[News] The armed revolt: Why Israel cannot crush the Resistance in Palestine

[Anti-Imperialist News]

english.palinfo.com
<https://english.palinfo.com/articles/2023/7/2/The-armed-revolt-Why-Israel-cannot-crush-the-Resistance-in-Palestine>
The armed revolt: Why Israel cannot crush the Resistance in Palestine
By Ramzy Baroud - July 2, 2023
------------------------------
Numbers can be dehumanizing. However, when placed in their proper context,
they help to illuminate wider issues and answer urgent questions, such as
why is Occupied Palestine at the threshold of a major revolt. And why
Israel cannot crush Palestinian resistance no matter how hard, or
violently, it tries.

That is when numbers become relevant. Since the start of this year, nearly
200 Palestinians have been killed in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza. Among
them are 27 children.

If one is to imagine a heat map correlating the towns, villages and refugee
camps of the Palestinian victims to the ongoing armed rebellion, one will
immediately spot direct connections. Gaza, Jenin and Nablus, for example,
paid the heaviest price for Israeli violence, making them the regions that
resist most.

Unsurprisingly, Palestinian refugees have historically been at the
forefront of the Palestinian liberation movement, turning refugee camps
such as Jenin, Balata, Aqabat Jabr, Jabaliya, Nuseirat and others, into hot
spots of popular and armed resistance. The harder Israel attempts to crush
Palestinian resistance, the greater the Palestinian reaction is.

Take Jenin as an example. The rebellious refugee camp has never ceased its
resistance to the Israeli occupation since the famous battle and subsequent
Israeli massacre of April 2002. The resistance continued there in all of
its forms, despite the fact that many of the fighters who defended the camp
against the Israeli invasion of the Second Palestinian Uprising, or
Intifada, were killed or imprisoned.

Now that a new generation has taken over, Israel is at it again. Military
incursions of Jenin by Israel have become a routine, resulting in a
mounting number of casualties, though at a price for Israel itself.

The most notable and violent of these incursions was on 26 January, when
the Israeli army invaded the camp, killed ten Palestinians and wounded over
twenty others.

More Palestinians continue to be killed as Israeli raids become more
frequent. And the more recurrent the raids, the tougher the resistance,
which has swelled beyond the confines of Jenin itself, to nearby illegal
Jewish settlements, military checkpoints and so on. It is common knowledge
that many of the Palestinians who Israel accuses of carrying out operations
against its soldiers and settlers come from Jenin.

Israelis may want to think of their violence in Palestine as self-defense.
But that is simply inaccurate. A military occupier, whether in Palestine –
or anywhere else, for that matter – cannot, by strict legal definition, be
in a state of self-defense. The latter concept only applies to sovereign
nations that attempt to defend against threats at or within their
internationally recognized borders.

Not only is Israel defined by the international community and law as an
'Occupying Power', but it is also legally obligated to "ensure that the
civilian population is protected against all acts of violence," as a
statement by the Secretary-General of the United Nations stated on 20 June.

The statement was a reference to the killing of eight Palestinians in
Jenin, a day earlier. The victims included two children, Sadil Ghassan
Turkman, 14, and Ahmed Saqr, 15. Needless to say, Israel is not invested in
the 'protection' of these and other Palestinian children. It is the entity
that is doing the harm.

But since the UN and others within the international community are content
with the issuing of statements – 'reminding Israel' of its responsibility,
expressing 'deep concerns' about the situation or, in the case of
Washington, even blaming Palestinians – what other options do Palestinians
have, but to resist?

The rise of the Lions' Den, the Jenin Brigades, the Nablus Brigades and
many other such groups and brigades, made mostly of poor and poorly armed
Palestinian refugees, is hardly a mystery. One fights when one is
oppressed, humiliated and routinely violated. This role has governed human
relations and conflicts since the very beginning.

But the rise of the Palestinians must be distressing for those who want to
maintain the status quo. One is the Palestinian Authority.

The PA stands to lose much if the Palestinian revolt spreads beyond the
boundaries of the northern West Bank. PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who
enjoys little legitimacy, will have no political role to play. Without such
a role, however artificial, foreign funds will quickly dry, and the party
will be over.

For Israel, the stakes are also high.

The Israeli military under the leadership of Netanyahu's enemy, Defense
Minister, Yoav Gallant, wants to escalate the fight against Palestinians
without repeating the full-scale cities invasion of 2002. But the internal
intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, is becoming keener on a full-scale
crackdown.

Far-right Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, wants to exploit the
violence as a pretense to expand illegal settlements. Another far-right
politician, National Security Minister, Itamar Ben- Gvir, is searching for
a civil war, led by the most violent of Jewish settlers, the very core of
his political constituency.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is struggling with his own
political and legal woes, is trying to give everyone a little of what they
want, but all at once. The paradoxes are a recipe for chaos.

This has resulted in Gallant's reactivation of aerial assassinations of
Palestinian activists, for the first time since the Second Intifada. The
first such strikes took place in the Jalameh region near Jenin on 21 June.

Meanwhile, the Shin Bet is expanding its list of targets. More
assassinations are surely to follow.

Concurrently, Smotrich is already planning a massive expansion of illegal
settlements. And Ben- Gvir is dispatching hordes of settlers to carry out
pogroms in peaceful Palestinian villages. The inferno of Huwwara on 26
February was repeated in Turmus'ayya on 21 June.

Though the US and its Western partners may continue to refrain from
intervening in supposed 'internal Israeli affairs', they should carefully
consider what is taking place in Palestine. This is not business as usual.

The next Intifada in Palestine will be armed, non-factional and popular,
with consequences that are too difficult to gauge.

Though for Palestinians an uprising is a cry against injustice in all its
forms, for the likes of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, violence is a strategy
towards settlement expansion, ethnic cleansing and civil war. Considering
the pogroms of Huwwara and Turmus'ayya, the civil war has already begun.

*- Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of the Palestine Chronicle.
He is the author of five books. His latest is 'These Chains Will Be Broken:
Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons'. Baroud is
a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global
Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC).*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230703/a85aa833/attachment.htm>