[News] Nidal Khazem: profile of a slain resistance fighter

[Anti-Imperialist News]

mondoweiss.net
<https://mondoweiss.net/2023/03/nidal-khazem-profile-of-a-slain-resistance-fighter/>
Nidal Khazem: profile of a slain resistance fighter
By Mariam Barghouti - March 19, 2023

*On March 16, Nidal Khazem was assassinated by Israeli special forces
alongside his comrade Yousef Shreim. Mondoweiss spoke with Khazem in
October 2022 in Jenin refugee camp. This is his story.*
------------------------------
[image: image.png]
Mourners carry the body of Nidal Khazem, killed in an Israeli assassination
raid earlier in the day, Jenin, March 16, 2023. (Photo: APA Images)

On Thursday, March 16, an undercover Israeli special forces team from
the Duvdevan
Unit
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/special-forces-units-earn-commendations-over-months-long-west-bank-operation/>
dressed in civilian clothing entered Jenin in two civilian cars on an
assassination mission. The targets were two Palestinian resistance fighters
from the Jenin Brigade
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/11/inside-the-wasps-nest-the-rise-of-the-jenin-brigade/>,
the armed umbrella group based in Jenin refugee camp that has been at the
forefront of the revival of armed resistance across the West Bank since
early 2022.

The two fighters were Nidal Khazem, 28, and Yousef Shreim, 29.

At 3 p.m., Khazem and Shreim were reportedly both riding a motorcycle
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-death-squad-kills-four-jenin>
on Abu Bakr Street in Jenin when the Israeli force fired on them without
warning, shooting one in the head and the other in the back. A 14-year-old
boy in the line of fire, Omar Awadin, was also shot dead
<https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli_special_forces_shoot_kill_palestinian_boy_riding_his_bike_in_jenin>
while riding his bicycle.

A harrowing video
<https://twitter.com/ShehabAgency/status/1636382238693793792> shows a clip
of Khazem lying prone on the ground as one of the Israeli assassins leans
over him and fires another bullet
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-03-16/ty-article/.premium/four-palestinians-killed-during-israeli-army-raid-in-west-bank/00000186-eac7-d719-a1ce-eff781390000?lts=1679159786233>
into his head to confirm the kill.

As the Israeli unit withdrew, Palestinians attempted to chase after and
rush the car, at which point the Israeli operatives opened fire on the
crowd, fatally wounding 37-year-old Luai Zughayyar and injuring 20 others,
including four who remain in critical condition, according to the
Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Nidal Khazem was a prominent member of the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing
of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), while Yousef Shreim was a commander
in the local Jenin refugee camp branch of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam
Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas.

“Nidal was the first one to confront the Israeli army,” a statement on the
Telegram channel of Jenin’s Al-Qassam Brigades said. “Nidal was
dramatically hurting the occupation.”

On October 26 of last year, Nidal Khazem spoke with *Mondoweiss *just
outside Jenin refugee camp. This is his testimony.
Nidal Khazem (Photo: Jenin Qassam Brigades Telegram Channel) *From
mechatronics engineer to resistance fighter*

Khazem’s factional background was multifaceted, but he clearly identified
with the PIJ as an armed resistance group. He occupied a central role in
the Jenin Brigade but also headed an armed battalion known as *Quwwat
al-Bahaa’*, or the Bahaa’ Force, named after Bahaa’ Abu al-Ata, the slain
commander of the Al-Quds Brigades in the northern Gaza Strip (assassinated
by an Israeli airstrike in November 2019).

Before becoming a fighter, Khazem had studied mechatronics engineering.
Although he was out of practice, he understood English during the interview
but insisted on having all questions repeated to him in Arabic, perhaps as
a matter of principle.

At the time of the interview, Khazem was, somewhat surprisingly, the only
resistance fighter who didn’t mind using his real name in public. “You can
use my name,” he told me and another international journalist as we stood
just outside Jenin refugee camp, an Israeli military drone hovering above
us from a distance.  It was 3:00 a.m. on October 26, 2022.

“I have no problem with using my name because we’re defending ourselves,”
Khazem explained.

Five years of Khazem’s short life were spent inside Israeli prisons, with
almost half of them spent in administrative detention without charge or
trial. Khazem was most recently released from administrative detention in
May 2021, and it was then that he joined the armed struggle.
[image: image.png]
Nidal Khazem. (Photo: Social Media)

Despite his large frame and imposing gait, the young man stood tall and
confident but was not deliberately intimidating. Clad in black attire and
sneakers, he was joined by two other junior fighters who kept watch around
the perimeter in case of undercover Israeli special forces or a sudden army
raid.

“When the armed resistance first started, [Israel] first tried arrests to
stifle [the wave of resistance],” Khazem told *Mondoweiss. “*When that
failed, they moved to assassinations.”

Those assassinations drove more and more youth towards armed confrontation,
including Khazem. “When they would kill five,” he said, “the next day, they
would face 25 [new fighters].”

His facial features remained consistent and unchanging as he explained the
motivation of the camp’s youth to pick up the struggle after the death of
their friends. When asked what drove him to bear arms, it became clear that
it was both a conscious choice and an act born of necessity.

“They come here and kill our friends,” he said. “They killed both my
cousins. They assault women. They continue their incursions into Al-Aqsa,
and they…” Khazem fell silent for a moment as though the weight of it all
was suddenly felt at once. Then he continued: “When they killed my cousin,
I and five other fighters joined [the armed resistance].”

That cousin was Raad Khazem
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/04/he-returned-to-jaffa-and-died/>, a
28-year-old resident of the camp who carried out a shooting operation in
April 2022 on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, killing three Israelis and
evading capture for hours in the middle of the city before he was finally
gunned down. Khazem’s attack was one of the first “lone wolf” operations in
2022 to be used by the Israeli army as a pretext to launch Operation Break
the Wave
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/12/a-year-of-resistance-and-repression-a-timeline-of-operation-break-the-wave/>,
which had already been set in motion a month earlier. As part of that
military onslaught, the Israeli army also killed Raad’s brother, Abdul
Rahman Khazem
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/09/israel-kills-four-palestinians-in-jenin-as-break-the-wave-onslaught-continues/>,
in September 2022.
[image: image.png]
>From left to right: Nidal Khazem, Adham Mabrouka, Mateen Dabaya, and Farouq
Salameh. (Photo: Social Media)

That wave of resistance, which had started in Jenin as early back as the
Unity Intifada of 2021 <https://mondoweiss.net/tag/unity-intifada/>,
quickly spread to Nablus, and by February, the Israeli army was already
assassinating armed youth from the Old City. Nidal Khazem had often gone to
Nablus to join in on the armed resistance there too. Images released on
social media by friends, family, and comrades of Khazem show the young man
with Farouq Salameh, 28, who was assassinated on November 3, 2022
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/11/in-a-bloody-24-hours-four-palestinians-killed-by-israeli-forces/>,
Mateen Dabaya, 20, who was killed on October 14, 2022
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/10/what-is-happening-in-the-west-bank-right-now-a-full-breakdown/>,
and Adham Mabrouka, 26, one of the co-founders of the Lions’ Den who
was assassinated
with two other comrades on February 8, 2022
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/02/israeli-forces-kill-2-palestinian-teens-in-24-hours-5-palestinians-in-a-week/>
.

Nidal chose to join the Islamic Jihad due to his impression of the group as
uninterested in seeking power or gaining social status. Rather, he believed
that the PIJ was in the honest pursuit of liberation. “There is nothing
else,” he said.

“PIJ is not after money or position, you know…unlike Hamas!” he laughed
with a wink directed at a man standing next to him, who was known to be
affiliated with Hamas — the Jenin Brigade encapsulated a variety of
fighters from different factions, fighting together when necessary, and
separately when carrying out independent offensives.

“The PIJ has a goal, which is to struggle and liberate Palestine,” he said.
“Honestly, I love the PIJ, and I love the Jenin Brigade, but in the end…we
fight because we must.”
*The social base of the resistance*

During an interview with *Mondoweiss* on October 25, 2022, a resistance
fighter with the Lions’ Den
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/11/the-story-of-the-lions-den/> in Nablus,
going by the *nom de guerre* Abu Bashir, voiced frustration that a small
handful of young resistance fighters were saddled with the sole
responsibility of fighting. “Why should fifty of us carry the burden of a
nation?” he said.

Nidal Khazem’s own reflections during my interview with him earlier in the
same month seemed to be more understanding of the supposed state of popular
inertia among Palestinians. “The people are helping,” he acknowledged.

Mulling on his statement, he also commented on the feelings of isolation he
and his comrades often felt. This was only confounded by the fact that
Israel’s systematic policy of collective punishment was aimed at turning
people against the resistance and implanting fear within Palestinian
communities.

Again, Nidal seemed to know this all too well. “We don’t ask for help from
people,” he clarified. “The [Palestinian] population is generally weakened,
so we draw on each others’ strengths, and we draw on the strength of the
camp.”

At the same time, Khazem was not blind to the reality on the ground. “All
these Palestinians killed and all the battles that take place — these are
the atmospheres of an intifada.”

In such circumstances, Israeli forces make it clear that anyone with any
kind of association with resistance fighters will be treated as an enemy
and punished accordingly, whether through arrests or punitive home
demolitions. It is no wonder that some would choose to distance themselves
from the armed youth in spite of the massive popular sympathy they enjoy.

“Some people move away from the hunted men because they’re scared,” Khazem
said. “Some people take resistance fighters into their homes and give them
refuge, but some also say, ‘please don’t come here, please.’ And this is
because Israel punishes them,” he explained.

The punishments of those who are friends with or related to resistance
fighters are most often in the form of arrests and home demolitions, but
broader forms of collective punishment of the entire population are also
common. “Look at Jalama checkpoint,” Khazem offers an example. “Why do
[Israeli forces] keep it closed now? They do it to obstruct the merchants
and their shops, they want to turn the situation against us.”

“They want to wear people down economically, emotionally — at every level,”
he continued to explain. “And yet, those very same people, the people who
are [drained]…they still tell us to keep going, to resist.”

“Our goal is to have all of Palestine liberated, but what we’ve done as a
small group is an achievement.” When I asked him whether he imagines
freedom, his answer was swift. “Yes, god willing. Look at the camp. The
camp is a liberated area.”

His observation wasn’t wrong. There is a reason why he was eventually
assassinated in Jenin *city* — that is, outside of the refugee camp and far
from the guerilla haven he and his comrades had carved for themselves and
their community. “But as the Jenin Brigade,” he qualified. “We can’t
liberate Palestine.”

That is when I asked him how he expected to move from liberating the camp —
by preventing the near-daily Israeli incursions — to liberating the whole
of Palestine.

“The people must wake up, no one is awake,” he answered. Taking a moment
away from the conversation, Khazem looked at the drone drawing nearer to
where we stood. Responding to whether or not he was afraid of Israeli
special forces assassinating him, he replied calmly and firmly: “Not at
all. We are waiting for them.”
[image: image.png]
Mourners carry the bodies of Palestinians killed in an Israeli raid earlier
in the day, Jenin, March 16, 2023. (Photo: Ahmed Ibrahim/APA Images) *The
complicity of the Palestinian Authority*

Only a few days after the barbaric assassination of Nidal Khazem, the
Palestinian Authority (PA) met with Israeli, American, Jordanian, and
Egyptian security representatives in the Egyptian city of Sharm El-Sheikh
on March 19, the second meeting of its kind since the Aqaba Summit in late
February. The purpose of these meetings is to stop the bourgeoning armed
resistance movement in the West Bank, which has evolved well beyond the
influence and control of the PA.

This evolution was not for lack of trying on the PA’s part. Only a few
months ago, in September and October of 2022, the PA attempted to take on
Israel’s role of quelling the armed resistance by arresting several
resistance fighters in Nablus
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/09/pa-arrests-resistance-fighters-in-nablus-many-injured-and-one-man-left-dead-after-clashes/>,
including a Hamas-affiliated Lions’ Den member, Musab Shtayyeh.

The PA also tried to bribe the fighters off the streets, offering them promises
of amnesty
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/11/west-bank-dispatch-martyrs-lone-wolves-and-underground-lions/>
for having taken up arms and a permanent position in the PA security
forces, in addition to monetary incentives.

Nidal Khazem was one of the many fighters the PA failed to persuade. “The
PA tried to quell us, they offered us many things, even offered them to
me,” he told *Mondoweiss*. Then, with a degree of pride, he said: “but I
refused. I chose a path, and I have stuck to it ever since.”

More often than not, the PA repression campaign turned from the carrot to
the stick. As early as 2021, the PA first began its escalation against the
armed presence in the camp at the behest of Israeli security officials.
According to Khazem, the campaign to target fighters by the PA lasted for
at least six months.

“The PA took us on, and they arrested some four young boys, but it couldn’t
do anything,” Khazem explained. “That’s when the Israelis started to come
to arrest us.”

“That is also when the [Palestinian resistance] operations outside the camp
started, including shooting at military checkpoints,” he continued.

After refusing to turn himself in to the PA, Khazem himself became one of
their targets in the camp. “They tried to shoot at me twice in the last
year and a half,” he told *Mondoweiss. *

In the wake of Nidal Khazem’s assassination, his father, Amin Khazem, wrote
a post on social media directed at the PA’s commander in Jenin.

I write with the knowledge that such headquarters only work in the service
and maintenance of the security of the occupation.
Amin Khazem, father of Nidal Khazem

“As for what is referred to as the headquarters of the so-called
Palestinian security [forces],” Amin wrote, “I will not forget that the
detainment of my son was at the top of you and your boss’s priorities.”

The bereaved father went on to emphasize the role of the PA in crushing
Palestinian hopes of deterring Israel’s ongoing killing sprees, settler
violence, and land confiscation. “I write with the knowledge that such
headquarters only work in the service and maintenance of the security of
the occupation,” Amin stated.
[image: image.png]
Funeral of Omar Awadin, Nidal Khazem, Yousef Shreim, and Luai Zughayyar
(Photo: Social Media) *Inheriting a world not theirs*

If the armed youth are afforded their banality and flaws, it becomes
compulsory to concede that many are heartsick and wearied by loss, even if
they maintain their determination to fight, whether by rifle or by stone.

In doing so, the movement they created became less about the individual
fighters and more about the ideas of change they encapsulated, taking on a
life of their own well beyond their death.

“Ibrahim is an idea, and ideas don’t die,” a comrade of the slain Ibrahim
al-Nabulsi told *Mondoweiss, *on the commemoration of what would have
been al-Nabulsi’s
19th birthday
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/10/ibrahim-al-nabulsi-turns-19-in-the-grave/>.

As Palestinian youth scramble to secure what little arms they can, they
have drawn attention and visibility, making them targets of Israeli
assassination missions. They slowly organized themselves into groups and
ultimately had no choice but to look out for one another because they had
no one else to protect them.

They became symbols — for their enemies and loved ones — but they remain
neither outlaws nor saints. Like most young people navigating the world,
they are youth who have come to recognize the distinction between the world
they inherited and the world they want to see. They had the courage to
revolt against that world and change it, even if only incrementally.
------------------------------

*Mariam Barghouti*
Mariam Barghouti is the Senior Palestine Correspondent for Mondoweiss.
------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230320/f9959247/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 1177313 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230320/f9959247/attachment.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 1533108 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230320/f9959247/attachment-0001.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 1041858 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230320/f9959247/attachment-0002.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 356909 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230320/f9959247/attachment-0003.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 1018994 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20230320/f9959247/attachment-0004.png>