Break the Wave

Israel launched its military campaign called "Break the Wave" on 31 March 2022, following a series of deadly terrorist attacks that left 19 dead. Break the Wave directly led to the high number of Palestinian casualties. Israel says it is targeting fighters, but unarmed civilians, including children, are often killed during the raids. While the state of armed resistance in the West Bank was largely dismantled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel following the end of the second Intifada (uprising) in 2005, the city of Jenin and its refugee camp re-emerged in 2021 as a centre of armed resistance, and Nablus followed suit.

Israel continued to step up its near-daily raids across the occupied West Bank, killing scores of Palestinians over the year 2021. The spike in killings came as part of intensified nightly raids by Israeli forces, particularly in the northern occupied cities of Jenin and Nablus, under the banner of crushing limited Palestinian armed resistance.

The despotic and corrupt PA was widely reviled as Israel's subcontractor in enforcing the decades-long occupation and increasing poverty while a handful of the Palestinian elite grow ever wealthier.

Civilians confronting the army during raids and uninvolved bystanders have been killed, as well as Palestinian fighters in targeted assassinations and during armed clashes. More than 170 Palestinians, including at least 30 children, were killed across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2022. In January 2023 alone, at least 29 Palestinians including five children had been killed.

Israel's army said on November 28, 2022 it thwarted some 500 terror attacks since the start of 2022, a year that has seen countless counterterrorism raids in the West Bank. More than 2,500 Palestinian suspects were apprehended throughout the West Bank since Operation "Break the Wave" began at the end of March 2022.

Israel's military also saw an increase in Jewish settler attacks against Palestinians, with 838 incidents recorded in 2022, compared to 446 last year - an 88 percent increase. Despite the increase, only 113 arrests were made, and 101 investigations were opened. The UN said that 2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians since 2006, but 2023 was already on course to surpass that, if the number of deaths stay at the same level, and there is now the potential for a full-scale uprising among Palestinians, particularly in the wake of Israel's new far-right government, which came into power at the end of December 2022.

Tensions on the ground kept escalating since the May 2021 Palestinian popular “outburst� that swept across the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. It began with protests against forced displacement of Palestinian families in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and led to a war with the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad armed groups in the besieged Gaza Strip. Israel's crackdown included the targeting of fighters affiliated with these groups in the West Bank. A string of individual attacks by Palestinians also killed 19 people in Israel between March and May 2022.

In September 2022, the first of a handful of armed resistance groups announced itself as the “Jenin Brigades�. Other groups have also emerged, such as the Nablus Brigades, the Lions' Den, the Balata Brigades and, most recently in Jenin, the Yabad Brigades. While small in number, these groups have come to pose a challenge to the Israeli army during raids and arrest operations by responding with live fire and engaging in armed clashes. They also carry out shootings at Israeli checkpoints which have led to an increase in the killing of soldiers and settlers in recent months.

The increased raids and killings of Palestinians were a policy under the previous government of centrist Prime Minister Yair Lapid. Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians, particularly in Nablus, sharply increased during this period, with the military accused of doing little to stop the attacks, and settlers calling for a heavier Israeli military crackdown on the northern West Bank.

The Israels Defense Forces (IDF) on December 29, 2022 published a report with statistics of attacks in 2022, revealing that 31 people have been killed in terror-related incidents since the beginning of the year. It is a significant increase as opposed to 4 people killed in 2021 and 3 in 2020. This makes 2022 the deadliest year since 2015, when 29 people were killed in a series of stabbing, shooting and car-ramming incidents. According to the report, 24 of the deceased were Israeli citizens.

The new far-right Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had given prominent roles to members of the Israeli far-right, including some, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, who have expressed support for Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish Israeli who killed 29 Palestinians at the Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994. Ben-Gvir is the national security minister, with control over Israel Border Police's division in the West Bank.

Another far-right figure, Bezalel Smotrich, was given control of COGAT, the Israeli army body in charge of administering the West Bank. Smotrich has openly encouraged violence against Palestinians. His role means that he oversees the already extremely restricted rules over Palestinian construction in Area C of the West Bank - approximately 60 percent of the territory that is under full Israeli military and civil control.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu decided that the authority over the Civil Administration would be transferred to Minister Bezalel Smotrich despite the opposition of Defense Minister Yoav Galant. Chief military prosecutor Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi and the legal adviser to the defense establishment Itai Ofir claim that the transfer of powers may be perceived by international bodies, including the International Court of Justice in The Hague, as de facto annexation.

Many Palestinians criticised Israel for the raids, accusing Israel of using its military campaign to carry out unlawful killings without accountability. Several of the killings have caused particular outrage among Palestinians, including one in December 2022, when a 16-year-old girl in Jenin was shot dead on the roof of her home during an army raid. Other cases include the killing of an 18-year-old student on his way to school, and a 15-year-old while she was in a car. In May 2022, Israeli forces also killed Al Jazeera's veteran Palestinian correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh while she was covering a raid on Jenin.

Since March 2022, Jenin and outlying areas in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank have drawn intensified raids ordered by Israel's hard-right government after a spate of Palestinian street attacks. The Jenin camp has long been a hotbed of militants with an array of light weapons and a growing arsenal of explosive devices. The Israeli military regularly accuses militant groups of basing fighters within densely populated urban areas such as refugee camps that date back to 1948. Many of the militants live in the camp, often with their families.

Jenin is a small city in the hilly, far north of the West Bank, near the border with Israel, and contains a teeming, concrete and cinder-block refugee camp by the same name housing some 14,000 displaced Palestinians in less than half a square kilometre (0.20sq mile). They are descendants of Palestinians dispossessed when Israel was created in 1948, and most are impoverished and unemployed. This harsh heritage generates die-hard hostility to Israel and support for Palestinian militant groups.

Jenin was the arena of some of the worst bloodshed during the second Intifada, which began after the collapse of US-backed peace talks in 2000 and escalated into an armed conflict between Israel and militant groups. Jenin produced many of the suicide bombers who spearheaded the uprising and, to curb it, Israeli armoured forces carried out a devastating raid on its camp in April 2002 as part of a wider clampdown on areas where Palestinians had exercised limited self-rule under 1990s interim peace deals. UN reports said 52 Palestinians died in Jenin, as many as half of them civilians, while Israel lost 23 soldiers.

Israel said the camp is a hub for planning and preparing militant attacks as well as a safe haven for fighters funded by Hamas or the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad group. Israel also said more than 50 shooting attacks have been carried out by Jenin-area militants since the beginning of 2023 and that almost half the population is affiliated either with Hamas or Islamic Jihad. The camp's militants operate under the umbrella of the Jenin Brigades.

Their growing presence has been partly due to inaction by the security forces of Abbas's internationally backed Palestinian Authority (PA), which says Israel has undermined its credibility on the street. The militants’ strength also feeds on the weakness of 87-year-old Abbas, whose formula of statehood negotiations with Israel collapsed in 2014, with no revival on the horizon, and perceived endemic incompetence and corruption within the PA.

The opening blow of the targeted activity in northern Samaria a combined opening strike that would surprise the enemy and keep the forces in the field, with every detail of the plan carefully selected. A little after midnight, movement permission was received for the infantry forces of over 1,000 soldiers, and at the same time for the air attack on the densely-packed area. The raid, launched under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government, targeted the northern city of Jenin and employed armored vehicles, army bulldozers and drone strikes. Many forces such as Dovdevan, Agoz, Parachute Patrol, Carob Patrol and Maglan each entered the refugee camp from a different direction and began the raid, with each unit having different tasks to perform.

The fighters include hundreds under the banner of the Jenin Brigades, a newly-emerged group, compromised of combatants from several armed factions. Fighters from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah and Hamas groups are also thought to be active in Jenin. The Jenin Brigades are just one of the newly emergent groups, which represent increased disillusionment with the Palestinian Authority and frustration at the ongoing Israeli occupation.

The operation was carried out by leveling the roads with engineering tools. Also, the engineering tools worked to remove the barriers placed by the militants in the camp in order to prevent the activity of the IDF forces. The fighters of the Aguz, Oktz and Halam units, based on accurate intelligence information from the Shin Bet, acted to confiscate the Amlah and neutralize the shafts in the 'Al Anatzer' mosque in the refugee camp.

The forces of the IDF, the Shin Bet and the Israel Defense Forces under the command of the Commando Formation and the Menashe Brigade continued to act to thwart terrorism. Based on intelligence from the Shin Bet, the IDF fighters located and destroyed an underground shaft that was used to store cargo in the heart of the refugee camp Jenin.

As part of an effort to widely thwart the removal of the threat of terrorism in Judea and Samaria, the security forces attacked a headquarters that is the unified headquarters of the factions in the refugee camp in Jenin and the operatives of the "Jenin Battalion". The headquarters was also used as an observation post, as a gathering place for armed terrorists before and after a terrorist activity, as an arming area with weapons and explosives, and as a contact and communication center for the activists. In addition, the headquarters served as a shelter for wanted activists in connection with the attacks in recent months in the sector.

Israel’s biggest military operation in the occupied West Bank since 2002 continued for a second day 04 July 2023, leaving at least 10 Palestinians dead and forcing thousands to flee their homes as the government said it struck “with great strength” the militant stronghold. In the city’s refugee camp – an urban community that was home to 18,000 people – multiple streets were ripped up leaving broken electricity cables, oil, and pools of water apparently after an Israeli anti-bomb bulldozer passed.

The Israeli military withdrew its troops from Jenin in the occupied West Bank on 05 July 2023, ending an intense two-day operation in the militant stronghold that killed at least 12 Palestinians and drove thousands of people from their homes. The Israeli army claimed to have inflicted heavy damage on militant groups in the Jenin refugee camp in an operation that included a series of air strikes and hundreds of ground troops. One Israeli soldier was also killed in the operation, which Israel’s hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned was “not a one-off”. It remained unclear whether the deadly raid would have any long-lasting effect after nearly a year and a half of heavy fighting in the West Bank.

The resistance is witnessing a remarkable and increasing development, as many Palestinian attacks have led to the killing of 36 Israeli soldiers and settlers since the beginning of 2023. The guerrilla operations escalated, whether by shooting at soldiers and settlers or targeting them with stomps and stabbings, passing through a remarkable development in the detonation of explosive devices against the occupation forces, leading to the launching of rocket projectiles at the “Jenin envelope” settlements in the northern West Bank. The "Ayyash Brigade" is a formation said to be Hamas members that carried out attempts to fire rudimentary shells towards settlements near Jenin.

The military wing of Hamas "adopted" several commando operations in the West Bank, in contrast to the movement’s policy of "blessing" operations without adopting them over many years. Saleh Al-Arouri, deputy head of the political bureau of the Hamas movement, whom Israel accuses of detonating the situation in the West Bank, said in September 2023 "Hamas is present in the resistance, and the adoption of guerrilla operations is subject to the discretion of the military apparatus. It is not a new policy, but it is subject to considerations of the interest of the resistance. Hamas today constitutes the backbone of the resistance, and its public entry affects the resistance environment and gives a strong message that this situation has political leadership, and that resistance is not merely an expression of anger at the practices of the occupation, but rather has a political goal, and a movement with the weight and strength of Hamas participates in it, which raises the slogan of resistance for liberation....

"In the operational dimension, the resistance operations that were adopted were those whose perpetrators were members of the movement and who were martyred or became wanted by the occupation. A number of the perpetrators left wills and pictures that indicate their affiliation with the military apparatus, but the movement avoids announcing the operations that were not revealed or whose perpetrators were not martyred in order to protect the resistance....

"The Al-Qassam Brigades are present in Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarm, and participate in confronting the incursions alongside members of other factions. Also, the largest number of specific operations were carried out by Mujahideen from the Qassam Brigades, such as the “Hamra” Jordan Valley operation, the first Hawara operation, the “Eli” settlement operation, the “Kedumim” and “Etzion” settlement operations, the shooting operations in Tel Aviv, and others that were not mentioned were adopted.