Jenin

Jenin
Panoramic view of Jenin
Administration :	Palestinian Territories
Governorate :	Jenin
Founded :	2500 BC
Coordinates :	32 ° 28 '  N , 35 ° 18'  E Coordinates: 32 ° 27 '40 "  N , 35 ° 18' 0"  E
Height :	200 m
Residents :	48,479 (2016)
Community type:	city
Jenin

Jenin (also Jenin or Djenin , Arabic جنين Dschanin , DMG Ǧanīn ( listen ^{? / I} ), Hebrew ג'נין, ancient: Engannim ) is a city in the West Bank with about 46,139 (2014) inhabitants.

history

Jenin was settled early because of the many water sources; the place was first mentioned in ancient Egyptian writings around 2000 BC. Chr. Mentioned. During the time of the settlement of the Israelite tribes after the exodus from Egypt, the Levite city "Ein Ganim" ( Hebrew garden spring) was founded here (Joshua 19:21). In his work History of the Jewish War, Flavius ​​Josephus mentions the city "Ganim" as a Jewish city in northern Samaria. In the past, the city was also able to control an important road leading north from Jerusalem to the Jezreel Plain and Haifa . Only with the construction of the coastal road via Hadera in the 1930s did this route lose its importance. From 1913 to 1948 the Jenin station was served by the Afula – Nablus branch of the Hejaz Railway.

Jenin is located in the West Bank, which - in the UN partition plan provided by 1947 as part of an Arab-Palestinian state - after the Israeli War of Independence (or Palestine War ) First of Jordan (then Transjordan ) had been occupied before the area in 1967 conquered by Israel and was occupied.

As a result of the Oslo Peace Process , Jenin became an autonomous Palestinian city in 1996. In the same year, on the initiative of the USA, the Arab American University was founded near the city and began teaching in September 2000.

As in other Palestinian territories, the living conditions of the population have deteriorated considerably since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000. It is suffering from the closure of the areas, many buildings have been destroyed, and unemployment is high (around 80%).

Jenin UN refugee camp

The name Jenin also refers to the neighboring refugee camp Jenin, which was founded in 1953 for Palestinians who fled or were displaced from their homeland and who had to give way to Israeli territorial claims during the Israeli-Arab war in 1948.

Jenin's population is 35,000 Palestinians. The Jenin refugee camp alone comprises around 12,000 refugees on an area of ​​92 hectares. Around 42% of the camp residents are under fifteen years old, mostly descendants of refugees from the 1948 war.

Current situation

View of Jenin from the Gilboa

Jenin has long been considered a stronghold of the al-Aqsa brigades , which were responsible for a number of terrorist attacks, particularly during the Al-Aqsa intifada . In response, Israel carried out a major military operation in Jenin in 2002, during which the military destroyed large parts of the refugee camp. In the meantime, the situation in Jenin has relaxed significantly. The Israeli army has withdrawn from the city, and there are seldom night raids by Israeli special forces. Instead, the local shops and cafes are open again into the evening hours. According to a SZ report, Jenin today (2010) resembles a “laboratory test for a future Palestinian state”. The state development cooperation approaches of Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom support cooperation on issues of security and civil administration between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Cinema Jenin

On a cultural level, since 2008, alongside the already established Freedom Theater, under the direction of the Arab-Jewish artist Juliano Mer-Khamis, the Cinema Jenin cultural project has been developed , which is dedicated to the reconstruction of the city cinema that was destroyed during the First Intifada in 1987. Cinema Jenin was founded by the German director Marcus Vetter and the two Palestinians Fakhri Hamad and Ismail Khatib and is supported locally and internationally; The project's supporters include the German Foreign Office , the Goethe-Institut Ramallah and celebrities such as the Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters .

Ismail Khatib became known in Israel and beyond after donating the organs of his son Ahmed, who was killed by an Israeli soldier, to Israeli children in 2005. His story was captured in the award-winning documentary The Heart of Jenin , directed by Marcus Vetter and Israeli director Leon Geller .

The Cinema Jenin reopened on August 5, 2010 with a three-day film festival.

Military operation 2002

See also : Operation Schutzschild # Fighting in Jenin

IDF Caterpillar D9L, an armored bulldozer.

After a Hamas assassination attempt on the Jewish Passover festival in Netanya with 30 deaths and 140 injuries, the Israeli army moved into the Jenin refugee camp on April 3, 2002, about 30 km away from Netanya. Israel found that Jenin had served as the basis for numerous terrorist attacks and suicide squads against the Israeli military and against Israeli towns and citizens. After days of fighting, Israeli demolition teams destroyed parts of the refugee camp with bulldozers. 23 fatalities have been confirmed on the part of the Israeli army and 52 on the part of the Palestinians (including 22 uninvolved civilians). Allegations of massacre against the Palestinians by human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have been rejected. Amnesty International alleges that the Israeli army has committed war crimes, including unlawful killings, torture and ill-treatment of prisoners, willful destruction of hundreds of homes, some of which have not left the buildings, obstruction of ambulances and refusal to provide humanitarian aid, and abuse of Palestinian civilians as "human shields". A delegation from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights , headed by Mary Robinson , the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, first entry into Israel was not allowed. The Israeli army, on the other hand, stated that by opting for a ground offensive instead of an air force deployment, they consciously took into account a higher risk for their own soldiers in order to minimize the casualty rate among Palestinian civilians.

Since construction began on the Israeli barrier , a “significant reduction” in suicide attacks has been achieved, also because Jenin is cut off from neighboring communities in the north. The barrier runs partially within the West Bank.

sons and daughters of the town

• Belly (* 1984), Palestinian-Canadian rapper and songwriter

See also

• List of cities in the Palestinian Territories
• Middle East conflict

literature

• Immanuel Benzinger : Engannim 2 . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume V, 2, Stuttgart 1905, Col. 2563.

Web links

Commons : Jenin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• UN report in full text (English)
• Report on the military operation in Jenin. Human Rights Watch
• Cinema Jenin project

Individual evidence

1. ^ According to UNRWA projections based on the 1997 census
2. ↑ sueddeutsche.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ cinemajenin.org
4. ↑ Hope is the director . Zeit Online , August 6, 2010. Süddeutsche Zeitung , August 5, 2010, p. 3; there also on the reconciliation initiative of Yaël Armanet-Chernobroda and Zakaria Tobassi
5. ^ Jenin's Terrorist Infrastructure . In: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs . April 4, 2002. Retrieved September 22, 2008.
6. ^ Israel and the Occupied Territories: Shielded from scrutiny: IDF violations in Jenin and Nablus . amnesty international
7. ↑ report. Mirror online
8. ^ Hamas in call to end suicide bombings . The Guardian , April 9, 2006
9. ↑ Statistics shows a decrease in the number of terrorists in areas with anti-terrorism fence . Newsletter of the Israeli embassy in Berlin, July 2, 2004
10. ^ Report of the UN