By ISABEL DEBRE Associated Press
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JENIN, West Bank (AP) — Last month, after the biggest Israeli military raid on a Palestinian refugee camp in the occupied West Bank in years, Palestinians turned their wrath on their own security forces.

They unleashed gunfire, firebombs and pipe bombs at Palestinian security buildings in an outpouring of rage against the Palestinian Authority’s failure to protect them from the devastating July 3 raid and a long-running, deeply unpopular security alliance with Israel.

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“The horrible events of that night reminded us of the lead-up to the Hamas coup in Gaza,” the head of police in Jenin, Brig. Gen. Azzam Jebara, said at a ceremony this week for officers who defended a police station from rampaging protesters. “It was a warning.”

Scarred by the Hamas militant group’s violent takeover of Gaza from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ forces in 2007, the Palestinian Authority has cooperated with Israel to suppress Islamist militant groups and keep the secular nationalist Fatah party in power in the West Bank. Hamas is both a major threat to Israel and the biggest rival to Fatah.

The July unrest exposed Palestinians’ seething resentment toward their semi-autonomous government and forced a reckoning for their beaten-down security forces, who in their blue camouflage uniforms have come to embody the tensions tearing at Palestinian society. Widely derided for working with Israel, the forces remain a symbol of Palestinian hopes for statehood.

Seeking to regain trust during a lull in Israeli military raids, Palestinian police have stepped up a campaign to restore order in the city of Jenin, long a bastion of crime adjacent to the militarized refugee camp.

But the force’s efforts to seize cars, cash and drugs have also revealed their limits. Unable to protect their people from radical Jewish settler attacks and near-daily Israeli military raids across the West Bank, Palestinian security forces described a law enforcement system on the brink of collapse.

“If we think we’re establishing control now, we’re fooling ourselves,” said Ibrahim Abahre, deputy head of Preventive Security, a domestic intelligence agency, in Jenin. “At any moment, the Israeli army could enter and everything could explode.”

Since the spring of last year, militants from the Jenin refugee camp, where Palestinian forces have lost control, have carried out dozens of shooting attacks in the West Bank and Israel. Israeli soldiers have repeatedly raided the camp to kill and capture suspected militants.

On July 3, Israeli special forces entered the camp under the cover of drone strikes, killing 12 Palestinians, at least eight of them militants, wounding dozens and leaving a trail of destruction. An Israeli soldier was also killed in the operation, which recalled one of the biggest battles of the second Palestinian uprising over 20 years ago.

Nearly 180 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire across the West Bank in 2023, almost half of them affiliated with militant groups. according to a tally by The Associated Press.