Key Developments (Dec 5 – Dec 12)
- 7 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, including 16-year-old Jana Zakarneh in Jenin.
- Israel continues to escalate its West Bank offensive, including a liberal shoot-to-kill policy, overnight raids, and targeted assassinations.
- Raids on Jenin and Jenin refugee camp intensify.
In-Depth
This week formed a continuity with the bloody week that preceded it, marking the persistence of Israel’s escalating offensive in the West Bank during the past few weeks. Almost every day, another Palestinian is martyred by Israeli forces, all aimed at increasing the human cost of resistance. Yet the deepening of this Israeli campaign of repression is a sign of the broadening of Palestinian resistance activity — both armed and unarmed.
Last week, the Palestinian resistance group, the Lions’ Den, commemorated 40 days since the assassination of one of its senior members, Wadee’ Al-Hawah. It was one of the first public appearances for the group ever since Israel had announced its success in neutralizing it during the beginning of last November. In the commemoration, the militants donning their military gear vowed to continue resistance in the face of the intensified extrajudicial assassinations.
But the main focus of this week’s assassinations was on Jenin. Home to the Jenin Brigade — otherwise known as the “Wasps’ Nest” in the Israeli intelligence community — Jenin and its neighboring refugee camp has been on the receiving end of continuous Israeli military incursions. Often these invasions serve the added purpose of creating a diversion for the infiltration of undercover Israeli special operation units, either meant to assassinate targets or arrest wanted resistance fighters. Four of the seven Palestinians killed this week were from Jenin.
Three of these were slain in the same incident — 46-year-old Ata Shalabi was killed on his way to work by Israeli forces during the assassination mission that killed Sidqi Zakarneh and Tareq Damaj, both 29 years old. The fourth Jenin resident to be killed was just this morning, as Israeli forces shot dead 16-year-old Jana Zakarneh during an arrest raid with a bullet to the head on the rooftop of her family home in eastern Jenin.
The onslaught on Jenin has been proceeding silently and without much media fanfare, but the last two weeks have seen a noticeable uptick in the number of assassinations and operations in the city. The Israeli military might be gradually turning up the pressure, but it is clear that Jenin is now firmly in sight of Israel’s counterinsurgency strategy.
But despite the stirrings of the armed groups in Nablus and Jenin, the broadening of Israeli arrests and killings to other geographic areas has been a response to the concomitant broadening of resistance activity. Not all of this resistance activity is armed — though some of it is — but most of it is directed at Israeli military targets.
One of the more notable instances is the killing of Mujahed Najjar Hamed from the village of Silwad on December 7. Hamed’s killing came after a two-day manhunt for the 32-year old “lone wolf” resistance fighter, who was responsible for shooting at an Israeli military base near the illegal settlement of Ofra in the West Bank.
Another important battleground has become the village of Beit Rima in the Ramallah governorate. On December 8, Israeli forces shot and killed 16-year-old Diaa Rimawi, who was gunned down as he ran away from soldiers near the village of Aboud, northwest of his home village of Beit Rima.
This recent death comes a week after Israeli forces killed two brothers from Beit Rima, Jawwad and Thafer Rimawi (22 and 19, respectively), who engaged in clashes with the Israeli army in the nearby village of Kufr Ein by hurling stones and a molotov cocktail at the invading military force. According to eyewitnesses interviewed by Mondoweiss, soldiers were not in danger when they fatally shot both brothers.
Beit Rima and Silwad are not the only places either. In recent weeks, Palestinians across the West Bank have organized themselves into small “battalions” of both armed and unarmed youth, for the purpose of confronting constant Israeli invasions of their villages and homes. Often these battalions are named after martyrs, and some of them engage in some coordinated actions.
One example is the “Night Disturbance Unit” (Wihdat al-Irbak al-Layli in Arabic) in Ramallah and al-Bireh, which has a Telegram channel that publicizes its direct actions. On December 11, for instance, it announced that the “Tamer Kilani Group” had targeted settler vehicles with molotov cocktails, and another message claimed that the Tamer Kilani Group had engaged in a joint operation with “Group of the the Martyr Abdallah Husari” in targeting a settler vehicle that allegedly carried “an occupation officer” near the illegal settlement of Halamish.
These kinds of groups continue to sprout across the West Bank. Not much is known about them, nor about the youth that make up these decentralized groups. But they continue to appear because Israeli army and settler provocation shows no signs of waning.
All the while, the expansion of illegal Israeli colonies continues apace.
Even after the execution of Ammar Mefleh last week at point-blank range by an Israeli border police officer in the town of Huwwara outside of Nablus, settlers continued to invade Huwwara this week, hurling stones at Palestinian cars.
This has been accompanied by an assault on Palestinians and Palestinian properties, including the uprooting of olive trees, a main source of livelihood for many Palestinians. Since the start of the year, more than 9,000 Palestinians have been injured by Israeli forces.
Israeli forces have also demolished more than 817 Palestinian-owned structures this year, making almost 1,000 Palestinians homeless or without a livelihood. While the majority of demolitions were in Jerusalem and Area C of the West Bank, 26 structures were in Areas A and B, ostensibly under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The intensification of violence from settlers and Israeli armed forces continues to place a chokehold on Palestinians. In light of this colonial reality, these kinds of resistance bands, although small in size, will likely continue to materialize across the West Bank.
Important figures
- 224 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers in 2022 across Palestine.
- 166 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem alone
- 490 Palestinians were arrested in November (12 women, 76 children, 242 orders of administrative detention, and 123 arrested in Jerusalem).
