HUMAN BEINGS live, work, study, play, fight, raise children and dream in Jenin, a city of 40,000 people in the northern West Bank, 90 driving miles from Jerusalem. They are confined to a little more than 14 square miles. The refugee camp, administered by the UN Refugee Works Administration, houses some 13,000 to 15,000 people, one-third of them children, and covers an area of only 0.16 square miles. The camp is one of the main centers of resistance to Israeli oppression, one group favoring armed resistance, the other, such as The Freedom Theater, cultural resistance. Jenin is known as The Martyr’s Capital by Palestinians and The Hornet’s Nest by Israelis.
The Jenin Freedom Theater after the army’s invasion.
Activated by the recent carnage in the refugee camp, I’d like to show you some of the residents that I’ve met and photographed, as recently as 2019 while I photographed for my “Ongoing and Relentless Nakba” project. I’ll also show you a powerful Freedom Bus ride thru the West Bank organized by the Freedom Theater in 2015.
Credible reporting from agencies like the UN-OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, strickens my heart and motivates this blog.
Overnight between 4 and 5 July, Israeli forces withdrew from Jenin city and the Jenin Refugee Camp. This concluded a large-scale operation that spanned 3 and 4 July, involving both air and ground forces in the camp and its surroundings. It began in the early hours of 3 July with a series of Israeli airstrikes, likely conducted by drones, followed by a large number of ground troops entering the area and engaging in exchanges of fire. This is the second operation in the Jenin Refugee Camp involving air strikes within two weeks this year.
The two-day operation resulted in casualties, internal displacement, and damage to buildings and infrastructure. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MoH), twelve Palestinians, including four children, were killed in Jenin during the operation. Furthermore, MoH reports that 143 Palestinians were injured, and that 20 of them are in critical condition. One Israeli soldier was killed, according to official Israeli sources.
The Israeli operation resulted in the highest number of Palestinian fatalities in a single operation in the West Bank since OCHA started recording casualties in 2005.
Palestinians gather around parts of an Israeli armored vehicle after it was destroyed during clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters in the West Bank city of Jenin, June 19, 2023. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)
Latest report from UN-OCHA (as of writing this blog on July 16, 2023)
Photos: The wreckage Israel left behind in Jenin refugee camp (June 6, 2023, Al-Jazeera)
Israel’s Raid on Jenin, in Pictures (New York Times, July 4, 2023-requires subscription)
MY EXPERIENCE IN JENIN dates to at least 2006 when I photographed the Popular Achievement youth program organized by the American Friends Service Committee. I did not fly in or use the train or even a direct bus. I struggled thru Israeli checkpoints. Jenin—like the West Bank and Gaza—is sealed by the Israelis. As is well known, Israel-Palestine is now a unitary state, privileging Jewish people. Also claimed by a growing number of organizations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Save the Children, the American Friends Service Committee, and the Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, the entire region, the river to the sea, is an apartheid state.
In an internet cafe, 2006
Inspired by the Freedom Theater I returned several years to volunteer my photography and teach photography to adults and young adults thru the theater and another youth program. The theater is in the refugee camp; the Israeli army attacked the theater during the recent violence to remove and interrogate families who sought shelter there. Much of my and my students’ photography concerned the camp.
Practice: Photographs from Jenin (photographs by my students, 2015)
2009 PHOTOS-two weeks in the city to explore, make photographs, and teach photography at the Jenin Creative Cultural Center: Parts one, two, three, four, and five
IN 2015 I PHOTOGRAPHED THE FREEDOM BUS RIDE organized by the theater. It brought about 40 of us from Palestine and around the world to 6 sites of suffering and resistance. Housed and fed by residents, we met local leaders of nonviolent strategic resistance and heard stories of their oppression.
Click on the poster to open the slideshow. And once at the show (a graphic of the Freedom Bus), click the page to begin the show.
The final section of the Freedom Bus Ride series
My most recent visit was in summer 2019 to photograph and interview more Nakba survivors for my Nakba series. On my first night at the theater I made this photo set: From the Jenin refugee camp and the Freedom Theater: a short evening of hip hop-2019
To complete my fieldwork for an eventual series of exhibits and publications, during that visit I interviewed and photographed Jenin camp residents: Ibrahim Eid Nghnghia (Abu Adnan) with his son, Adnan (who was held briefly during the recent incursion), and a friend of Ibrahim’s. With the help of a colleague I’d met at the theater, Mohammed Mouwia, I photographed and interviewed Qasem Ahmad Qasem Abu Qutnah, with his son and grandson.
Ibrahim Eid Nghnghia (L) with his son, Adnan Torokman
Qasem Ahmad Qasem Abu Qutnah
My narrated movie-slide show, The Ongoing and Relentless Nakba, (part one of a two-part show) will give you a fuller view of my Nakba work.
NOW IS THE TIME to reflect on the latest reliable information, spread the word, link with activist organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace, and, depending on your mode of activism, go into the streets with loud demonstrations and contact Congress. Or whatever is appropriate for where ever you are.
From Friends of the Freedom Theater a report with a section about what you can do (July 13, 2023)
SOME DAY there may be direct flights between Jenin and the rest of the world.
LINKS
2019 annual report of The Freedom Theater, which may be the last before the Covid pandemic at least partially closed the theater’s doors.
Hip Hop in Jenin, video by The Freedom Theater
The Jenin operation didn’t end. Phase Two has already begun. (July 10, 2023-Mondoweiss)
Skip Schiel & Teeksa Photography 
What a testament you have assembled in this comprehensive series of journeys to Jenin—yours that are recorded in one indelible photograph after another, and other observers and writers who bring the story right up to these recent days and weeks. Add Save the Children as one more international organization that has declared the reality of apartheid in Israel and Palestine.
LikeLike
scott, thanks for your comment. i’ve added Save the Children to a list of international organizations declaring Israeli apartheid.
LikeLike