Numbers can be dehumanizing. However, when placed in their proper context, they help to illuminate wider issues and answer urgent questions, such as why is Occupied Palestine at the threshold of a major revolt. And why Israel cannot crush Palestinian resistance no matter how hard, or violently, it tries.
That’s when numbers become relevant. Since the start of this year, nearly 200 Palestinians have been killed in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza. Among them are 27 children.
If one is to imagine a heat map correlating the towns, villages, and refugee camps of the Palestinian victims to the ongoing armed rebellion, one will immediately spot direct connections. Gaza, Jenin, and Nablus, for example, paid the heaviest price for Israeli violence, making them the regions that resist the most.
Unsurprisingly, Palestinian refugees have historically been at the forefront of the Palestinian liberation movement, turning refugee camps such as Jenin, Balata, Aqabat Jabr, Jabaliya, Nuseirat and others, into hot spots of popular and armed resistance. The harder Israel attempts to crush Palestinian resistance, the greater the Palestinian reaction is.
Take Jenin as an example. The rebellious refugee camp has never ceased its resistance to the Israeli occupation since the famous battle and subsequent Israeli massacre of April 2002. The resistance continued there in all of its forms, despite the fact that many of the fighters who defended the camp against the Israeli invasion of the Second Palestinian Uprising, or Intifada were killed or imprisoned.
Now that a new generation has taken over, Israel is at it again. Military incursions of Jenin by Israel have become a routine, resulting in a mounting number of casualties, though at a price for Israel itself.
The most notable and violent of these incursions was on January 26, when the Israeli army invaded the camp, killed ten Palestinians, and wounded over twenty others.
More Palestinians continue to be killed as Israeli raids become more frequent. And the more recurrent the raids, the tougher the resistance, which has swelled beyond the confines of Jenin itself to nearby illegal Jewish settlements, military checkpoints, and so on. It is common knowledge that many of the Palestinians who Israel accuses of carrying out operations against its soldiers and settlers come from Jenin.