President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority made his first visit in years to Jenin, the battle-scarred and impoverished Palestinian city in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that was the target of a two-day raid by the Israeli military last week.
Jenin is within the roughly 40 percent of the West Bank that has been nominally administered by the Palestinian Authority since the 1990s, when Israeli and Palestinian leaders signed diplomatic agreements, known as the Oslo Accords, that increased Palestinian autonomy within some parts of the territories that Israel captured during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
But in recent years, areas of Jenin and other parts of the northern West Bank have become dominated instead by Palestinian militias that reject Mr. Abbas’s leadership and conduct frequent attacks on Israelis.
As a result, the Israeli Army has increased its raids on the city and the wider region, like the one last week that killed at least 12 Palestinians.
Mr. Abbas’s inability to prevent those raids has further dented his popularity among Palestinians, making it even harder for him to assert his authority over the city.
Persons:
Mahmoud Abbas, Abbas’s
Organizations:
Palestinian Authority, West Bank, Oslo Accords, Israeli Army
Locations:
Jenin, Palestinian, Oslo, Israel, West