From time to time, the name of Jenin refugee camp and its city (in the northern West Bank) emerges as a front that is resistant to occupation during confrontations and debates.

This city, with a population of 40,000, is the largest city in the triangle between Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarm.

popular incubator

- 1799: The residents of Jenin - located at the foot of the hills of Mount Fire "Nablus" - did not hesitate to burn the olive groves from which they were surviving in order to stop the advance of the French forces on their lands led by Napoleon Bonaparte. The French response to Jenin's resistance came by burning and looting the city.

September 1918: During the First World War, Jenin fell under British occupation like the rest of the Palestinian territories, but the governorate did not surrender.

- 1935: The first armed resistance was organized under the leadership of Izz al-Din al-Qassam, one of the major resisters to the British occupation at the time, who found in Jenin a popular incubator of farmers who believed and supported the revolution.

- The region has since turned into a center for the Palestinian resistance, whose leadership, after the martyrdom of Al-Qassam, passed to Farhan Al-Saadi, a descendant of one of the resistance families.

1938: The city's most prominent operations against the occupation took place, by killing a great British commander inside his office in Jenin.

- 1948: When the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories occurred and the Zionist gangs killed thousands of Palestinians and occupied their homes, Jenin got rid of a short occupation that it had gained thanks to the fierce defense of Palestinian volunteers and the Iraqi army.

- 1949: The city came under the rule of the Jordanian administration, and in the early fifties, Jenin camp was established to house the displaced persons of the Nakba, whose homes were seized by Israel after their expulsion, and soon the camp located on the outskirts of the city became a stronghold of the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation, especially in the seventies and eighties.

Jenin camp was established to house the displaced persons of the Nakba in 1948, whose homes were seized by Israel after their expulsion (Al-Jazeera)

1951: With the rest of the West Bank, the city entered into a union with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

1964: It became the center of the Jenin Brigade in the Nablus Governorate, and remained under Jordanian rule until its occupation in the 1967 war.

Jenin was under Israeli occupation and became the center of the Jenin area, which is directly ruled by an Israeli military ruler.

- This situation continued until the arrival of the Palestinian National Authority in 1995, and the city has since become the center of Jenin Governorate, and most of the governorate’s lands fell under the classification (A) and (B) according to the Oslo Accords.

"protective fence"

April 3, 2002: The occupation army stormed the Jenin refugee camp with a large number of army, infantry and tanks, after completely encircling it.

The operation, which Tel Aviv called "the Defensive Wall", the resistance prepared for it by forming a joint operations room of all factions led by the martyr Tawalbeh and other leaders of the military wings of the factions, which was able to equip 200 resistance fighters armed with rifles and improvised explosive devices.

- With the start of the invasion, which was exceptionally supervised by the Chief of Staff of the occupation army, Shaul Mofaz, the resistance fighters set up booby-trapped ambushes in the alleys of the camp, which caused the death of a number of soldiers. One of them killed 13 Israeli soldiers and wounded 15 others, which made the occupation change its plans and decide to demolish part of the camp. And leveling it with the ground, which is the area in which the resistance fighters were holed up.

- Israel besieged the camp for 10 days, during which it was denied water, electricity, food and treatment, and the occupation bombed the camp with F-16 warplanes and artillery.

The occupation completely destroyed 455 houses, and partially 800 houses, and killed 58 camp residents, most of them non-residents, as it was using them as human shields during its attempt to penetrate into the camp and arrest hundreds of its children, in a massacre that affected people and rocks, and shook world public opinion.

On the other hand, 50 Israeli soldiers were killed during this battle and dozens were wounded, making it one of the most expensive battles in which Israel paid.

Israel tried to reduce this price by announcing its success in eradicating the resistance in the camp, and that it was an inevitable step to eliminate the "wasps' nest", as it described the camp, and to stop the operations that exit from it.

close resistance

March 2, 2021: The death of 3 Palestinians after clashing with the occupation forces, which resulted in the injury of 4 occupation soldiers, one of whom is in serious condition.

August 2021: The incident of the escape of the six prisoners was not without re-talking about Jenin, as two of the prisoners had already landed in Jenin.

August 2021: The Israeli occupation forces and their military vehicles stormed the city of Jenin with the aim of arresting a member of the Hamas movement, and an armed clash took place with a group of resistance fighters, resulting in the death of 4 Palestinian youths from the city and its camp, before the occupation soldiers left the camp under a heavy cover of Firing live bullets to protect themselves.

October 2021: There was a shooting attack carried out by the 27-year-old Palestinian Diaa Hamrasheh, which resulted in the killing of 5 Israelis and the wounding of 6 others.

The perpetrator of the shooting attack in Tel Aviv, the young martyr Raad Hazem (communication sites)

April 7, 2022: Raad Hazem, 29, left his home in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank until he reached Dizengoff Street, named after the founder of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff. The street witnessed some of the most famous commando operations in which no less than 40 Israelis.

Hazem opened fire on those in the street, leaving behind 5 dead and 6 wounded.

And quite calmly, Raad withdrew and sat on a chair before disappearing from view, so that the Israeli occupation forces began searching for the perpetrator of the attack, which took place in one of the most sensitive and important streets in Israel.

While Tel Aviv - whose residents call it the city that never sleeps - was closing its bars, restaurants and discos after the operation, in implementation of security instructions and in anticipation of the ghost gunman reappearing, Raad Hazem was skipping all security measures, heading to Jaffa.

It took 8 hours to search for the ghost gunman, during which the occupation forces searched the alleys of Tel Aviv, until the moment of his martyrdom in Jaffa, around six in the morning on the first Friday of Ramadan 1443 corresponding to April 8, 2022.

Then, from several axes of Jenin, more than 200 Israeli soldiers stormed the Jenin refugee camp, the Jabriyat neighborhood near it, the outskirts of Burqin village adjacent to the camp, and the village of Arana in the eastern region of the city.

- Since the beginning of 2022, according to Palestinian statistics, Jenin has lost 10 martyrs and dozens have been wounded, thus registering the highest number of cities among the martyrs and wounded and the highest among the resistance operations and the implementation of its "brigades" attacks against the military occupation points, such as checkpoints and towers.

Ain Al-Janain

Jenin is a Palestinian city, the center and largest city of Jenin Governorate, located in the northern West Bank of the Palestinian Authority.

Historically, it is considered one of the Triangle cities in the northern West Bank, 75 km to the north from Jerusalem.

Jenin overlooks the Jordan Valley to the east, and Marj Bin Amer to the north.

The area of ​​Jenin alone reaches 21,000 acres, making it the fifth largest Palestinian city in the West Bank after the cities of Hebron, Nablus, Tulkarm and Yatta.

Jenin Governorate covers an area of ​​583 square kilometers, or 9.7% of the total area of ​​the West Bank.

Jenin camp is located to the west of the city and is home to 16,000 refugees.

The city rises above sea level at a rate of 175 meters.

It is considered one of the oldest cities in the world that is still inhabited.

- The name of the city is mentioned in the sources and monuments of the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians and Assyrians;

According to archaeologists, it was the Canaanites who founded it around 2450 BC.

It was called in the old days "Ain Janim" and means in the Canaanite way "Ayn al-Janain", where the name of the city was associated with Marj Ibn Amer, which is considered the most fertile lands of historical Palestine, and in the era of the Romans there was a village mentioned in the name of "Jinai" from the villages of Sebastia.

Jenin lands with fertile agricultural soil (the island)

The city of "Ain Janim" is mentioned in the Torah as one of the cities inhabited by the Levites belonging to the "Isaackar" tribe, who changed its name to "Gent" after a few years of settling there.

In other writings, the city is symbolized as “Jenny.” The Jewish historian, Josephus Flavius, mentions that Jenin was one of the cities north of Samaria.

A lot of forces controlled Jenin, sometimes it rose and sometimes it relapsed, but the city flourished at the end of the Ottoman rule and the first municipal council was established in it in 1886.

Burqin village, which Jesus Christ passed through when he healed the 10 isolated lepers in a cave at the edge of the village (Al-Jazeera)

Holy places

Jenin is considered the fifth holy place for Christians, due to the passage of Jesus Christ from the village of Burqin, where he healed the 10 isolated lepers in a cave at the edge of the village.

In the same place, in the early fourth century AD, Constantine the Great built Burqin Church, known as the Church of Gerges. The Dutch government carried out the necessary repairs in coordination with the Department of Antiquities in the Palestinian National Authority, as it is one of the holy places for Christians.

This church became the connecting route for Christian pilgrims from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

During the aforementioned period, a church was established in Jenin, among 31 cities and 442 villages throughout Palestine. The church remained in existence until it was destroyed by an earthquake in 560 AD.

The governorate also includes a Latin monastery located in the predominantly Christian village of Zababdeh, southeast of Jenin.

On the Islamic side, one of the oldest and largest Ottoman Islamic monuments in Palestine is located in the city, which is the Great Mosque of Jenin, which was established by Fatima Khatun, daughter of Muhammad Bey bin Sultan Al-Ashraf King Qanswa Al-Ghouri in the sixteenth century.

This mosque is considered one of the most prominent historical monuments in the Islamic civilization in Palestine, and one of the oldest Ottoman architectural masterpieces in the country.