On April 3, 2002, Israeli forces attacked the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank as part of what it named Operation Defensive Shield, which was the largest military mobilization in the West Bank since the War of 1967. The Israeli military framed the invasion of the camp as a defensive measure against suspected militants, a response to six suicide bombings inside Israel in the two prior weeks that claimed 56 lives and injured hundreds. Allegations of a massacre in Jenin spread immediately after the operation. International media sources estimated casualties in the first days approaching the hundreds, and the final casualty numbers remain in dispute, hovering between 48 to 56 Palestinians, including civilians, and 23 to 33 Israeli soldiers. Some Jenin camp residents still claim 200 Palestinians were killed. Israel broke international law during the invasion; Amnesty International reported that the Israeli military blocked humanitarian assistance to the camp and denied the Palestinian wounded medical assistance, and that the operation left 3,000 Palestinians homeless. Human Rights Watch criticized the Israeli military for destroying over 35 percent of the refugee camp. For Palestinians, the attack on the Jenin refugee camp quickly became an important symbol of Israel’s oppression, while Israelis cite it as an example of baseless massacre allegations. See Gresh, Alain and Dominique Vidal. The New A-Z of the Middle East. New York: IB Tauris, 2004; Kumaraswamy, P.R. Historical Dictionary of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Oxford: The Scarecrow Press, 2006; Mattar, Philip, ed. Encyclopedia of the Palestinians. New York: Facts on File, 2005; “Israel and the Occupied Territories Shielded from Scrutiny: IDF violations in Jenin and Nablus.” 4 November 2002. Amnesty International. 26 September 2011. http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE15/143/2002; and “Jenin: IDF Military Operations.” Human Rights Watch. May 2002. 31 October 2011. http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/israel3/.  http://www.justvision.org/glossary/jenin-invasionincursion-marchapril-2002