UAE pledges $15 million through UNRWA to help rebuild Jenin refugee camp
Many of the camp’s buildings and narrow alleys were damaged in this week’s counter-terrorism operation by the IDF
The United Arab Emirates has pledged to give $15 million to help rebuild the Jenin refugee camp after one of the largest Israeli military operations in the West Bank in nearly two decades.
The funding promise came on Thursday after the two-day offensive on Monday and Tuesday heavily damaged the camp’s narrow roads and alleyways, with bulldozers used to clear paths for soldiers and remove possible roadside bombs in the densely populated area of around 20,000. Cars, some overturned on the sides of roads, were smashed and scorched.
The operation, meant to crack down on armed Palestinians after a series of recent attacks on Israelis, sent thousands of people fleeing their homes. Twelve Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed in the fighting. Israel says all those killed were armed combatants.
The UAE’s state-run WAM news agency reported that the money would be funneled through UNRWA, the UN agency that assists Palestinian refugees, to rebuild damaged homes and businesses and for the agency’s services. UNRWA has struggled recently to raise the funding it needs to maintain its day-to-day operations.
Representatives of the agency said some of their facilities, including the windows and walls of a health center and the road leading up to a school, sustained damage.
At a donor conference last month, UNRWA fundraising fell short of the $300 million it said was necessary to continue assisting Palestinians, with countries pledging just $107 million. The shortfall came even after the United Nations chief said UNRWA “is on the verge of financial collapse.”
Israel launched the operation in the camp, long known as a bastion of Palestinian terrorists, on Monday, saying its goal was to arrest suspects and destroy and confiscate weapons. It carried out airstrikes and sent in hundreds of troops.
Some of the scenes from Jenin, including massive army bulldozers tearing through camp alleys, were somewhat reminiscent of those from a major Israeli incursion in 2002, which lasted for eight days and became known as the battle of Jenin.
The gunmen are viewed by many Palestinians as heroes, with the latter citing 56 years of Israeli control and the absence of any political process. They also point to increased West Bank settlement construction and violence by extremist settlers. Israel on the other hand says the gunmen are terrorists who regularly attack civilians in the West Bank.
The army’s stated objective of the operation, known internally as “Bayit Vagan” (literally “Home and Garden”), a reference to Jenin’s biblical name, was to put an end to the refugee camp’s status as a “city of refuge” for Palestinian terrorists, to restore deterrence and to grant Israeli troops more “freedom of action” when conducting future raids in the West Bank city.
According to the IDF, since last year, some 50 shooting attacks were carried out by residents of the area, and 19 wanted Palestinians escaped to Jenin to seek refuge from Israeli forces.
During the campaign, involving over 1,000 troops, IDF said forces located and demolished at least eight weapon storage sites, six explosives labs with hundreds of primed devices, three war rooms used by Palestinian gunmen to observe Israeli forces and other “terror infrastructure.”
Army bulldozers ripped up several roads in the camp to expose areas where there was intelligence pointing to possible improvised explosive devices, as a lesson learned from the large bomb that wounded soldiers last month.
The military hopes that in the future it will be able to enter Jenin for counterterrorism raids with much smaller numbers of forces, without facing the fierce resistance it had seen over the past year.
