Excerpted from an article by Haggai Huberman in HaTzofeh, Aug. 24, 2001
[Almost three weeks ago, Israeli forces spent a few short hours in the PA-city of Jenin - between Afula and Shechem, in northern Shomron - destroying downtown installations used by PA police and suicide terrorist units. As the Israelis left the city, they were greeted with several rounds of Arab fire; the Israelis did not fire back in order not to hit civilians standing nearby.] Thousands of Jeninites then began to celebrate the \"repulsion\" of the \"Zionist conqueror,\" and a top Arafat aide announced proudly, \"The residents of Jenin have proven that they can stand against the conquering forces and defeat them.\"
This was not the first [or even the second] IDF retreat from Jenin. The first one, in June 1948, could be considered a \'reason for generations to weep\' - for it is the reason that today Jenin is considered part of \"Arab Palestine\" [and not a] genuine city of Israel.
On June 1, 1948, Battalions 21 and 22 of the Carmeli Brigade and Battalion 13 of the Golani Brigade arrived in Jenin, and by the next night had taken over Jenin and the hills to its south. In this way, they essentially saved the Jezreel Valley from Arab attacks from the south. The operation was a great success, and the Arab population in Jenin, as in all the other Arab cities that were liberated by our forces during the War of Independence - ran away...
At this point, it was reasonable to assume that the future of Jenin would have been the same as that of Lod, Ramle, Acco, Haifa, Tiberias, and other cities that today no one objects to calling integral cities of the State of Israel. If we had merited it, Jenin would have been one of these, with a Hebrew name such as Ir Ganim [City of Gardens]...
But the destiny of Jenin was slated to be different. The Israeli Command received intelligence information to the effect that the Iraqis had left the city, and therefore did not correctly evaluate the speed with which the Iraqis would re-organize. Two Iraqi divisions, accompanied by planes and artillery, entered the battle, and the Carmeli Brigade was [badly battered], suffering many dead, wounded, and prisoners... Finally, there was no choice but to redeploy north of the city in order to protect the Jezreel Valley and the Gilboa region. These new positions were later to determine the Green Line ceasefire lines, and Jenin was left to remain in what the left called \"the territories...\" A week later, another Israeli attempt to capture the police station in Jenin failed...
...Here is what former President Ezer Weizman [who served as Air Force Commander, after beginning his military career as a pilot during the War of Independence] had to say, in his book \"To You, the Heavens, To You, the Land:\"
\"I could never tell my cadets and trainees that I was satisfied with the results of our War of Independence. It was definitely an incomplete piece of work, leaving old Jerusalem torn away from the body of Israel, the Gaza Strip stuck like a bone in our throat, and Judea and Samaria stolen from us -- a Land of Israel without the Land of the Bible. I could not make peace with this... I had to analyze why this happened. My conclusion, which was perhaps very painful, but realistic and honest, was that we were not in Jenin not because we did not want to be there, but because they threw us out of there... and the same with Kfar Etzion and other places. There was no reason to hide this, and I felt that the longing to return to these places should be encouraged and nurtured - and should not be suffocated with nonsensical claims that Little Israel is enough...\"