Key developments (August 29 – 31)
On Wednesday night, the armed resistance in Nablus appeared to make a comeback after successfully detonating an IED that injured four Israeli soldiers in direct response to an Israeli army raid on the eastern part of Nablus. The purpose of the military invasion was to secure the entry of Israeli settlers to Joseph’s Tomb, which has been a regular flashpoint over the past two years as resistance fighters have targeted settlers’ repeated invasions of the area. Since the start of the year, the presence of the armed resistance in Nablus has dwindled, during which time Israel claimed victory against the Lions’ Den and announced that the resistance in Nablus had been put down. The events of Wednesday night indicate that the victory claimed by the Israeli security apparatus may not be as total as it made it out to be. At 11:10 p.m. on Wednesday, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades-Nablus announced over Telegram that its fighters were waging a defensive battle against the invading military force in eastern Nablus, and that it had detonated several explosives and fired a hail of bullets on the encroaching force. At around the same time, the Al-Quds Brigades-Nablus also made an announcement to the same effect, announcing that its fighters”in the engineering unit” had detonated IEDs against Israeli military vehicles on Amman Street. Plumes of smoke could be seen from where the blast had taken place, causing the injury of the four soldiers, who were evacuated to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva. Clashes continued through the night. By the early morning hours of Thursday, the Al-Quds Brigades-Nablus formally claimed credit for the IED, while a source in the Lions’ Den told Aljazeera that the IED had been planted by one of its members, Ayed al-Qani, who had died earlier in the same day from the accidental detonation of another explosive device that killed the resistance fighter. Over the past two years, resistance groups in Nablus have coalesced under different names and factional affiliations, including the Lions’ Den, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade (the armed wing of Fatah) and the Al-Quds Brigade (the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, often used interchangeably with “the Nablus Brigade” to indicate the local branch of the organization), yet the latter organizations throughout 2022 had mostly been subsumed under the Lions’ Den as a cross-factional organization. The renewed prominence of these organizations, appearing under a factional affiliation, indicates that the leadership of armed resistance organizations such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, most of them based in Gaza, are more forcefully asserting their role in fomenting armed resistance in the West Bank.
On Wednesday morning, August 30, Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian teenager in East Jerusalem near Damascus gate. The boy was identified as Khaled Za’anin, 14, from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina. According to Wafa, Za’anin had been accosted by Israeli settlers, who called police officers to the scene, upon which the officers fired on the youth. The Israeli media has alleged that Za’anin was carrying out a stabbing attempt. Later, Israeli forces stormed his family home and ransacked the house and arrested Za’anin’s mother, father, sister, and brother, while violently turning away mourners that had come to the house to offer condolences. Hamas put out a statement hailing Za’anin as a “martyred fighter” who “ascended after a heroic stabbing operation.”
On the morning of August 31, a Palestinian man conducted a ramming operation at the Maccabim checkpoint outside the settlement of Modiin, killing one Israeli soldier and injuring six others. According to Wafa, the man who carried out the operation was Dawoud Abdul Razzaq Dars, a 41-year-old father of five from the village of Deir Ammar. According to an initial investigation by the Israeli army, Dars had allegedly commandeered a truck that was not his and rammed it into a group of off-duty soldiers who were walking to a bus station. Dars then reportedly escaped with the truck in the direction of the Hashmonaim checkpoint, where Israeli soldiers caught up to him and shot him dead. Clashes broke out later in the day in Deir Ammar refugee camp with Israeli army forces. Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem released a statement hailing the ramming operation, citing the acts of the “revolutionary youth” as conveying “a clear message that there will be no security for the occupiers as long as they continue to occupy our land and violate our sanctities.” Qassem also provided an assessment of the state of resistance in the West Bank as confirming “the increasing presence and influence of the resistance, while the occupation remains incapable of stopping it,” referencing not only the prevalence of recent “lone wolf” operations but also the persistence of the armed resistance in Nablus: “The ability of the resistance to transition from a defensive stance, as seen in Nablus last night, to an offensive one, as witnessed this morning west of Ramallah, surprises the Zionist enemy with unexpected strikes.”
