Jenin Brigades

The Jenin formation combines a connection to PIJ’s Jerusalem Brigades, also known as the al-Quds Brigades, with participation by operatives associated with other Palestinian organizations.[1][3] Accounts of its membership name Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and, in some descriptions, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades.[1][7] Local affiliation has been an important element of the network, sometimes taking precedence over individual members’ factional affiliations.[4]

Its activities have included organizing armed cells, sharing command facilities with other groups, and confronting Israeli security forces operating in Jenin.[1][6] The network has also challenged the Palestinian Authority (PA), whose security forces mounted a campaign against it in December 2024.[5] Polling discussed in September 2023 suggested that the Jenin Brigades and the Nablus-based Lion’s Den enjoyed substantial Palestinian domestic popularity, although the available account supplied neither polling figures nor the underlying surveys.[8]

PIJ had a long-established presence in Jenin before the Jenin Battalion’s reported emergence, and ICT identifies Jenin as an area where PIJ had a foothold before the Second Intifada.[4][2] This earlier presence provided the organizational background to the formation associated with the Jenin Battalion name in 2021.

The battalion’s organization began during or after Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021, with PIJ operative Jamil al-Amouri identified as the organizer of its first cells.[4][1] One account describes its growth from a four-person cell into eight cells, reaching battalion scale approximately a year later.[1] Its public emergence followed the escape of six security prisoners from Gilboa Prison in September 2021, when a statement offering the escapees shelter became the first public evidence of the formation.[1]

In its early statement, the group invoked a desire to overcome fear, the weakness of the Palestinian Authority, and Israeli security-force activity in the refugee camp as reasons for its emergence.[9] Residents’ explanations also linked recruitment to the effects of security operations on households.[9] A battalion leader, explaining his own participation in armed activity, cited loss of hope for a better future and his belief that Israel did not intend to implement a two-state solution.[4]

By February 2022, members of Katibat Jenin and Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades were participating in a joint operations room called Hizam al-Nar.[2] A July 2022 account described another joint command room, called the “Hornets’ Nest,” as coordinating operations and training among units associated with PIJ, Fatah, and Hamas.[1] In November 2022, an assessment found that pressure from Israeli and PA security forces had weakened the Jenin group and reduced its activity, even as its example continued to influence young people elsewhere.[10]

A major Israeli operation in Jenin in early July 2023 lasted two days and was the largest conducted there since the Second Intifada.[11] Israeli forces targeted command infrastructure used by the Jenin Battalion and other armed factions.[6] The operation came after escalating armed activity in the area; a roadside bomb two weeks earlier had wounded seven Israeli personnel.[6]

At the opening of the July operation, Israeli forces struck a shared war room used by several armed groups, including the Jenin Battalion.[6] The IDF and Shin Bet described the facility as an observation post, gathering place, weapons-and-bombs cache, and communications center.[6] The Jenin Battalion’s al-Quds Brigades formation claimed that its members fired on Israeli troops during the fighting.[6] The IDF estimated that approximately 300 gunmen had been in the refugee camp and said most had left during the operation; that estimate concerned the camp’s gunmen collectively, not a confirmed battalion membership count.[12]

A contemporaneous report recorded the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s preliminary figures of four Palestinians killed and 27 wounded, seven seriously, at that stage of the operation.[13] In a separate account, Tikvah Ideas described an operation involving airstrikes and ground forces in which eleven guerrillas were killed and bomb-making workshops, weapons caches, and three headquarters were destroyed.[14] After the July operation, the PA deployed additional security forces in Jenin and other northern areas but did not extend its operations into the refugee camp.[15]

On November 29, 2023, Israeli security forces killed Mohammed Zubeidi in Jenin.[3] A joint security-forces statement identified him as the commander of PIJ’s Jenin Battalion and alleged that he had participated in shooting attacks, dispatched attackers, and provided transportation.[3] The operation also resulted in the arrest of 17 wanted people and the seizure of weapons and military equipment.[3]

A review of incidents recorded between March 31, 2022, and June 13, 2024, attributed the majority of attacks against Israeli targets in its incident-mapping tally to Katibat Jenin, identified there as PIJ’s Jenin branch.[16] That finding concerned the project’s recorded incidents and did not supply a total number of attacks attributed to the group in the cited passage.[16]

PA security forces began operating against the Jenin Battalion and other armed groups in the refugee camp in early December 2024.[5] Their stated objective was to restore security and stability.[17] The forces claimed control of several locations, including the brigade’s central command room, and demanded that members surrender their weapons or face arrest and prosecution.[18]

During the campaign, Palestinian media identified Yazid Jaysa, also rendered Ja’aysa, as a PIJ-affiliated Jenin Brigade commander killed by PA security forces.[19][17] PIJ had not immediately confirmed the initial report of his death.[19] Hamas condemned the PA operation, while PIJ called for protests.[19] A commander affiliated with Hamas separately claimed in a video statement that the brigade had proposed solutions that the Authority rejected.[17]

The PA campaign ended in an agreement that did not provide for disarmament, and subsequent Israeli military action interrupted the PA operation.[5] PA forces had confined armed operatives to the camp and continued pursuing them during Israeli operations.[5] Israel launched Operation Iron Wall in Jenin on January 21, 2025, targeting PIJ, Hamas, al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and other armed groups.[20] PA security-service spokesperson Anwar Rajab said the preceding PA campaign, Operation Protect the Homeland, had produced 247 arrests and the dismantling of 17 car bombs; these were his reported figures rather than independently established totals.[20]

Reports placed the formation at several dozen operatives organized in cells and coordinated through shared command facilities.[4][6] Broader reporting on emergent Jenin and Nablus armed groups described them as lacking a clear hierarchy.[21] Some individuals were assessed as presenting themselves as battalion members while operating independently.[9]

The membership combined young recruits with varied factional backgrounds.[8] Recruitment drew on local connections, while broader reporting placed members of emergent groups from their teens through their late twenties.[4][21] In June 2023, Jenin governor Akram Rajoub described the brigade as a joint formation of the military wings of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, and the Popular Front, and claimed that it included hundreds of activists.[7] His description also identified Khaled Asa’asa, who had been killed, as an al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades fighter within the Jenin Brigade.[7]

Joint command facilities were a prominent feature of the network’s cooperation with other factions.[1][6] Accounts of the July 2023 operation describe a shared site used for observation, communications, storing weapons and explosives, and assembling armed operatives.[6] These facilities served several groups, rather than being described solely as the property of the Jenin Battalion.[6]

Weapons procurement appears in both members’ statements and accounts of outside assistance.[8][22] In an October 2022 interview with six masked brigade members, a leader said the group purchased weapons on the black market using money it raised itself.[22] The same account recorded an IDF denial that senior Israeli commanders were involved in weapons sales.[22] Other reporting described some weapons as independently purchased and others as supplied by PIJ.[1]

JNS reported that the Jenin Battalion received millions of shekels in funding from PIJ, Hamas, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.[3] A separate account suggested that much of the funding for Jenin fighters came from Iran, while local groups retained responsibility for operational planning and implementation.[8] It identified stolen Israeli weapons resold through criminal networks, smuggling across the Jordanian border, and local improvisation as possible sources of weaponry.[8]

The wider environment of recruitment included PA weakness, socioeconomic difficulties, access to weapons, and Israeli actions, all identified as possible drivers of increased Palestinian armed activity rather than established causes specific to the brigade.[8] An estimate that Iranian funding could enable some fighters to receive $300–$700 monthly related to fighters in an area of chronic unemployment, not a verified Jenin Brigades salary schedule.[8]

PIJ secretary-general Ziyad al-Nakhaleh presented the Jenin model as one he hoped would spread to other Palestinian cities, while Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri praised battlefield cooperation among factions.[23] Senior PIJ figure Khaled al-Batash called the formation of local battalions “a genuine miracle and a great achievement” in remarks made in May 2022.[9] These statements demonstrate the value that faction leaders publicly attached to local, cross-factional armed organization.[9][23]

The Jenin group was a more established formation than Nablus’s Lion’s Den by November 2022, and its armed ethos continued to influence some young people despite security pressure that had reduced its activity.[10] Videos circulated on TikTok helped armed groups using names including the Jenin Brigade gain confidence and popularity among Palestinians in northern areas.[11]

The network’s relationship with the PA also extended beyond opposition to Israeli forces.[18][22] A brigade leader publicly criticized the Authority and urged its leadership to join armed resistance, while the December 2024 security campaign brought PA forces into direct confrontation with the group.[18][22]

The principal uncertainty concerns what the different names encompass. Accounts variously describe a PIJ branch or a cross-factional umbrella.[2][7] Other reporting uses “Jenin Brigade” for locally organized armed groups, many of which were described as lacking formal affiliation with Hamas or PIJ.[11] The available material does not establish a consistent formal distinction between “Jenin Brigade,” “Jenin Battalion,” and “Jenin Brigades,” or resolve whether the formation represented a new organization or a rebranding of PIJ’s existing presence.[2]

Membership estimates and formal command arrangements remain dependent on reported assessments rather than a verified organizational record.[9] Claims concerning Iranian funding and weapons assistance are likewise presented as reported accounts rather than independently established findings.[8][3] Attack claims issued by the Hizam al-Nar operations room were not all independently verified, and figures concerning all armed groups in the refugee camp should not be treated as figures for the Jenin Brigades alone.[2][12]