The journey of the Palestinian who opened fire at a street-side bar in Tel Aviv last week, killing three young Israeli men and sending the city into lockdown, began a two-hour drive away in an impoverished refugee camp deep inside the occupied West Bank.
Twenty years after Jenin saw one of the biggest battles of the second Palestinian uprising, Israel is once again launching near-daily raids into the camp and trading fire with local fighters. Decades of dispossession, poverty and violence have only deepened the camp’s reputation as a bastion of armed struggle against Israeli rule.
Tires, gutted appliances and other rubble are piled up near the entrances to the camp, which is transformed into a fortress at night, when the raids usually occur. Narrow roads wind through a confusion of squat concrete homes built on a hillside, some adorned with portraits of slain Palestinians and the flags of armed factions.
