Anger rises in Jenin, two months after murder of journalist

It's early morning in Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank, but the summer sun is already hot. Shopkeeper Salih Farah is getting ready for the day, sweeping up the spent bullet cases littering the entrance to the slum-like refugee camp on the city's western edge.

- Bethan McKernan and Sufian Taha

The night before, a fighter belonging to the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad was arrested during an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) raid on the camp; one person was killed during the operation. Close by, on the spot where Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh was killed in May, beneath the murals painted in her memory, there are still pools of dried blood.

"It's the same every single night now. You can't go outside at night without getting shot, but it's not going to stop us living our lives," Farah said. "Jenin is the centre of Palestinian resistance ever since the second intifada [Palestinian uprising]. The Israelis have never forgotten that ...They are trying to punish us."

The veteran Al Jazeera journalist Abu Aqleh was covering the violence when she also lost her life, most likely as the result of being shot by an Israeli sniper. Abu Aqleh is one of 25 people who have been killed in the Jenin area since the beginning of the year: the near-nightly IDF raids on the camp have become one of the biggest Israeli military operations outside wartime for two decades.

Jenin's refugee camp is one of the largest of the 19 camps in the West Bank. It is also one of the poorest, with high rates of poverty and unemployment. Gun battles between Israeli forces and Palestinian militant groups in the camp's narrow streets are common: although Jenin is in Area A, the 18% of the West Bank under full Palestinian control, the Palestinian Authority (PA) granted the IDF free rein to operate here during the 2000-05 second intifada.