The Global Network on the Question of Palestine (GNQP) strongly condemns the repeated aerial and ground assaults perpetrated by the Israeli occupation on Jenin refugee camp, the most recent beginning on 3 July 2023. Deliberate and indiscriminate use of lethal force by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) has claimed the lives of eleven Palestinians, including three children, left hundreds injured, and dramatically affected the camp’s infrastructure.
We call for the immediate deployment of a protective presence on the ground to restrain the violence in occupied Palestine and safeguard the Palestinian population. As any resolution for a peacekeeping operation through the UNSC may be blocked by the US veto, we urge the UN on the ground to redistribute its international presence taking as an example UNRWA’s deployment of its ‘Refugee Affairs Officers’ during the First Intifada. This program consisted of stationing part of UNRWA’s international staff at particularly sensitive places to provide a degree of protection to the Palestinian people and uphold the norms of international humanitarian law.
The international community’s exceptional treatment of Israel with blunt impunity only serves to further diminish the already tarnished image and credibility of the post-World War II system, including the UN, premised on the rule of law and human rights for all. The pursuit of justice in Palestine represents the last opportunity to restore the legitimacy and effectiveness of the international order and must be urgently prioritized.
Beyond the loss of lives and injuries, the IOF has deliberately targeted journalists, as have humanitarian personnel and hospitals, now encircled by IOF snipers. Civilian infrastructure, including water lines and sewage systems, has also been subjected to attack. Meanwhile, the IOF has bulldozed access roads to the refugee camp, blocking those spared from destruction. This has severely impeded the ability of paramedics and ambulances to evacuate and assist the wounded who remain in the refugee camp, forcing them to navigate the scenes of IOF crimes on foot at an excruciatingly slow pace. Over 3000 refugees, who are survivors or descendants of those displaced from their homes in the coastal cities of Mandate Palestine in 1948, have been forced to flee the camp.
As would any people under a harsh regime of alien domination, Palestinians have resorted to all forms of resistance—peaceful and armed–-to bring an end to their illegal and prolonged subjugation and to realize their inalienable rights. The right and the necessity to resist in settler-colonial situations of this kind are the basis for fulfilling the right to self-determination, recognized by international law as an inalienable right of the Palestinian people.
Jenin refugee camp has long been the epicenter of Palestinian steadfast resistance – the most obvious threat to any settler-colonial enterprise. The dehumanization of Jenin refugee camp, branding of all its residents as a collective terrorist threat—epitomized by the unfathomable destruction of the camp in 2002 during the Second Intifada—has thus been a longstanding strategy employed by the Israeli regime, with the aim of crushing Palestinian resistance, encouraging coercive departure through recourse to state terror, deterring the emergence of similar movements, and ultimately eradicating any trace of Palestinian identity from Palestine.
The current events unfolding in Jenin, reverberating throughout historic Palestine, are a perpetuation of the abhorrent practices and policies of ethnic cleansing that crystallized through the Nakba of 1948 and have persisted ever since, with ever more advanced technologies and strategies: the targeting of densely populated areas, instilling despair and fear among the population, and coercing the indigenous inhabitants to abandon their homes—those that have not already been demolished—are all tactics employed to enable land theft, expand settlements, dispossession, and expand Israel’s unlawful annexation of Palestine
Another aspect that has reprehensibly remained unchanged since the events of over 75 years ago is the exceptional treatment afforded to the State of Israel by the international community, led by the United States. As long as Israel is granted impunity for its daily flagrant violations of international law and human rights abuses, tantamount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, it will continue unabated to implement its settler-colonial project, striving to forcibly dispossess the native population from their homeland to permanently secure its grip on all of historic Palestine.
The latest massacre in Jenin cannot be considered in isolation from the structural violence that marks the daily lives of the Palestinians, and that has culminated in the recurring waves of violence that have plagued Palestinian villages in recent months, the repeated Israeli military offensives on the Gaza Strip, already reeling under a severe 16-year blockade or the judicial overhaul promoted by the new Israeli government. These events are all part and parcel of Israel’s settler-colonial enterprise, implemented through an apartheid regime against the Palestinian people, as well as the illegal occupation of the territorial remnant recognized by international consensus for the partial realization of the Palestinian people’s external self-determination in the form of independent statehood.
In light of this enduring brutal reality, we urge the international community to:
- Acknowledge that the violence in Jenin is the result of an anachronistic settler-colonial project, where Israel is the colonizer and the Palestinian people the colonized.
- Dismantle Israel’s oppressive dominance as a settler-colonial power over the Palestinian people and put an end to its unlawful manifestations, including the apartheid regime and the occupation.
- This must start from the realization of the Palestinians’ inalienable right to self-determination, which entails the right of return of all the Palestinians displaced from their homes throughout the past 75 years, as a fundamental prerequisite for any sustainable and just political negotiations.
- Pursue accountability through the International Criminal Court and other available venues for those responsible for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, while ensuring that the victims receive due reparations and compensation, as per international law.
- Renew the pact of solidarity with the Palestinian people by persevering in the pursuit of justice in Palestine, adopting a narrative faithful to the anachronistic settler-colonial tragedy that has befallen the Palestinian people, and by populating every institution, public discourse, and the media with Palestinian voices and experience.
