A Palestinian symbol of resistance — and ruin

After 15 months in an Israeli jail, Mustafa Sheta drove home with his brothers to Jenin.

- By Nabih Bulos

ISRAEL'S military campaign has laid waste to the Jenin refugee camp.

(JOHN WESSELS AFP/Getty Images)

A lot changed while he was in prison, they said.

The fighters who once had daily run-and-gun battles with Israeli soldiers? Gone. The bustling population of the refugee camp that gave Jenin its reputation as the martyrs’ capital? Gone. The theater Sheta ran in the camp, which he nurtured into an internationally known lodestar of Palestinian cultural resistance? Gone.

It appeared that Jenin, known as the city that never surrendered, had surrendered.

"I was shocked. The concept of resilience in Jenin, it’s really important to people. Where are the fighters, the Palestinian Authority, grassroots organization, the local leaders?" Sheta said.

"It felt like we lost the war, like we are losing this battle."

Jenin has become the quintessential model of how Israel — in a long-running campaign dubbed Operation Iron Wall — has largely subdued the northern West Bank.

Over more than 300 days, Israel has deployed soldiers, tanks, helicopter gunships and even airstrikes in Jenin and other cities, leaving a trail of destruction that has triggered what aid groups call the most severe bout of Palestinian displacement in the West Bank - more than 40,000 people initially, now down to about 32,000 since Israel occupied the region in 1967. In a report released Nov. 20, Human Rights Watch alleged Israeli forces' actions amounted to war crimes and against humanity.

Coming under particular Israeli ire are the refugee camps in the area, set up as tent encampments for Palestinians displaced by Israel's creation in 1948 but which hardened over the decades into slum neighborhoods Israel nodes of militancy.