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Jenin Refugee Camp, at Center of Israeli Raid

An Israeli armored vehicle is stationed at the end of a blocked-off street during an ongoing military operation in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on July 4, 2023. (AFP)
An Israeli armored vehicle is stationed at the end of a blocked-off street during an ongoing military operation in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on July 4, 2023. (AFP)
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Jenin Refugee Camp, at Center of Israeli Raid

An Israeli armored vehicle is stationed at the end of a blocked-off street during an ongoing military operation in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on July 4, 2023. (AFP)
An Israeli armored vehicle is stationed at the end of a blocked-off street during an ongoing military operation in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on July 4, 2023. (AFP)

Jenin refugee camp, one of the most crowded and impoverished in the occupied West Bank, is synonymous with Palestinian militancy and resistance against Israel which views it as a "terrorism" hub.

In recent years it has been the site of fierce fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups.

This week, Israel launched what it called an "extensive counterterrorism effort" targeting the camp, which has so far killed 10 Palestinians and wounded dozens more.

Refuge for displaced Palestinians

The camp was established in 1953 to house some of those among the 760,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes in 1948 when Israel was created, an event Palestinians call the "Nakba" or "catastrophe".

Today some 18,000 people live in the camp in the northern West Bank. It is just 0.43 square kilometers (0.16 of a square mile) in size, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

Over time, the camp's original tents have been replaced by concrete, and it now resembles something closer to a neighborhood.

A symbol of Palestinian resistance

Jenin camp resident Zakaria Zubeidi rose to be a senior figure in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the armed wing of Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party.

For years, he operated out of the camp and was on Israel's most-wanted list.

Zubeidi escaped from Israel's Gilboa prison with five other Palestinians in 2021, sparking a days-long manhunt, and he is lauded by Palestinians as a hero. He is still alive and in jail.

In 2022, Raad Hazem, another resident of the camp, killed three Israelis in a shooting spree in Tel Aviv's busy Dizengoff Street nightlife district, before being shot dead after a massive manhunt.

Images of Hazem, Zubeidi and those dubbed "martyrs" by the Palestinians after they were killed by Israeli forces plaster the camp's walls and hang from the archways which mark the entrance to the camp's narrow streets.

The 2002 battle for Jenin

The camp was a hive of activity during the second "intifada" or uprising of the early 2000s.

In 2002, the army besieged the camp for more than a month amid fierce fighting that killed 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers.

More than 400 homes were destroyed in the operation, according to UNRWA, and more than a quarter of the camp's population was left homeless.

Shireen Abu Akleh killed

Veteran Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed on May 11, 2022 while covering an Israeli raid on the camp for Al Jazeera television, sparking international condemnation.

The Israeli army later admitted one of its soldiers probably shot the reporter -- who was wearing a helmet and a bulletproof vest marked "Press" -- having mistaken her for a militant.

Deteriorating security

Over the past 18 months, the security situation in the camp has deteriorated, with the Palestinian Authority having little real presence there. Israel's military says that at least 50 shooting attacks have originated from in and around Jenin so far this year.

The deadly attacks on Israeli targets have prompted a fierce response, with Israel's forces carrying out a string of raids on the flashpoint refugee camp in the first half of 2023.

Israel says "The Jenin Brigade", a local group it alleges is backed by Iran and counts members of Gaza's rulers Hamas, Islamic jihad and Fatah within its ranks, is behind the attacks.

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'We Will Die from Hunger': Gazans Decry Israel's UNRWA Ban

Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
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'We Will Die from Hunger': Gazans Decry Israel's UNRWA Ban

Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Itimad Al-Qanou, a displaced Palestinian mother from Jabalia, eats with her children inside a tent, amid Israel-Gaza conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 9, 2024. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed

After surviving more than a year of war in Gaza, Aisha Khaled is now afraid of dying of hunger if vital aid is cut off next year by a new Israeli law banning the UN Palestinian relief agency from operating in its territory.

The law, which has been widely criticised internationally, is due to come into effect in late January and could deny Khaled and thousands of others their main source of aid at a time when everything around them is being destroyed.

"For me and for a million refugees, if the aid stops, we will end. We will die from hunger not from war," the 31-year-old volunteer teacher told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

"If the school closes, where do we go? All the aspects of our lives are dependent on the agency: flour, food, water ...(medical) treatment, hospitals," Khaled said from an UNRWA school in Nuseirat in central Gaza.

"We depend on them after God," she said.

UNRWA employs 13,000 people in Gaza, running the enclave's schools, healthcare clinics and other social services, as well as distributing aid.

Now, UNRWA-run buildings, including schools, are home to thousands forced to flee their homes after Israeli airstrikes reduced towns across the strip to wastelands of rubble.

UNRWA shelters have been frequently bombed during the year-long war, and at least 220 UNRWA staff have been killed, Reuters reported.

If the Israeli law as passed last month does come into effect, the consequences would be "catastrophic," said Inas Hamdan, UNRWA's Gaza communications officer.

"There are two million people in Gaza who rely on UNRWA for survival, including food assistance and primary healthcare," she said.

The law banning UNRWA applies to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in 1967 during the Six-Day War.

Israeli lawmakers who drafted the ban cited what they described as the involvement of a handful of UNRWA's thousands of staffers in the attack on southern Israel last year that triggered the war and said some staff were members of Hamas and other armed groups.

FRAGILE LIFELINE

The war in Gaza erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, after Hamas attack. Israel's military campaign has levelled much of Gaza and killed around 43,500 Palestinians, Gaza health officials say. Up to 10,000 people are believed to be dead and uncounted under the rubble, according to Gaza's Civil Emergency Service.

Most of the strip's 2.3 million people have been forced to leave their homes because of the fighting and destruction.

The ban ends Israel's decades-long agreement with UNRWA that covered the protection, movement and diplomatic immunity of the agency in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

For many Palestinians, UNRWA aid is their only lifeline, and it is a fragile one.

Last week, a committee of global food security experts warned there was a strong likelihood of imminent famine in northern Gaza, where Israel renewed an offensive last month.

Israel rejected the famine warning, saying it was based on "partial, biased data".

COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, said last week that it was continuing to "facilitate the implementation of humanitarian efforts" in Gaza.

But UN data shows the amount of aid entering Gaza has plummeted to its lowest level in a year and the United Nations has accused Israel of hindering and blocking attempts to deliver aid, particularly to the north.

"The daily average of humanitarian trucks the Israeli authorities allowed into Gaza last month is 30 trucks a day," Hamdan said, adding that the figure represents 6% of the supplies that were allowed into Gaza before this war began.

"More aid must be sent to Gaza, and UNRWA work should be facilitated to manage this aid entering Gaza," she said.

'BACKBONE' OF AID SYSTEM

Many other aid organizations rely on UNRWA to help them deliver aid and UN officials say the agency is the backbone of the humanitarian response in Gaza.

"From our perspective, and I am sure from many of the other humanitarian actors, it's an impossible task (to replace UNRWA)," said Oxfam GB's humanitarian lead Magnus Corfixen in a phone interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"The priority is to ensure that they will remain ... because they are essential for us," he said.

UNRWA supports other agencies with logistics, helping them source the fuel they need to move staff and power desalination plants, he said.

"Without them, we will struggle with access to warehouses, having access to fuel, having access to trucks, being able to move around, being able to coordinate," Corfixen said, describing UNRWA as "essential".

UNRWA schools also offer rare respite for traumatised children who have lost everything.

Twelve-year-old Lamar Younis Abu Zraid fled her home in Maghazi in central Gaza at the beginning of the war last year.

The UNRWA school she used to attend as a student has become a shelter, and she herself has been living in another school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat for a year.

Despite the upheaval, in the UNRWA shelter she can enjoy some of the things she liked doing before war broke out.

She can see friends, attend classes, do arts and crafts and join singing sessions. Other activities are painfully new but necessary, like mental health support sessions to cope with what is happening.

She too is aware of the fragility of the lifeline she has been given. Now she has to share one copybook with a friend because supplies have run out.

"Before they used to give us books and pens, now they are not available," she said.