Amid the largest Israeli assault on the occupied West Bank since the second Intifada, the city of Jenin and its nearby refugee camps once again find themselves in the focus of Israeli military attacks.
At the time of writing, Jenin city, housing nearly 50,000 people, was surrounded by Israeli forces as part of a wider attack that has seen assaults launched at Jenin, Nablus, Tubas, Tulkarem and has so far killed 10 Palestinians and wounded many more.
Access to hospitals has been blocked with dirt barriers, with other medical facilities surrounded by troops.
In a statement, the governing Palestinian Authority (PA), which has nominal responsibility for the territory, said hospitals were under siege and warned of “repercussions” over what it said were threats to storm them.
Jenin has been the focal point for Israeli military incursions many times before, which, in a long history of military assaults have, in the words of Zaid Shuabi, a Palestinian human rights organiser in the West Bank, are “like Gaza on a smaller scale”.
“You don’t see roads because they’re destroyed. The infrastructure … the sewage and electricity system and the water pipes and telecommunication networks are damaged,” he told Al Jazeera in June.
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