Iran Tries To Make a Stand in Jenin by Seth Mandel
The future of Gaza depends to some extent on what’s happening in Jenin this week.
The West Bank city is a hotbed of Iranian-backed militias who have spent years carving out a separatist haven there. It is a significant challenge to Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. Both Israel and the Palestinians who want self-determination share an interest in preventing the Iranian colonial project from accomplishing its primary aim in the West Bank: Palestinian civil war and the disintegration of the Palestinian Authority.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, that has only become more urgent. At some point, the PA is expected to take over the administration of the Gaza Strip after Hamas is removed from power. If Abbas cannot maintain control over the West Bank, the PA cannot take on Gaza as well.
And so Abbas’s decision to send Palestinian security forces into Jenin is a crucial test for the aging autocrat and his government.
“The gunmen in Jenin are not resistance fighters, but mercenaries serving the dubious agenda of an outside party,” declared PA spokesman Anwar Rajab.
The New York Times describes the riddle that the PA, Israel, and the U.S. are trying to solve. Israel has been stepping up its security raids in Jenin because Abbas is barely able to step foot in the city. Israel does not want an Iranian terror-and-tunnel project in the West Bank to match the one currently undergoing disassembly in Gaza. The U.S. wants Israel to back off a bit, to enable the Palestinian security forces to gather the strength to take back Jenin. But if Israel backs off too much or for too long, the PA will fail when it does try to restore order there.
That happened last week, in fact. According to Axios, Palestinian security forces fumbled a mission in which they were trying to arrest “several PIJ and Hamas militants who stole Palestinian security forces vehicles and used them for an armed parade through the refugee camp.” The mission failure, then was a double humiliation.
Back again for another round, Palestinian forces sent troops to surround problem areas in Jenin, killing a Palestinian Islamic Jihad commander. But no one wants a protracted war either, and the Iranians have reportedly armed the Jenin-area militants to the teeth. So the U.S. has asked Israel to transfer weapons to the PA and money to pay the security forces, but to otherwise stay out of it. (Or stay out of sight.)
As of this afternoon, according to Kann News, “the Palestinian Authority’s security forces have neutralized 3 car bombs, killed two terrorists, and wounded 19.”
To the question of why the PA is launching this crackdown now, there is an official answer and an unspoken one. The official answer is that the anti-Abbas parade thrown by Hamas and PIJ was a public taunting that Abbas and the PA could not afford to leave unanswered. The unspoken answer is that Iran is at a strategic low point after Israel bloodied its nose, weakened Hezbollah dramatically, and pushed Hamas to brink of defeat, leading to the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to the rebels.
In that sense, Israel’s recent successes against Iran may have given the PA new life.
It’s an important reminder for the West as it faces another season of public protests over Gaza: The anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas mobs in the street and on campus are working against Palestinian self-determination. Western leaders found it easy to ignore this fact when Hamas claimed to represent the Palestinians in war against Israel. But who does Hamas represent in their war on the Palestinian Authority? And what is West doing to ensure Hamas doesn’t win that one?
Comments are closed.
