[News] The Israeli plot to pit the West Bank resistance against the PA

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 The Israeli plot to pit the West Bank resistance against the PA

In a bid to undermine resistance groups in the occupied West Bank, Israel
is strategically targeting key individuals to incite discord between armed
factions and the Palestinian Authority, intensifying an already volatile
situation marked by unprecedented violence and political maneuvering.

Robert Inlakesh <https://thecradle.co/authors/robert-inlakesh>

JUN 14, 2024 -
https://thecradle.co/articles/the-israeli-plot-to-pit-the-west-bank-resistance-against-the-pa
Photo Credit: The Cradle

After failing to destroy resistance factions in the occupied West Bank, *The
Cradle* has learned that Israeli forces plan to target specific
individuals to create tensions between the armed groups and the Palestinian
Authority (PA).

This effort includes an alleged meeting held in Tel Aviv between Hussein
al-Sheikh, head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) ’s executive
committee, and Major General Ghasan Alyan, head of Israel’s Coordinator of
Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).

The Tel Aviv trip by Sheikh, the man favored by Israel to lead the PA once
President Mahmoud Abbas retires, was organized to discuss methods of
“de-escalating tensions and allowing West Bank workers to travel into
Israeli territory for work,” according to an anonymous source in his office.

*The rise of West Bank resistance*

Over 530 Palestinians
<https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/we-are-appalled-ferocious-escalation-violence-ongoing-west-bank>
have been killed in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, making the past
eight months the most violent period there since the Second Intifada.
Although the Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood was formally staged in the
Gaza Strip, the fighting in the northern West Bank has now coalesced into
what can be called a second Palestinian front against the Israeli military.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, there have also been quantitative jumps
in the complexity of ambushes and the effectiveness of explosive charges
manufactured by resistance groups in the West Bank.

Many of the West Bank’s armed resistance groups,
<https://thecradle.co/articles-id/2790> as we know them today, formed in
the wake of the events of May 2021, when Hamas led its 11-day ’Sword of
Jerusalem’ battle against the Israeli military. Simultaneously, the concept
of the ‘Unity of Fronts,’ or ‘Unity of the Squares
<https://www.palestinechronicle.com/joint-room-and-unity-of-the-squares-what-will-the-next-israeli-war-on-gaza-look-like/>,’
emerged in defense of Al-Aqsa Mosque across occupied Palestine, and the
‘Joint Operations Room of Resistance Factions’ was established.

Initially consisting of only a few dozen young armed men from the Jenin
Refugee Camp, by September of that year, a group
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKEdxHEQz00&rco=1&ab_channel=Mondoweiss>organized
by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)’s armed wing, the Quds Brigades, would
officially declare themselves the Jenin Brigade.
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKEdxHEQz00&rco=1&ab_channel=Mondoweiss>

What was interesting about the Jenin Brigade was that despite being led by
PIJ, it also included members from the Fatah-aligned Al-Aqsa Martyrs
Brigades, along with members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP), Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP),
and Hamas armed wings.

Israel’s knee-jerk response was to raid Jenin and kill both fighters and
civilians, triggering conflict even more broadly. In February 2022, Israeli
special forces carried out a reckless daytime assassination
<https://www.972mag.com/west-bank-assassination-palestinians/> of three
Palestinians traveling in a civilian car in Nablus, who were later
identified as members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

On 31 March 2022, after several “lone-wolf” attacks against Israelis that
left 19 dead
<https://www.israelhayom.com/2022/08/04/operation-breakwater-reins-in-terrorism-in-judea-and-samaria/>,
the military announced “Operation Break the Wave
<https://jewishcurrents.org/israels-raids-on-palestinian-cities-an-explainer>”
in the West Bank. This operation would begin with arrest campaigns,
focusing clearly on the areas where the newly formed resistance groups
emerged, which had begun expanding beyond the area of Jenin by that time.

The operation, formulated from an earlier Israeli strategy to combat hundreds
of lone-wolf attacks
<https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/10/4/palestine-2015-attacks-triggered-new-path-of-resistance>
between October 2015 and early 2016, inflicted mass civilian casualties and
only succeeded at encouraging the growth of the armed resistance groups.

According to local Nablus-based journalist Ahmad al-Bazz, the Israeli
military’s violence played a large role in fueling armed struggle in his
city and would later give birth to the Lions’ Den
<https://thecradle.co/articles-id/2454> armed faction, formally announced
in the Old City of Nablus in October 2022.

Another influencing factor was the assassination of 19-year-old Ibrahim
Nabulsi
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/08/how-ibrahim-al-nabulsi-became-the-lion-of-nablus/>,
who valiantly fought to the death when cornered by an Israeli special
forces team that August.

In early 2023, when it had become apparent that Palestinian armed
resistance groups were effectively taking control of areas like the Jenin
Refugee Camp and the Old City of Nablus, US security coordinator Michael
Fenzel proposed a “security plan
<https://www.axios.com/2023/02/01/blinken-abbas-palestinian-authority-jenin-nablus>”
to the PA.

The proposal, dubbed the “Fenzel Plan,” was reportedly accepted by the PA
and included the US-backed formation of a special PA force to counter the
armed groups and retake security control in the northern West Bank.

*Israel’s divide and rule strategy*

While this was underway, Tel Aviv was already working on implementing its
own divide-and-rule strategy to sow chaos between Palestinians in the West
Bank. Younis Tirawi, a reporter known on social media for his intimate
knowledge of the PA and Palestinian armed groups in the West Bank, tells *The
Cradle* that Israel had already begun arresting PA officers involved with
the resistance back in November 2022.

Then, in the summertime [2023], they arrested a Palestinian intelligence
officer who was coordinating on the ground between the PIJ and Fatah groups.

According to two PA sources who wish to remain unnamed, the Fenzel Plan has
now been effectively forgotten and won’t proceed, allegedly due to the
Ramallah-based PA’s strained relationship with Washington.

Although it is impossible to confirm whether this information is fully
accurate, there have been no known developments regarding the creation of a
PA-specialized anti-resistance force.

*The PA’s complicated relationship with the resistance*

The Palestinian resistance groups in the West Bank may fight under the same
banners in many cases but have varying relations and predicaments with the
PA throughout the territory. In Jenin, for instance, many of the fighters
belonging to Jenin Brigade were the sons of high-ranking PA-linked figures,
like Fathi Khazem
<https://mondoweiss.net/2022/10/why-israel-fears-fathi-khazem-the-latest-symbol-of-palestinian-resistance/>,
while many others were actually PA Security Force (PASF
<https://thecradle.co/articles-id/1014>) officers who had chosen the path
of armed resistance.

In early 2023, the interconnectivity between the PASF and Jenin Brigade was
such that a direct line of communication via handheld radios allowed for
continuous coordination when needed. It appears the Israelis caught on to
this and cracked down, as the obvious ties between the resistance and local
PA forces made it difficult to characterize the fighters as bandits or
outlaws seeking to violently challenge the PA’s security control. As Tirawi
describes the scene at the time:

During the second invasion of Jenin, after the beginning of the Gaza war,
they arrested all the Fatah members who were dual fighters and [PA]
security officers who were not going to work, and people who were part of
al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. That was the main point when they began arresting
senior figures coordinating between armed groups and the Palestinian
Authority. There is always going to be tensions in any place or any city
where there are [two armed forces] because you are taking away the
Palestinian Authority’s influence and their ability to enforce the law in
the area.

Tirawi gives the example of the Tulkarem Brigade
<https://mondoweiss.net/2023/08/west-bank-dispatch-the-tulkarem-brigade-resists/>,
which finds itself in a different predicament than Jenin and operates in an
area with greater tensions with the PA. He explained that fighters often
conceal their identities, and the PA forces there cannot distinguish
between fighters and criminal elements.

This is especially the case, he says, when it comes to issues of weapons
transfers into the city, and can often cause confusion in a setting where
the PASF is tasked with managing security there.

There are, however, blatant examples, especially in Tulkarem, of PA forces
outrageously opening fire upon resistance fighters and confiscating their
weapons from them.

A source from Tulkarem, speaking with *The Cradle* on the condition of
anonymity, reveals that the financing and ammunition that supplies Al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades there reach these fighters through the PIJ’s armed wing in
the city.

This information matched what local journalists from Nablus and Tulkarem
had also come to understand, further demonstrating the interconnectivity
between the resistance factions.

*PA’s stance on PIJ and Hamas*

Last year, a group emerged from Tulkarem’s Nour Shams refugee camp, calling
itself Jund Allah and stating it was independent of any political party.
However, after a number of their fighters were killed during Israeli
incursions into the camp, this group later evolved into a small Qassam
Brigades (armed wing of Hamas) aligned group.

While the PA will allow PIJ-aligned fighters to exist, they have little
tolerance for anyone belonging to Hamas. According to the same source, once
it was understood that the PIJ was aiding Hamas-aligned fighters in
Tulkarem, this caused further friction with the PA.

On 6 November, Israel decided to assassinate
<https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-30/hamas-gaining-popularity-in-west-bank-after-october-attack/103162566>
the 24-year-old leader of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Tulkarem, named Jihad
Ishhadeh, whose father is a Brigadier General in the PA’s security forces
and is known to be friendly toward PA President Mahmoud Abbas. This is
again an example of the Israeli occupation forces specifically going after
fighters who maintain strong connections with the ruling PA.

*The Nablus Equation*

When the group known as the Lions’ Den emerged from the Old City of Nablus,
it was a major cause for concern in both the PA and Israeli security
establishments. Having witnessed the power that the Jenin Brigade had
generated and the fact that they were able to openly hold military parades
in Jenin City, the fear arose that this could soon be the case in Nablus
and that it could lead to resistance fighters emulating this model in other
cities too.

Nablus, unlike Jenin, is surrounded by Israeli settlements and military
sites that are more open to armed attacks. The Lions’ Den emerged as a
group that managed to command enormous support throughout occupied
Palestine and even into the refugee camps in Lebanon. Formed of young
fighters from a range of Palestinian factions, it formed alliances with
other resistance groups in the surrounding refugee camps, like Balata camp.

It didn’t take the Israeli military long to begin carrying out
assassinations and large-scale attacks in attempts to break up the Lions’
Den. For instance, Tamir al-Kilani, one of the founding members of the
Lions’ Den and a member of the PFLP’s armed wing, the Martyr Abu Ali
Mustafa Brigades, was murdered
<https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-west-bank-israel-tel-aviv-militant-groups-24341764f8d3440844e6413173e7c2f0>
in an Israeli booby-trapped motorbike explosion.

Many of the Lions’ Den’s leading members, affiliated with the PIJ movement,
were also killed
<https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-collaborator-conflict-west-bank-18889d636e2cfde18a57fca33530e6d8>
during various invasions of Nablus, while the PA arrested and imprisoned
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220920-pa-arrests-a-resistance-fighter-wanted-by-the-resistance/>
Musab Shtayyeh, the most prominent Hamas member who helped lead the group.

This left a much less diverse crowd of fighters to lead the Lions’ Den, who
were commanded by Oday al-Azizi. Unlike Hamas members, some
Fatah-affiliated fighters are given the option to remain under PA detention
temporarily, avoiding assassination and arrest by the Israeli occupation
forces.

Azizi, who is married to a woman from a prominent family loyal to PA
President Abbas, is also a PA security officer himself and has worked to
manage the relationship between the PA and the Lions’ Den for some time.

However, the Lions’ Den gradually saw its power decline and was left
isolated due to its difficult predicament. The US Biden administration has
just recently targeted the group with sanctions
<https://www.reuters.com/world/us-imposes-sanctions-palestinian-group-lions-den-over-west-bank-violence-2024-06-06/>for
its participation in armed activities in the West Bank, but it now plays a
marginal role, if any.

While Tirawi informs *The Cradle* that “it is already over … the main
structure has been dismantled,” two anonymous sources affiliated with West
Bank resistance groups say that it has reduced in power and is not really
present, as other armed groups are currently resisting Israeli incursions
into Nablus instead of it.

Despite Israeli attempts to disband the resistance groups throughout the
West Bank and to sever their ties to local PA elements to encourage
internecine fighting, the groups persist.

Whether they will expand their operations in the near future is contingent
on their ability to navigate their way through a complicated environment,
evading persecution from the PASF and the Israeli military while
implementing more sophisticated tactics and developing greater weapons
capabilities.
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