Key Developments (Jan 3 – Jan 9)
- Adam Ayyad, 15, was shot and killed during an army raid on the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem.
- Amer Abu Zaytoun, 16, was shot and killed during an army raid on the Balata refugee camp in Nablus.
- A Palestinian teenager sustained critical injuries after being shot in the head by Israeli forces during a raid on the Aqabat Jaber refugee camp in Jericho.
- At least four Palestinian homes were destroyed in Masafer Yatta, after Israeli authorities announced they will be expediting the forcible transfer of over 1,000 Palestinians in the area.
- Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, and ordered Israeli police to ban the Palestinian flag from public spaces.
In Depth
Last week was much like the one before it — two martyrs, escalations from the new Israeli government, and the continuation of the attack against Palestinian society that has been ongoing since the past year. But Operation Break the Wave has also unfolded alongside the overall program of Zionist erasure of Palestinian existence. While Palestinian refugee camps and havens of armed resistance continue to be raided, and as the trail of martyrs extends into the present, the less immediately lethal but no less supremacist practices of Zionist colonialism have been brought to the fore this week.
This was when we were reminded that the essence of the Zionist encounter with the Palestinian people hasn’t changed much since the early days of the Yishuv, best encapsulated by Jabotinsky’s infamously prescient Zionist screed, The Iron Wall:
“Zionist colonization must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population — behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.”
We were reminded of the reality that the “iron wall” policy has wrought this week, as the unchecked Zionist colonization of Palestine continues apace, first with the announcement that the Israeli army would expedite the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills, and secondly with yesterday’s announcement that National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir would ban the Palestinian flag from public display.
Old history continues to play out into the present. As Zionist colonization expresses the rapacious need to expand ever outwards, and as the native population rebels and further develops its national identity, the war against the natives becomes a war against native culture itself. This is what the flag ban means.
It also isn’t the first time the flag has been censored. During the “Military Government” and “Civil Administration” periods between 1967 and 1993, not only was the flag outlawed, but any combination of colors that made up the national banner was considered illicit and punishable by up to 3 years in prison. This was especially enforced during the First Intifada of 1987.
During the Oslo era, the Palestinian flag was reappropriated by the Palestinian Authority (PA), and it was mounted atop PA office buildings — monuments to Palestinian capitulation and surrender — as the sigil of the new normal of defeat. The flag’s subversive qualities were diluted for a time, but its ability to rally and restore unity, to bring together Palestinians across the geographic and colonial demarcations that sought to divide them — as with the Unity Intifada of 2021 — rehabilitated the semiotics of national liberation that the flag embodied. It was a threat all over again.
Perhaps this is what drove the Knesset to pass a bill banning the flag in all public institutions back in June 2022. Now Ben-Gvir’s move renews the attack.
But where the endless Zionist onslaught continues, perhaps it would be best to be reminded of an important historical fact — culled from Jabotinsky’s own words:
“Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized.”
Important figures
- 4 Palestinians killed in 2023
- 173 Palestinians killed in West Bank and East Jerusalem alone in 2022
