West Bank raids: Who are the Jenin Bridges and why is this military operation coming now?
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00:00 Well, for more on this, I'm joined by our International Affairs Editor, Philip Turle.
00:04 So, Philip, Israel says it is striking a terrorist infrastructure in the Jenin area,
00:12 controlled by a group called the Jenin Bridges.
00:15 Can you tell us a bit about the Jenin Bridges?
00:17 Why now?
00:18 Yeah, it's actually the Jenin Brigades, and they are a terrorist group that was created
00:25 back in 2021.
00:27 In Jenin, which is situated in northern Israel, you can see on the map up here, this is all
00:32 part of the northern West Bank.
00:34 You can see part here, which is situated within Israel itself.
00:38 And that is the big problem, because the Palestinians living in these refugee camps have been there
00:43 since 1948 and the creation of Israel, wanting to be given proper housing, the right to return
00:49 to their land.
00:50 And they obviously have not ever been able to do that.
00:53 And that has led to growing criticism from within the refugee camps, from within the
00:58 whole of the West Bank, that the Palestinian National Authority isn't doing enough to provide
01:03 a future for them.
01:05 And these groups, like the Jenin Brigades, have just taken it all in their own hands
01:11 because they don't have any faith in the Palestinian Authority anymore.
01:14 So it was created back in 2021.
01:16 Its founder is Jamil al-Amouri from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
01:20 And their motto is "We are the resistance", because, as I said, they don't have any faith
01:25 in the Palestinian National Authority.
01:29 And at the same time, they're face to face with the Israeli government, which is the
01:34 most far-right government in the history of Israel, which is under pressure from within
01:40 Israel itself to stop these attacks on Israeli settlers and on Israeli residents.
01:47 And that has led to this inflammatory cocktail that for the moment doesn't seem to have any
01:51 way out in the short term.
01:54 And face to face with that is a feeling that Israel is constructing more and more settlements
01:59 in the West Bank.
02:00 They've gone up a lot over the last few years, 400,000 Israeli settlers for about 2.6 million
02:06 Palestinians.
02:07 13,000 new housing units have been approved, even though that's been criticized by the
02:12 UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice, who
02:16 say that Israel's actions in the West Bank are illegal.
02:19 So all of this together has created this situation, which is very volatile and at the same time
02:25 very dangerous.
02:27 And where does this leave the prospects for peace?
02:31 Well, that is the big question.
02:33 And the answer to that is far away.
02:35 There have been umpteen efforts to bring the two sides to the negotiating table, the last
02:39 one in 2014 by John Kerry, the then Secretary of State of the US.
02:43 It didn't lead to anything.
02:45 The problem is there's no real willingness on the side of either the Palestinians or
02:50 the Israelis to get to that negotiating table.
02:54 And the only way forward at the moment seems to be a military solution.
03:00 And that is not a solution.
03:02 It needs to be a diplomatic solution, given to the Palestinians that there's going to
03:05 be a two-state solution.
03:06 That's what they want.
03:07 But no sign of that in the short term.
03:09 Okay, well, we'll leave it there.
03:11 Thanks very much, Philip Taylor, our International Affairs Editor.