The Silence in Jenin: How Gaza’s Shadow Quelled the West Bank’s Militant Heart 

Once known as the “martyrs’ capital” for its fierce armed resistance, the West Bank city of Jenin has been silenced by a heavy Israeli military occupation, as the devastating war in Gaza served as a stark warning, leading weary residents to abandon confrontation in favor of a desperate desire for a quiet life.

Following an Israeli operation that expelled residents, erected barriers, and established a permanent patrol presence, the local militant groups have been crushed, and the pervasive fear of suffering Gaza’s fate has quelled widespread protest, even as settler attacks increase and the occupation expands, forcing a shift from revolutionary fervor to a focus on daily survival and quieter forms of defiance.

The Silence in Jenin: How Gaza’s Shadow Quelled the West Bank’s Militant Heart 

The once-deafening soundtrack of Jenin—the crackle of gunfire, the roar of militant rallies, the defiant chants—has been replaced by a heavier, more ominous sound: the low rumble of Israeli military trucks and the methodical scrape of bulldozers tearing up the earth. Jenin, a name that for decades resonated as the “martyrs’ capital” of Palestine, has fallen silent. This is not the silence of peace, but the quiet of exhaustion, of trauma, and of a population grappling with a terrifying new calculus: is resistance worth becoming the next Gaza? 

The transformation of this northern West Bank city is a microcosm of a broader shift in Palestinian sentiment, a chilling lesson written not in textbooks but in the rubble of Gaza and the occupied streets of Jenin. The fiery determination that once defined this place has been tempered by a visceral, bone-deep fear of total annihilation. 

The Scars of the Past and the Fear of the Future 

To understand the silence in Jenin, one must first listen to the stories of those who embody its turbulent past. Shadi Dabaya, 54, is a living archive of the Second Intifada. His body is a map of old conflicts, with a chunk of his cheek torn away and a zigzag scar on his arm marking the path of Israeli bullets. Just a year ago, he was a local legend, captured on video confronting an Israeli armoured personnel carrier with nothing but a flip-flop—a symbol of defiant, almost theatrical, resistance. 

Today, when an Israeli military truck rolls by, Dabaya only stares. The fight has left his eyes, replaced by a weary resignation. “We are tired,” he admits, his previous bravado gone. “Resistance was a good idea, but look what happened to Gaza. All of the fighters are gone and we just want to live our lives in peace.” 

This sentiment, once taboo in the stronghold of militancy, is now commonplace. The war in Gaza served as a graphic, months-long horror film broadcast directly to every Palestinian phone. The destruction of 88% of the Strip demonstrated a stark reality: there is no red line Israel will not cross to crush militant threats. For Palestinians in the West Bank, armed resistance shifted from a strategy of liberation to a potential suicide pact for their entire community. 

The Architecture of Occupation: Berms, Barricades, and Broken Roads 

The Israeli military operation “Iron Wall,” launched in January, physically dismantled Jenin’s capacity for rebellion. The Jenin refugee camp, a densely packed quarter historically known as a bastion of fighters, was entirely emptied of its 14,000 residents. Israeli soldiers didn’t just raid it; they moved in, repurposing apartment blocks into makeshift barracks. 

The military then reshaped the very geography of the city. Earthen berms—massive, man-made hills of dirt and rubble—were erected, severing the camp from the rest of Jenin. These are not temporary barriers; they are permanent scars on the landscape, designed to control movement and isolate militant pockets. 

The occupation’s boundaries are fluid and ever-expanding. Take the wealthy Jabria neighbourhood, which overlooks the camp. From her living room window, resident Hiba Jarar can watch Israeli troops come and go. She is one of the last holdouts in a row of deserted luxury villas. One by one, her neighbours have been raided and told to leave. The road leading to her home ends abruptly in a monstrous mound of dirt, a project of Israeli bulldozers. 

“The Israelis know they have nothing to fear any more,” Jarar observes. “They raid houses with just a single soldier now.” This single detail is perhaps the most telling indicator of the power shift. The once-feared Jenin Battalion, a unique alliance of fighters from various Palestinian factions, has been dismantled. Their faces, which once stared defiantly from posters on every street corner, now fade in the sun, forgotten ghosts of a recent, more defiant past. 

The Carceral Humiliation: From Resistance to Submission 

With the armed threat neutralized, the occupation has entered a new phase characterized by daily humiliations designed to enforce submission. Social media feeds are filled with videos of Israeli soldiers rounding up dozens of young Palestinian men, forcing them to march with heads down and hands behind their backs in scenes of mass, ritualized degradation. 

The story of Mustafa Sheta, the general manager of Jenin’s Freedom Theatre, encapsulates this carceral strategy. Arrested in December 2023, he was held for 15 months under administrative detention—a system that allows Israel to imprison Palestinians indefinitely without charge or trial. He describes dehumanizing treatment: prison guards filming strip-searches on their personal phones and using the backs of prone detainees as “springboards,” jumping on them for sport. 

When Sheta was released in March, he returned to a city he no longer recognized. “I was shocked because Jenin is the capital of resistance. Where are the fighters? What’s happened to the fighters?” he recalled. “It felt like we lost the war.” 

He identified a fundamental shift in the people’s psyche. The grand political questions of revolution and the right of return have been supplanted by more immediate, grimly practical concerns: “What they can do in this new kind of life.” The struggle is no longer for liberation in the abstract, but for the mere ability to remain on one’s land, to earn a living, and to avoid the midnight raid. 

Resilience Redefined: The Quiet Defiance of Existence 

To interpret the silence in Jenin solely as surrender, however, is to miss a crucial part of the story. The nature of defiance is evolving. When the cost of armed resistance is collective punishment on a Gaza-like scale, other forms of steadfastness, or sumud, come to the fore. 

For figures like Mustafa Sheta, the battle has moved to the cultural and psychological arena. “They don’t deal with us even as animals, they consider us as nothing. So you need to again open that important discussion about how we can be resilient and stay in our homeland,” he argues. This resilience is the determination to clean your house after a soldier has searched it, to reopen a shuttered business, or to simply remain in your home in Jabria as your neighbours flee. 

It is the resilience of existing, of refusing to be erased, even when your voice cannot be raised in protest. In the face of overwhelming military power, the simple act of living a life, of seeking normality, becomes a quiet, profound form of defiance. 

The Looming Question: Will the West Bank Be Next? 

As the war in Gaza winds down, a palpable dread fills the vacuum in the West Bank. The Israeli military apparatus, honed to a razor’s edge in Gaza, is already deployed throughout Jenin and other Palestinian cities. The recent, albeit paused, Knesset bills to apply Israeli law to the West Bank signal a political direction that many fear is a prelude to formal annexation. 

The eerie lack of mass protest in response to these moves is not acceptance; it is the silence of a traumatized population holding its breath. The message has been received and internalized: provoke a full-scale confrontation, and you will share Gaza’s fate. 

The story of Jenin is a cautionary tale of power, fear, and survival. The guns have been silenced, but the conflict has not been resolved. It has merely mutated, driven underground into the human heart. The earthen berms around the camp are more than just physical barriers; they are metaphors for the walls of fear that now surround a once-defiant city. The martyrs’ capital has been subdued, but in the weary eyes of its people, the embers of a struggle for dignity still smolder, waiting for a breath of wind that won’t bring fire.