fire drowned out ambulance sirens and shouts and screams. Roads were littered with bullet casings and broken glass, and the air was filled with teargas and plumes of black smoke from burning tyres, set alight to block Israeli access and vision.
Jenin, a poverty-stricken city in the north of the occupied West Bank, witnessed some of the worst fighting of the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, of the 2000s. Two decades later, full-scale warfare has returned to the city’s streets, bringing old traumas to the surface for older generations and opening the eyes of younger ones.
