The Israeli campaign to quash armed resistance in the West Bank continues to intensify. However, a new generation of fighters says they will continue to resist due to the reality of living under occupation.
Two Palestinians were shot and killed by Israeli forces in separate events in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israeli forces shot and killed 20-year-old Aref Lahlouh was shot and killed near the city of Qalqilya in the West Bank, claiming that he attempted to stab soldiers. 17-year-old Mohammad Ali was killed during confrontations in the Shu’fat refugee camp.
“The New York Times” realized it had to report the year-end casualty statistics for Palestinians in the West Bank, the highest toll since 2005.
So it looked for a way to shift attention away from the major perpetrators — the Israeli military and Jewish settler/colonists — and put it on the Palestinians.
In the last two days Israeli forces have killed five Palestinians, including three resistance fighters.
On Thursday, December 8, Israeli forces invaded various towns in the Jenin governorate, north of Jerusalem, killing Atta Shalabi, 46, Sidqi Zakarneh, 29, and Tareq Al-Damaj, 29. The day before on Wednesday Mujahed Najjar Hamed, 32, was shot and killed on after a days-long manhunt for the resistance fighter, who is from the village of Silwad.
An eyewitness described the Jenin killings as “a true massacre” to local reporters.
House progressives press the Biden administration over Israel’s discriminatory travel restrictions and warn against granting the country a visa waiver.
This week Israeli President Isaac Herzog was welcomed to The White House. The meeting with Biden comes just a week before Israelis head to the polls and less than a two weeks before the U.S. midterms.
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.
A draconian set of rules and restrictions on the entry of foreigners into the occupied West Bank have gone into effect today, despite months of condemnations by rights groups and legal efforts to stop the restrictions from being enforced.
“It of course comes down to demographic considerations,” Israeli attorney Yotam Ben Hillel explains. “These new restrictions will completely isolate Palestinian society.”
We are currently seeing an unprecedented moment of Palestinian resistance across the West Bank. It’s too early to tell where events will lead — whether it’s the historic turning point or the last gasp of protest before something even worse — but what’s certain is that Palestinians are on the precipice of returning to a state of refusal, if not full-fledged resistance, to the settler-colonial reality some would have them ignore. The current moment will ultimately be decided by militant mass support and the expansion of resistance activity to the rest of the West Bank.
An Israeli siege of Shu’fat refugee camp in the West Bank is entering its third day as Israel conducts a manhunt to capture a Palestinian resistance fighter who killed an Israeli soldier this past weekend. Residents of the camp are running low on basic needs and supplies, including necessary medical resources, while the death toll across Palestine continues to rise. In response, the Nablus-based armed resistance group Areen al-Usud has called for strikes across the West Bank in solidarity with Shu’fat and nearby Anata, which is also facing restrictions.