Fatah official calls on PA Security Forces to join terror in Jenin
Fatah Revolutionary Council member Jamal Huweil: “The morale is sky-high, as if we were in the 2002 [Jenin] battle. There are heroes who do not fear death at all... The young people are united, they have ammunition and equipment… This is a message to all our heroes in Palestine: The Jenin refugee camp is fighting for the honor of Jerusalem, for the Gaza Strip… The fate of this refugee camp is always to write history in letters of gold and blood... Our motto is that this occupation will pay the price if it enters our alleys, neighborhoods, and homes, the criminal Zionist occupation. This is a message to all members of the Palestinian people, and a message to the free people, the members of the [PA] Security Forces: The time has come for you to defend your sons and your brothers in this refugee camp. This is a message to Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, and the PFLP, let them all turn into military wings to fight this occupation.”
[Donia Al-Watan, independent Palestinian news agency, July 3, 2023]
Huweil’s statement was published under the headline: “Watch: A Fatah Revolutionary Council member calls on the [PA] Security Forces to defend the Jenin refugee camp”
2023 Operation Home and Garden - an Israeli counter-terror operation in Jenin that started on July 3, 2023. The operation targeted terror infrastructure in the city, and particularly the Islamic Jihad-affiliated terror group the Jenin Brigade, after 50 terror attacks had originated from the city and 19 terrorists had fled to it since the start of 2023.
On the first day of the operation, Israeli forces killed 10 terrorists in Jenin and attacked a terror headquarters located next to a medical clinic and two schools, one of them belonging to UNRWA. Several weapons factories were also discovered containing hundreds of explosives and weapons caches. Terrorists opened fire on Israeli forces from within the Al-Nasser Mosque in the Jenin refugee camp, and after gaining control of the site, the Israeli forces discovered weapons caches including explosives and entrances to underground tunnels in the mosque's basement.
Jenin – refugee camp north of Nablus that was a major hotbed of terrorism in the PA terror campaign 2000-2005 (the second Intifada). To reduce the attacks, Israeli forces entered Jenin on April 3, 2002, to conduct searches as part of Operation Defensive Shield, which was carried out to destroy the terror infrastructure in the West Bank, and several days of intense fighting against Palestinian terrorists in booby-trapped houses ensued. While the PA claimed that the Israeli forces committed a “massacre” and killed hundreds of civilians, a UN report refuted these claims, confirming that 52 Palestinians were killed in the battle of which the majority were terrorists. 23 Israeli soldiers were also killed in the fighting.