Key Developments (Nov 14 – 21)
- Palestinian teen killed after carrying out “lone wolf” stabbing and ramming operations in the industrial zone of Ariel settlement, killing 3 Israeli settlers.
- The Lions’ Den continues to confront the Israeli army, appears to go underground.
- 18-year-old Palestinian killed in Jenin after an Israeli invasion during a search-and-arrest raid.
In-Depth
Last week began with a “lone wolf” stabbing and ramming attack carried out by 18-year-old Muhammad Murad Souf that left 3 Israeli settlers dead in the Ariel industrial zone. The week ended with the Israeli army’s incursion into Jenin in search of a Palestinian resistance fighter on the morning of November 21, during which soldiers shot and killed Palestinian youth Mahmoud al-Saadi during clashes with the army. This week was also notable for a statement put out by the Nablus-based armed resistance group, the Lions’ Den, indicating that the group has adopted a shift in tactics in confronting the Israeli army.
The operation in Ariel came after two weeks of relative quiet on the resistance front, with little reports of operations — both “lone wolf” and organized armed resistance activity — in the West Bank. Prior to the stabbing attack in the Ariel settlement, the most recent lone-wolf stabbing was on November 3, when a 20-year-old Palestinian university student was killed after stabbing an Israeli policeman in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem. Leading up to the Ariel operation, little had also been heard from the Lions’ Den, who had not released any official statements claiming responsibility for armed operations against the Israeli occupation since November 9.
The past few months have seen the evolution of two dynamics in parallel — the proliferation of “lone wolf” attacks, and the expansion of organized armed resistance groups. Israel has worked hard to eradicate both types of resistance, yet it has had considerably less success in anticipating and preventing the actions of the lone wolves.
Lone wolf operations are fundamentally offensive forms of resistance, and during the past seven years Israel has been largely powerless to prevent them from happening. By definition, lone wolf attacks do not rely upon an extensive network of people, do not require significant resources, and often use knives, pistols, or other crude weapons. They are also often more deadly, happening at point-blank range and with little to no prior planning. Udai al-Tamimi killed Israeli soldier Noah Lazar using only a pistol, and successfully evaded a massive military manhunt for 10 days before he made his last stand, while Muhammad Souf killed three settlers with a knife and a car.
The Israeli response and wide-ranging arrest campaign of anyone in the immediate social circles of those lone wolves has been as hysterical as it is ineffectual. The main reason is because these individual resistance operations have often been carried out spontaneously and independently of any infiltrated or heavily surveilled organizational structure.
On the other hand, the military activity of the armed groups in Nablus in Jenin has largely been defensive, launching shooting operations against nearby Israeli military targets, and shooting at invading Israeli forces and settler invasions near Joseph’s Tomb. The number of recorded casualties in Israeli ranks by those groups have been limited.
The operation carried out by Raad Khazem, killing three Israelis, was unique in that it was a lone wolf attack, but that Khazem also hailed from Jenin refugee camp, and he was a product of the resurgence of the armed presence in Jenin. After Khazem’s operation, Israel announced that it would launch a war against the camp and against bastions of armed resistance in the West Bank, and was an inauguration of Operation Break the Wave in Jenin.
In other words, the most deadly act of the armed resistance groups, and the one that instigated Break the Wave, was a lone wolf attack.
Israel has grown attuned to dealing with organized armed groups, composed of a wide membership that is able to be infiltrated, surveilled, and targeted for liquidation. The armed resistance groups in Nablus and Jenin have been the object of a concerted Israeli counterinsurgency effort, punctuated by targeted assassinations, extensive intelligence-gathering, and broad search-and-arrest operations. One of the largest massive assaults on the Old City of Nablus last October dealt a significant blow to the Lions’ Den, assassinating Wadee al-Hawah, one of the group’s most central leaders, along with several of his comrades. Following Hawah’s assassination, several members of the Lions’ Den handed themselves over to the PA in exchange for alleged amnesty, leaving the fate of the group uncertain.
Overall, this has meant that Israeli counterinsurgency has been able to achieve concrete objectives in its quest to eradicate the infrastructure of the resistance organizations. Although Israel has grown adept at infiltrating and targeting such groups, the brutal Israeli assassination campaign seems to have been partly facilitated by the relatively lax security measures taken by the resistance fighters, most of whom were in their teens and twenties with no formal military training.
But some of this might be changing, as indicated by the Lions’ Den’s recent statement on its Telegram channel.
On November 20, the group announced that on Saturday it had lured an Israeli special forces unit into the Old City of Nablus in its search for “leaders of the [Lions’] Den that are unknown to the general public.” In an apparent ambush set up by the armed group, the Israeli special forces unit was confronted with gunfire and explosives “from three directions,” which according to the Telegram statement caused the army to call in dozens of reinforcements before it retreated. The statement went on to salute “every fighter in the Balata Brigade and our brave factions who participated in this battle.”
But what was most notable about the statement was its indication that the Lions’ Den “is now dealing with the occupier using different tactics.” The statement said:
[The Lions’ Den] has hidden its leadership and its soldiers. The occupation’s information about the Den has been cut off, and neither the occupation nor its collaborators know anything about the Den. We therefore call upon and appeal to all of you not to spread any photo of a resistance fighter on social media, or even in private messages, and to refrain from photographing any resistance fighter.
The statement went on to appeal to the citizenry to cease the use of security cameras. “You do not know what we know of the occupation’s ability to hack these cameras and track the movements of resistance fighters with ease,” the Lions’ Den said.
The statement ended with a promise that the Lions’ Den was alive and well:
“We will fight to the last fighter, the last bullet, the last drop of blood. We will give our lives for your children, our lives for your honor, and we will all die so long as your heads are held high and your flags remain raised.”
Important figures
- 199 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in 2022, 148 from the West Bank
- 6,000 arrests have been recorded since the start of the year
Mondoweiss Highlights
Reflections on a Decade: when a youth movement attempted to redefine Palestinian politics, by Mariam Barghouti
A decade of a hesitant “We”: A homage to friendship, by Abdaljawad Omar
Palestinian girl killed by Israeli soldiers a day before turning 16, by Mariam Barghouti
