The United Arab Emirates has committed to giving $15 million to help rebuild the Jenin refugee camp after one of the most significant Israeli military operations in the West Bank in nearly two decades.
The promise of funding 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 broadside bombs in the densely populated area of nearly 20,000. Moreover, overturned cars on the side of the roads were smashed and scorched.
The UAE’s state-run WAM news agency reported that the money would be channeled through UNRWA, the UN agents that assist 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 mundane activities.
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.
On Monday, Israel launched the operation in the camp, long known as a bastion of Palestinian terrorists, saying its goal was to arrest suspects and destroy and seize weapons. It carried out airstrikes and sent in hundreds of troops.
Some of the scenes of 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 was known as the Battle of Jenin.
Many Palestinians viewed the gunmen as heroes, citing 56 years of Israeli control and the absence of any political process.
According to the IDF, after last year, some 50 shooting attacks were carried out by area residents, and 19 wanted Palestinians to escape to Jenin to seek refugee from Israeli forces.
During the campaign, they involved 1,000 troops; IDF said forces located and demolished at least eight weapon storage sites, six explosive labs with hundreds of primed devices, three war rooms used by Palestinian gunmen to observe Israeli forces and other
” terror infrastructure.”
Moreover, as a lesson learned from the giant bomb that wounded soldiers last month, army bulldozers ripped up many roads in the camp to expose areas where there was intelligence pointing to possible unprepared explosive devices.
The military hopes that in the future, it will be able to enter Jenin for counterterrorism raids with a much smaller number of forces without facing the fierce opposition it had seen over the last year.
