This headline in Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Publish solely tells a part of the story: “The Lions’ Den, different Palestinian teams are limitless headache for Israel, PA.”
It’s true that the Israeli authorities and the Palestinian Authority are equally nervous concerning the prospect of the continuing armed revolt within the West Financial institution rising extra widespread and each acknowledge that the newly fashioned Nablus-based brigade the Lions’ Den is on the heart of this youth-led motion.
Nevertheless, the rising armed resistance within the West Financial institution is inflicting greater than a mere “headache” for Tel Aviv and Ramallah. If this phenomenon continues to develop, it may threaten the very existence of the PA, whereas giving Israel its most troublesome alternative because the invasion of main Palestinian cities within the West Financial institution in 2002.
Although Israeli navy commanders proceed to undermine the facility of the newly fashioned group, they appear to have no clear concept concerning its roots, affect or future influence.
In a current interview with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Israeli Protection Minister Benny Gantz claimed that the Lions’ Den is a “group of 30 members,” who will ultimately be reached and eradicated. “We’ll lay our palms on the terrorists,” he declared.
The Lions’ Den, nevertheless, just isn’t an remoted case, however half of a bigger phenomenon that features the Nablus Brigades, the Jenin Brigades and different teams, that are positioned principally within the northern West Financial institution.
The group, together with different armed Palestinian navy items, has been energetic in responding to the killing of Palestinians, together with kids, elders and even a health care provider, Abdullah Abu Al-Teen, who succumbed to his wounds in Jenin final week. In keeping with the Palestinian Ministry of Well being, greater than 170 Palestinians have been killed within the West Financial institution and Gaza because the starting of the yr.
The Palestinian response has included the killings of two Israeli troopers, one in Shuafat on Oct. 8 and the opposite close to Nablus on Oct. 11. Following the previous assault, Israel fully sealed off the Shuafat refugee camp as a type of collective punishment, just like current sieges on Jenin and different Palestinian cities.
Citing Israel’s Hebrew media, the Palestinian Arabic every day Al-Quds reported that the Israeli navy will focus its operations within the coming weeks on focusing on the Lions’ Den. Hundreds extra Israeli occupation troopers are more likely to be deployed within the West Financial institution for the upcoming battle.
It’s troublesome to think about that Israel would mobilize a lot of its military to tackle 30 Palestinian fighters in Nablus. Nevertheless, it isn’t solely Israel that’s terribly involved, however the PA too.
The PA has tried however didn’t entice the fighters by providing them a give up deal, whereby they offer up their arms and be a part of the authority’s official forces. Such offers had been additionally supplied up to now to fighters belonging to Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, with various levels of success.
This time round, the technique didn’t work. The group rejected the PA’s overtures, compelling the Fatah-affiliated governor of Nablus, Ibrahim Ramadan, to assault the moms of the fighters, calling them “deviant” for “sending their sons to commit suicide.” Ramadan’s language, which has similarities to that utilized by Israeli and pro-Israel people of their depiction of Palestinian society, highlights the huge schism between the PA’s political discourse and people of peculiar Palestinians.
Not solely is the PA shedding its grasp of the narrative, however it’s also shedding no matter vestiges of management it has left within the West Financial institution, particularly in Nablus and Jenin. One senior Palestinian official instructed the Media Line that the Palestinian “road doesn’t belief us anymore,” as they “view us as an extension of Israel.” True, however this lack of belief has been within the making for years.
The so-called Unity Intifada of Might 2021 served as a significant turning level within the relationship between the PA and Palestinians. The rise of the Lions’ Den and different Palestinian armed teams is only one manifestation of the dramatic modifications underway within the West Financial institution.
The West Financial institution is altering. There’s a new era that has little or no reminiscence of the Second Intifada of 2000 to 2005 and didn’t expertise the Israeli invasion of that point, however grew up underneath occupation and apartheid, feeding on the reminiscences of the resistance in Jenin, Nablus and Hebron.
Judging by their political discourse, chants and symbols, this era is fed up with the crippling and sometimes superficial divisions of Palestinians amongst factions, ideologies and areas. In truth, the newly established brigades, together with the Lions’ Den, are believed to be multifactional teams that convey collectively, for the primary time, fighters from Hamas, Fatah and others onto a single platform. This explains the favored enthusiasm and lack of suspicion of the brand new fighters amongst peculiar Palestinians.
For instance, Sa’ed Al-Kuni, a Palestinian fighter who was not too long ago killed by Israeli troopers in an ambush on the outskirts of Nablus, was a member of the Lions’ Den. Some have claimed that Al-Kuni was a number one member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and others say he was a well known Hamas fighter. This lack of certainty concerning the political identification of killed fighters is pretty distinctive to Palestinian society, at the very least because the institution of the PA in 1994.
Expectedly, Israel will do what it all the time does: amass extra occupation troops, assault, assassinate, crush protests, and lay siege to rebellious cities and refugee camps. What it fails to grasp, at the very least for now, is that the rising insurrection within the West Financial institution just isn’t generated by just a few fighters in Nablus and some extra in Jenin, however is the end result of a very common sentiment.
In an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth, translated by Al-Quds, an Israeli commander described what he witnessed in Jenin throughout a raid: “Once we enter (Jenin), armed fighters and stone-throwers look ahead to us at each nook. Everybody takes half. You take a look at an previous man … and also you marvel, will he throw stones? And he does. As soon as, I noticed an individual who had nothing to throw. He rushed to his automobile, grabbed a milk carton and he threw it at us.”
Palestinians are merely fed up with the Israeli occupation and with their collaborating management. They’re able to put all of it on the road; in reality, in Jenin and Nablus, they have already got. The approaching weeks and months are important for the way forward for the West Financial institution and for all Palestinians.
