After the march through the town centre, the men dispersed: to mosques, to their homes, to the few stands that had opened to sell juice or coffee. Many were armed, cradling their M16 assault rifles and ammunition in their arms. All were young, with close-cropped hair, wearing black T-shirts and baseball caps, trainers or combat boots, and all ready to fight.
The day before, many had done exactly that. A raid by Israeli forces into Jenin, a town in the far north of the occupied West Bank, had led to a protracted and chaotic battle. When it ended, 14 were dead and many more injured. These included at least two non-combatants: a 31-year-old paramedic badly wounded when she tried to retrieve an injured militant, and a 40-year-old construction worker who was killed. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said they had detained terrorist leaders, destroyed terrorist infrastructure and seized a stash of handmade bombs.
When the bodies of many of the casualties from the fighting were paraded through Jenin’s main street on Friday, they were wrapped in shrouds bearing the colours of Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad faction, and held high on stretchers by young men often carrying weapons.
“We are the resistance to the occupation. In Gaza, in the West Bank, we are one and the same,” said one young Hamas fighter, a chequered scarf drawn up to his eyes and an M16 in one hand.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has pledged to crush the extremist Islamist group to ensure it never repeats the attacks into Israel on 7 October which killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Victims were murdered at home and at an all-night dance party. Others were tortured and abused, and 240 were taken hostage.
But though an IDF spokesperson on Friday insisted that the focus remained on Gaza – where more than 11,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed since the war began, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory – attention is now turning to the West Bank, where violence has risen dramatically in recent weeks.
Since last month’s Hamas attack, 176 Palestinians have been killed by the IDF and Jewish settlers on the West Bank, which was occupied by Israel after the 1967 war. Three Israelis have been killed, too, in attacks by Palestinians, according to UN statistics. There have also been more than 2,500 arrests by Israeli security forces – mostly Hamas militants planning attacks, members or sympathisers, Israeli officials said.
“Here in the West Bank, there is a small intifada,” said Hani al-Masri, an analyst in Ramallah, using the term for the mass uprisings in Gaza and the West Bank in 1987 and again in 2000.
Masri said protests had been limited both by the wave of arrests and the effective lockdown of much of the West Bank. Travel, always difficult for Palestinians there, has now become even harder due to the closure of checkpoints since 7 October.
There is much economic hardship. In Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, established by the peace process of the early 90s to administer Gaza and the West Bank, a retailer selling kitchenware said he had already laid off staff and might be forced to shut altogether if local Palestinians were not allowed into Jerusalem soon.
An educator in al-Am’ari refugee camp, who withheld his name for fear of arrest, said: “The West Bank is at boiling point. There is a generation here with no chances, no future, no life. The tension is building and building.”
Most observers believe events of recent weeks presage huge change. Mahmoud Abbas, the ailing 87-year-old president of the Palestinian Authority, heads an administration held in contempt by many Palestinians for its incompetence, corruption and compromises.
Many in the west have suggested the authority could take over Gaza if the Israelis achieve their objective of “crushing” Hamas there. Senior authority officials have said they will not return to governing Gaza without a comprehensive agreement that includes the West Bank in a sovereign Palestinian state. Some diplomats raise the possibility that a renewed Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1964 and later recognised as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, could assume an important role.
This means that the succession to Abbas looms large. Many believe the next leader will be Hussein al-Sheikh, a close associate of the president, even if the popular choice would be Marwan Barghouti, 62, who is serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison and is often described by Palestinians as their “Mandela”.
Supporters of the authority point out that it was meant to be an interim institution to create the institutions for a Palestinian statehood which has never come. But most admit that Hamas has gained massive popular support from its many shortcomings.
Jenin is in now the crosshairs of Israeli security forces. Its hundreds of fighters, backed by more ready to mobilise, present a significant challenge to Israel’s aim of destroying the military and political capabilities of the extremist Islamist organisation.
“We understand we have to deal with all Hamas infrastructure, whether it is in Gaza or the West Bank or anywhere else,” said Prof Kobi Michael of the Institute of National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “We will also have to deal with the ideological element, but we cannot do this with bombs and shooting. To uproot the ideology is a process that will last for years, but it is not connected to the immediate aims of the war.”
Many stress the links between Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas militants in Jenin describe those in the coastal enclave as “brothers” and hope for further attacks like those of 7 October. “Violence has to be met with violence, everywhere,” said one.
The human cost is inevitably high. Another raid in Ramallah by the IDF on Thursday led to the arrest of at least two “terrorist suspects”, but also further civilian suffering.
Mohanad Jaad al-Haq, a 30-year-old driver, was in a rush because he knew his boss did not like him to be late for work. Usually breakfast was coffee and a cigarette. That morning, he didn’t even drink all his coffee.
At about 6.30am, he stepped out of the flat he shared with his wife, sister-in-law and 10 children, and into the narrow street of al-Am’ari camp. Moments later, he was lying wounded with a bullet in his abdomen. Unknown to him, the Israeli army had moved into the camp a few minutes earlier to arrest a neighbour.
Who fired on Haq is unclear. Usually the soldiers make a lot of noise and everyone stays inside, his wife, Alaa, said. But her husband was in a hurry. “I am full of hope in God that he will be well and safe,” she told the Observer. “I refuse to think of anything else, but I am afraid.”
