Over the past three years, the West Bank has witnessed a significant escalation in protests and resistance in the face of mounting settlement, land confiscation and Judaization, carried out by the occupation army and by Fascist settlers’ gangs. Despite all attempts to calm the situation and marginalize the question of Palestine, the Palestinian struggle assumed a more intense form both politically and in terms of security. The occupation regime was in a political assault mode, whose principal slogan was to erase all legitimate Palestinian rights. The program presented by the Netanyahu-Ben Gvir government stated the following: “The Jewish People has an exclusive and inalienable right throughout the land of Israel.” The government pledged to encourage and expand settlement in all regions of the land of Israel: in the Galilee, the Naqab, the Julan Heights and in Judaea and Samaria (The occupied West Bank).[1] The so-called “Deal of the Century” which the Netanyahu government had finessed in partnership with the Trump administration which considered the settlements legitimate and a united Jerusalem as “the capital of Israel,” and totally ignored the question of the Palestinian refugees.
The occupation government intended to finalize its control of the West Bank by annexing more than 60% of its area, called Area C, and to demolish any remnants of a future Palestinian state or any political prospect of enhancing any Palestinian regime on Palestinian land. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated that the ultimate objective of Netanyahu and the extremist duo of Ben Gvir and Smotrich was to empty the West Bank completely from its Palestinian inhabitants and to “cleanse” the Temple Mount from those who pray therein and annex its grounds.[2] Intent upon full control over the West Bank, the government ordered two detachments of the army’s Commando Division stationed on the borders of Gaza to move to the West Bank a mere two days before October 7, where they were deployed in Hawwara and on roads leading to the city of Nablus. [3]
The impotence of the Palestinian Authority
Faced with Israel’s unprecedented onslaught, the Palestinian Authority (hereinafter PA) and the PLO continued to spout the same tired language and adopt utterly inane policies, such as submitting complaints to the ICJ and the ICC, and calling upon the US Administration, the EU and the UN to intervene and issue resolutions. That policy, however, had been helpless to stop or prevent the creeping settlement incursions and the facts on the ground daily created by the occupation. At the heart of any relationship between citizens and government lies the issue of defending these citizens. Once this is not the case, the confidence of citizens in government begins to shake and totter and the national pact, or delegation of authority, begins to fragment. The PA and PLO lacked any sensitivity towards the mood of the public and of the rising generations to the point where it could be argued that they were invisible in a scene replete with radical change and interventions and the creation of colonialist facts on the ground. Their absence from the scene allowed the occupation regime to rid the PA of all its authority and faced it with a choice: either become a tool of occupation in confronting its own people or else face collapse and be replaced by a pliant authority that does the occupation’s bidding. The Netanyahu government adopted these two alternatives simultaneously.
The phenomenon of individual resistance
Two factors contributed to the rise and growth of spontaneous individual resistance. The first is the seizure of land and water by the occupation regime, the daily humiliation of citizens, the closing of all doors and windows before any political solution that might end the occupation, the intense efforts exerted to bend the people’s will and dismiss all its national aspirations, insulting its national symbols, and the encouragement given to Fascist gangs like “Hilltop Youth” and “Price Tag” to commit violent crimes. The second factor is the impotence of the PA, PLO and Opposition, in varying degrees, which created a huge national vacuum. These two factors contributed to the growth of spontaneous acts of individual resistance carried out by tens, indeed hundreds, of young men and women from outside the ranks of youth parties and movements. These acts began with running over soldiers in cars, stabbings and to a lesser degree use of firearms, in addition to Molotov cocktails, stone throwing and directly confronting all assaults by the army of occupation on Palestinian towns and refugee camps. At center stage was a spontaneous reaction that turned into a resistance joined by a new generation of radicalized youth with an average age below twenty, and unknown to the Israeli security services. This phenomenon lasted from the end of 2014 until 2017, leaving its imprint on a new generation of Palestinians.
The persistence of this type of resistance, rising and falling across the years, confirms the birth and spreading of this phenomenon. In this regard, the various factions of the resistance began to work to create a front of armed resistance in the West Bank in an effort to organize these individual acts and proceed to creating a well-disciplined resistance to emulate the resistance in the Gaza Strip. It started with the Jenin Brigade then spread to Nablus (“The Den of Lions”) then to the Balata Brigade, Tulkarm, Qalqiliya and several other towns and camps, including the `Aqabat Jabr camp in Jericho. The youth responded in large numbers to induction in the resistance movement, in tandem with the state of public opinion which had lost all faith in the possibility of a political solution and its chief advocate, the PA. This was especially so since the escalating colonialist projects, fortified by murders, arrests and humiliations, left little doubt in most people’s minds, and particularly among the youth, that the failure of the Oslo Accords necessitated the search for other nationalist paths and for reasons to do with dignity and the most basic human rights, and other reasons to do with the economic crisis. This change in Palestinian public opinion was confirmed by a poll carried out in the West Bank and Gaza in the period between September 6-9, 2023, by the Palestinian Center for Policy Studies and Survey Research [4] which concluded the following:
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76% of those polled stated that the chances for creating an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel in the coming five years are slim or negligible.
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58% support the resort to armed resistance and an Intifada to break the current stalemate.
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53% support armed action as a way of ending the occupation versus 20% who support negotiations.
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45% support the creation of armed groups in the targeted areas to confront settler terrorism.
On the ground, the period between 2021 and October 7, 2023, witnessed an escalation in violence, so resistance became more widespread, and the occupation regime intensified its repression through murder, detention, home demolitions and collective punishments.
The Netanyahu government strove to entrench the concept of ending the conflict once and for all by destroying all legitimate Palestinian rights. This in turn convinced the vast majority of Palestinians to look for an alternative path. The various factions settled upon the option of resistance, and the resistance itself was transformed from individual acts to the kind of resistance that emulated the experiences of resistance in Gaza. However, that transformation neglected to answer the following two questions: (1) Can armed resistance be adopted as the principal kind of struggle given the conditions and resources available or likely to become so? (2) Have political goals been set within the larger strategy of resistance, such as stopping or slowing the settler onslaught, ending ethnic cleansing, ensuring a certain degree of protection to Palestinian civilians, and terminating collective punishment? More specifically, how can one carry out armed resistance, public or semi-public, within an Israeli security fist that mans hundreds of barricades and armed gates, sundering the West Bank in fragments; one that controls all resources, energy, communications, and movement? This is all part of a colonialist system of domination that works without cease to tear apart what holds the Palestinian people together, to oppress them, and to control their behavior and standards of living. Israel is the foremost country in the world to have “mastered the art” of dominating another population and controlling them through a network of varied and huge barriers[5], within a tight security grip, through an information bank, and through complete control over resources, the economy and labor. Hence, how can one avoid an Israeli response free from all restraint?
The West Bank does not enjoy the advantages of Gaza under siege, whether in possession of underground tunnels protecting the fighters and their infrastructure from Israeli devastation or the freedom to carry out training in order to build up capabilities and skills. All facts on the ground indicate that the conditions and prerequisites for adopting armed struggle as the principal type of resistance are not available since the armed Intifada of the year 2000 demonstrated that these prerequisites were lacking. Thus, Israel was able to successfully carry out its military onslaught of the year 2002 and destroy the structure of resistance in the West Bank. The same may be said for the experience of armed and unequal confrontation, e.g. the attacks and wars waged on Gaza, which did not serve the interests of liberating the Palestinian people. In these conflicts, the Palestinian losses were massive, the least of which was the destruction of infrastructures. Each time these conflicts would end with the imposing of conditions and further oppression and constrictions. In this latest Israeli onslaught, and in response to the Tufan al-Aqsa operation, the occupation regime is currently destroying Palestinian society, its infrastructures and its institutions, turning the Gaza Strip into an uninhabitable piece of land, and the population into one that may be expelled by force or willingly, thus accomplishing a military occupation which satisfies obvious colonialist greed.
According to international law, resistance of all kinds is a legitimate right of all peoples under occupation. But is resistance appropriate, and does it fulfill its purpose, if it is adopted as the principal means of struggle or just as one form of defensive struggle? Can resistance be in the open and dominate the camps and towns of the West Bank without being exposed to savage Israeli reprisals that lead to liquidating the struggle through murders, detentions, and destruction of space, as happened with the armed resistance of the year 2000? There can be no alternative to resistance while a colonialist and exclusionary occupation exists, a resistance which encompasses broad sectors of the population, attracts the support of a wide spectrum of allies and friends, acquires legitimacy, achieves political and moral ends and gains, and turns Israel’s occupation into a burden upon it. The Palestinian people possesses the encouraging example of the 1987 Intifada, and the equally encouraging Jerusalem and Shaykh Jarrah uprisings, but also possesses the armed al-Aqsa Intifada which is not encouraging. The success or failure of any kind of struggle, measured as to whether it brings liberation nearer or drives it away, is the criterion determining its suitability for a people struggling to be free. The Palestinian people have lost all faith in negotiations as a policy once it was it was seen to be used as a veil to conceal the entrenchment of the occupation, of the illegal settlements and of colonialist domination.
The post-October 7 period
Since October 7, and Israel’s declaration of total war on Gaza, protests and acts of resistance swept the West Bank. All points of contact became points of confrontation with the forces of occupation, and demonstrations were held in city centers in support of Gaza. The occupation regime had already increased its assaults, detentions and storming of cities and refugee camps in the northern areas of the West Bank even before October 7, forcing the occupation to withdraw some troops from the Gaza Envelope and to deploy them in those northern areas. In tandem with the genocidal war on Gaza, the army of occupation stepped up its campaign to physically eliminate resistance leaders in the West Bank, including the partial destruction of infrastructures in the refugee camps of Jenin, Nur Shams, and Balata.
According to international and Palestinian statistics, and from October 7, 2023 up until February 29, 2024, this campaign waged by the occupation regime and by Fascist settler gangs has resulted in the following: 406 have been martyred, including 103 under the age of 18; 14 citizens have been murdered by fascist settler gangs; 4,000 have been wounded of whom 593 are below the age of 18; and 7270 were detained, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club, half of whom remained in prison, bringing the total number of prisoners to 9,000. Some administrative detainees were recently released because of prison overcrowding, and some detention orders previously planned on the eve of the month of Ramadan were cancelled for the same reason. 848 householders were turned homeless when their houses were demolished, divided between Bedouins and farmers. Settler gangs carried out a total of 595 assaults on Palestinians and their properties and 10 new and illegal settlements were built on Palestinian lands.[6] The Netanyahu government recently decided to build 3400 housing units in the West Bank settlements, and Ben Gvir distributed 30,000 weapons, and demanded and received permission to change the rules for opening fire. Thus, acts of violence increased by 50%. On the other hand, more than ten soldiers and settlers were killed, and double that number were injured. Resistance fighters carried out more than 100 acts of resistance such as opening fire, setting off explosive devices, throwing Molotov cocktails, and confronting Israeli onslaughts.
Israel’s targeting of open resistance became ever more savage and deadly and many resistance fighters were neutralized through murder or unprecedented detentions, alongside collective punishments which were inflicted on whole regions, families, and relatives. Regarding this policy of genocide, Minister of Defense Yoav Galant declared: “Whoever is, or is suspected to be a saboteur [mukharrib], or is about to become one, must be pursued, apprehended, and eliminated.”[7] This systematic repression resulted in decreasing the emergent state of armed resistance and its open or semi open centers in the camps and towns, resulting in a decline in acts of resistance and a move towards secret actions and individual operations.
Escalation and what it led to
As the forces of occupation were bogged down in Gaza and unable to exercise control over it, and this despite the massive destruction, acts of genocide and policy of starvation that threaten 2.3 million people, and with the coming of the month of Ramadan, a report issued by Israel’s security agency stated that there is a high probability of a collapse in security in the West Bank and doubted that this could be stopped. The report was based on an increase in incidents involving opening fire by a ratio of 80% in the West Bank and Jerusalem in the past year,
and more than 500 security incidents in 2024.[8]
Likewise, the Wall Street Journal reported Israeli fears that the month of Ramadan would increase tensions in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Minister Ben Gvir had already submitted a highly provocative plan for the entry of worshippers from the West Bank and the 1948 territories into al-Aqsa Mosque in Ramadan, in an attempt by him and other extremists to set off a wide conflagration in the West Bank. This plan, however, was rejected by the head of SHABAK and other security officials who warned of the dangers of the imposition of restrictions proposed by Ben Gvir. The war cabinet yielded to the recommendations of the security chiefs and to US, European and Arab pressure by, first, withdrawing authority over al-Aqsa mosque from Ben Gvir and, secondly, by allowing worshippers entry into al-Aqsa in the first week of Ramadan, 2024, in numbers equal to what these had been in previous years. However, the situation would be assessed on a weekly basis and regulated accordingly, in an attempt to defuse tensions.
Al-Aqsa Mosque and the city of Jerusalem has long been a flash point in confrontations between the Palestinians and the occupation regime and “Temple Mount” fundamentalist Jews. In most earlier uprisings and intifadas religion was a factor in igniting them especially since religious ideology is the bedrock of the Israeli narrative that justifies Israel’s colonialist onslaught and its seizure of what it calls the “Biblical Land of Israel” and the “Promised Land.” The turning in Israeli society towards the religious and nationalist right has transformed Israel from a secular to a “theocratic” state and this allows Palestinian lands to be expropriated and Palestinians to be savagely treated. On the other hand, Palestinian society has resorted to religion to face that imminent threat. While the occupation regime conceals its colonialist ambitions under a religious veil which justifies its seizure of land and lends this a religious legitimacy as an alternative to legitimacy in international law, the Palestinian people resorts to religion hoping thereby to gain the support of Muslim nations and states as it strives to protect its rights and its religious symbols. Noticeable in this regard is how Israel practices policies that date back to the Middle Ages such as turning religious sites from one religion to another as happened decades ago with the Ibrahimi sanctuary in al-Khalil and is now happening with the al-Aqsa mosque. Attempts are being made by Israel to gain a footing therein prior to exercising full power over it, in defiance of moral norms in this modern age that are based upon the peaceful coexistence of religions and cultures, the complementarity of civilizations and reciprocal recognition and respect.
The religious factor may well be the spark that lights a conflagration even when the preconditions for this are lacking and without any calculation of loss, as is predicted to happen at present. A popular Palestinian uprising in the West Bank could take place as a reaction to Israeli violations of religious symbols or to the escalating genocide and starvation in Gaza. But such an uprising is unlikely to last or turn into a third Intifada since it lacks the backing of an administrative and political structure made up of political organizations, trade unions, and popular unions and committees that transform a spontaneous popular eruption into regular resistance activity. Furthermore, given the unprecedented economic strangulation of Palestine, there are no financial resources, local or foreign, to uphold such an uprising, and not enough political support, regional or international, that renders such uprisings or protests legitimate. Nor is there enough support from institutions, individuals, politicians and academics from inside Israel’s occupation society. To be noted, therefore, is the fact these prerequisites are currently lacking and are not being pursued, especially since political movements advocating a third intifada are being savagely repressed and because of the overwhelming attention paid to military action and mobilizing the widest spectrum of the population. These prerequisites had at a minimum been present during the first intifada, and this allowed it to last for a long time and to achieve important objectives.
A spontaneous popular uprising and eruption could occur, together with individual reactions to the brutal repression and violations of individual and collective rights practiced for a long time by the occupation regime. These reactions may or may not last for a longer or shorter period, disappearing and reappearing, as took place in the phenomenon of stabbing, overrunning, and firing by individuals. There is a basic difference between, on the one hand, a spontaneous uprising and violent individual reactions, isolated or lacking an overall plan, and under the mercy of a colonialist regime expert in the game of repression, siege and destruction and possessing extensive data and experience; and, on the other hand, a presumptive role played by political organizations or perhaps trade unions and social movements that carefully weigh losses and gains. According to Frederick Engels in his The Peasant War in Germany [1850] the fate of an uprising depends upon “parity and alliance” especially when political organization is about to transform a spontaneous popular uprising into organized activity capable of lasting and developing, and one which achieves minor goals yet might become more significant as the struggle proceeds.
If we focus here on the balance of power, the struggle of the Palestinian people against Israel’s colonialist and exclusionary regime and fortified by a religious ideology and by limitless US, western and international support, means that any progress in the Palestinian struggle will be scored by “points” and not by “knockout” or by a major confrontation. It is only natural that such progress will be slow and long-lasting and will depend upon involving all or most Palestinian society in the struggle. The real achievement of the 1987 Intifada was its success in neutralizing the Israeli war machine by reducing it to its barest minimum. This very skillful tactic enabled most of the population to join the struggle, and that intifada succeeded in limiting the losses of society. The leaders of the intifada managed to present themselves to the world as an unarmed people demanding freedom in the face of an army brimming with weapons. The Palestinians achieved a great deal when nations, states and organizations stood by them and supported their demands, rejecting continued occupation and the suppression of their right to self-determination.
The genocidal war in Gaza and the threat of extermination in the West Bank constitute a real danger to the people of Palestine and to the system of laws, moral standards and rights which govern relations among peoples and states in times of war. International order and its organizations collapsed when parts of it colluded with aggression and other parts were unable to stop it. The task of protecting the Palestinian people from both dangers and of restoring credibility to the system of laws, morality and rights moved from the international order and became espoused by peoples and organizations that respect these principles. The real question that needs to be answered now is this: How can the Palestinian people unite around the task of foiling genocide in Gaza and foiling extermination in the West Bank?
[1] "نتنياهو يعرض برنامج الحكومة الإسرائيلية الجديدة.. أولوياتها التوسع الاستيطاني في الضفة الغربية"، "يورونيوز"، 28/12/2022.
[2] "أولمرت: حكومة نتنياهو عصابة وهدفها قيادة المنطقة نحو الكارثة"، "الجزيرة نت"، 23/2/2024.
[3] "الكشف عن تفاصيل إضافية حول استخبارات الجيش الإسرائيلي قبل 7 أكتوبر، واستشارات قبل ساعات من هجوم حماس"، "تايمز أوف إسرائيل"، 5/12/2023.
[4] المركز الفلسطيني للبحوث السياسية والمسحية، "نتائج استطلاع الرأي العام الفلسطيني رقم 89"، 6-9 أيلول/ سبتمبر 2023.
[5] وليد حباس، "عن منظومة الحواجز العسكرية والمعابر في الضفة الغربية.. عددها، أنواعها ووظائفها!"، مدار - المركز الفلسطيني للدراسات الإسرائيلية، 10/10/2022.
[6] هشام حدانة، "الضفة الغربية: هذه جرائم الاحتلال منذ 7 أكتوبر"، "العربي الجديد"، 4/3/2024.
[7] "غالانت: حماس تحاول تحويل ʾرمضانʿ إلى المرحلة الثانية من ʾطوفان الأقصىʿ"، وكالة "سما" الإخبارية، 27/2/2024.
[8] المصدر نفسه.