While the people of Gaza cheer for resistance in the West Bank and call for armed factions in Gaza to support it, they also fear that escalations with Israel will lead to another war on Gaza.
The next escalation is already here.
It feels very different from previous cycles of resistance and repression, as if Palestine is on the brink of something closer to an uprising.
While the many possible futures of Palestinian resistance remain formless and kaleidoscopic, the colonial constant ensures that resistance will have a future.
The martyrs of Palestine speak to one another in their final acts, emulating the examples of those that came before them, and turning into icons for those that will come after them.
2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in decades. We kept a record of all those who were killed by Israeli state and settler violence. These are their names, faces, and stories.
18-year-old Muhammad Murad Souf was killed Tuesday after carrying out a stabbing near the illegal Ariel settlement in the occupied West Bank that left three Israeli settlers dead.
The raid lasted several hours, during which time Israeli forces surrounded several homes where members of the “Lion’s Den” group were reportedly fighting from.
Two Palestinians were killed over the weekend in the occupied West Bank, including a member of the armed resistance group Areen al-Usud (“The Lion’s Den”) in Nablus, in what the group has called a targeted assassination by Israel.
While Americans and Europeans chat and debate with each other about the nuances of Israeli politics and come up with all sorts of fanciful solutions to “the conflict,” the Israeli government tightens its grip on Palestinians and Palestinians become ever more frustrated, eager for action, and impatient with their leadership and with a world that keeps telling them the time is not yet “ripe” for their rights to be realized.
Perhaps that is why we are seeing such widespread support for armed resistance. Perhaps it’s simply a response to Israel escalating an already violent policy of apartheid. In any case, armed action seems to be moving into a more prominent role in Palestinian resistance and it will be important for supporters of Palestinian rights to be ready to defend those actions wherever we can.
When Palestinians use terminologies not of their own making to describe their experiences, all in the name of gaining legitimacy in the eyes of a white liberal (and sometimes Zionist) audience, they become divorced from their own reality. This includes centering the discourse of international law, the apartheid analogy, and retractions of official Palestinian statements after pressure from the Israel lobby.
Fathi Khazem’s stoicism and defiance of colonial rule has turned him into the symbol of resistance that the Palestinian people need.