This Year In Occupied Palestine: The Year Of The Lions (30/12/2022)
The new extremist Israeli government is sworn into power at the end of the most deadly year for West Bank Palestinians since the UN began keeping count. What has this year brought for Palestinians?
This year in occupied Palestine has ushered in a new era and birthed a revival of the armed struggle in the West Bank. Whilst the Gaza Strip remains unliveable, since 2020 according to UN experts, the West Bank has suffered the most deaths from Israeli fire since 2005. To conclude the year, Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn in as Israeli Prime Minister for a sixth term, heading a cabinet of extreme right wing fascists.
Ibrahim Nablousi attends the funeral of resistance fighters in Nablus, 24 July 2022. (Credit: Middle East Eye)
This year in occupied Palestine, all eyes have been on the West Bank. It is from this part of the Holy Land that the most inspiration, and also death, has come. The year began with the implementation of Israel’s amendments to their ‘Open-fire policy’, which had allowed for Israeli soldiers to shoot-to-kill Palestinians who did not pose any immediate threat to an Israeli.
Although fears have arisen over the potential damage that the new Netanyahu government will likely inflict onto the daily lives of Palestinians in 2023, it is important to understand that the ground work, for what is in store, took place under the so-called “most diverse” Israeli government in history. In 2022 at least 230 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, 171 in the West Bank, 53 in Gaza and 6 in the 1948 territories.
This year, airstrikes and targeted assassinations returned to the West Bank, serving as the starting point for a new kind of confrontation between the newly formed armed movements and the occupier itself. On February 8 an undercover Israeli ‘Yamam’ unit entered Nablus, in cars that bore Palestinian license plates, in order to set up an ambush against members of the unofficial Fatah Party militia group, known as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. In broad daylight the Israeli forces exited their vehicles, firing 80+ bullets at close range into a civilian car, killing Ashraf al-Mubaslat, Adham Mabrouka, and Muhammad al-Dakhil.
A joint investigation conducted between Local Call and The Intercept revealed that the three Palestinians killed did not fire a single bullet at the Israeli forces. The assassination was an extra-judicial killing operation, missing one of its intended high-value targets, 18-year-old Ibrahim Nablousi. This gruesome assassination in broad daylight was the first of its kind in the West Bank in over 15 years. The Israeli occupation forces accused the three Palestinians, that it killed, of being behind shooting towards Israeli soldiers and settlers, without specifying when or where.
At this time, attacks were beginning to become more frequent from the Jenin Brigades, which announced its formation in September of 2021 in the Jenin refugee camp. A number of other smaller formations also began to join in on often ineffective acts of armed resistance, such as shooting at checkpoints from a distance, during the early months of 2022. On March 31, the Israeli regime decided to launch ‘Operation Break the Wave’, which was designed to combat the armed groups inside the West Bank and to violently put down any acts of resistance. The Israeli ongoing operation resulted in the repeated besiegement of areas like Nablus and Shuafat refugee camp, in addition to more targeted assassinations and the rounding up of around 6,500 Palestinian detainees since the start of the year in total. At least 811 children and 153 women were detained by Israeli forces during 2022, the majority of which suffered some level of physical or psychological abuse.
Notably in May, the Palestinian icon, Shireen Abu Akleh, was assassinated in the Jenin refugee camp. The veteran al-Jazeera journalist, a US citizen, was deliberately targeted by an Israeli soldier, according to all available evidence, yet the US State Department decided to white-wash her murder and prevent justice from being served by producing a biased report on her death, one that they were forced to conduct after Tel Aviv’s failure to comply with carrying out their own objective report.
The Martyrdom of Shireen Abu Akleh was not only significant in that it was a war crime, carried out against a clearly marked journalist, but it also signalled to Palestinians that nobody is safe. The mood after her death was one of shock, that if they can do this to an iconic journalist, holding a US passport, then they will do this to any Palestinian they see fit. Many Palestinians saw the murder as a calculated move to try and break the spirit of the Palestinians resisting, reflecting the fact that the assassination of the household name who’s voice was constantly heard throughout their homes, year after year, has had a major psychological impact.
In August, Israel’s newly instated Prime Minister at the time, Yair Lapid, had just taken over from Naftali Bennet. It was clear that PM Lapid needed to stamp his authority as a leader, partly for the, then, upcoming election in order to show some sort of military achievement to potential voters and also in part to distract from tensions on the northern front with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Israel launched an unprovoked three-day surprise attack against the Gaza Strip, targeting specifically the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) Movement, acting carefully not to involve the more powerful Hamas Party which governs Gaza. The assault resulted in the killing of 52 Palestinians. Almost half of those killed during Israel’s assault were children and the areas targeted fitted into the Israeli military’s regular pattern of murdering civilian supporters of the group they are targeting.
Israel lied about Palestinian misfired rockets killing the majority of the children that died during their bombardment campaign. US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, shamelessly repeated this propaganda at the United Nations following the Israeli assault, whilst both the Associated Press and Reuters did horrendous pieces attempting to cherry pick quotes from Gazan human rights groups in order to give credence to Israeli claims, something they are yet to apologise for.
Haaretz news later revealed, through contacts with Israeli military officials, that one of the massacres that Tel Aviv had framed to have been caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket, had indeed been an Israeli airstrike. This massacre had occurred in the Fallujah cemetery, located in the Jabalia refugee camp, where an Israeli airstrike had killed 5 Palestinian children. I interviewed the family members of the martyred children and followed up on the story, finding out that the shrapnel found in their bodies bore Hebrew inscriptions. I was informed by one of the fathers that an investigation conducted in Gaza, that had discerned its preliminary findings at the time, suggested that the munition was fired from an Israeli drone, meaning that it was a deliberate targeting of the children in the graveyard.
A rebuttal to Israel’s claims has never been written by Western corporate media and their gutter-journalism attempts to corroborate the Israeli military’s claims were never retracted. This is despite the admission, to Haaretz, that the initial Israeli claims that it had not fired on Gaza, during the times that any of the child massacres took place, was a blatant lie. Yet, the US government and mainstream Western media never bothered to apologise for repeating Israeli propaganda, which victim blames Palestinians for killing their own children.
Following the Israeli assault on Gaza in August, PM Yair Lapid and his minister of war, Benny Gantz, got carried away and decided to continue their anti-Palestinian crusade into the West Bank. On August 9, the Israeli military launched an operation, using special forces units, assaulting the old city of Nablus, their mission was to assassinate Ibrahim Nablousi, the Palestinian teenage fighter who had evaded previous assassinations. After hours of gunfights, Israeli forces cornered Nablousi in a house located in the Old City. He recorded his last message to his mother at that time, telling her that he knew he was about to face death and that he urged all Palestinians to continue their fight. Ibrahim Nablousi kept firing until he was shot dead by Israeli forces, never surrendering.
The assassination of Ibrahim Nablousi ended up having the opposite effect than Israel had intended, instead of beating down the peoples spirits, they were inspired by the bravery of the young man who was just about to turn 19 years old. His funeral the next day was packed with tens of thousands of mourners, with millions praising him online. On September 2, a new armed movement, calling itself Areen al-Asoud, or the Lions Den, announced its formation inside the Old City, as a reaction to Tel Aviv’s assassinations and besiegement of Nablus.
The striking thing about the Lions Den, is that it does not affiliate itself with any single armed movement or political party. It’s members have been identified as belonging to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Fatah, the Al-Qassam brigades of Hamas, the Abu Ali Mustapha brigades of the PFLP and the Al-Quds Brigades of PIJ, yet all of them fight under one banner. Despite the Jenin Brigades, based in and around the Jenin Refugee camp, being openly affiliated with the PIJ movement, they also accept fighters from every faction and some fighters will even switch attire to represent the Al-Quds brigades, whilst being part of Al-Qassam or other armed factions officially.
The new armed movements are made up of young men, primarily between the ages of 18-25, meaning that this is a youth led resistance. They enjoy support from the overwhelming majority of Palestinians throughout all age groups, however, the younger population is their primary support base and this extends to the student movements in the West Bank’s various Universities too.
Lone wolf attacks against soldiers and settlers have also escalated this year, with the likes of Udai Tamimi carrying out a shooting attack against a checkpoint in Shuafat refugee camp, which killed a soldier. Udai Tamimi survived the attack and was able to remain in hiding for 11 days, before re-emerging to carry out a final attack against another checkpoint near Ramallah. A video was released from the scene of the attack, he was shot and injured during the incident, continuing to shoot whilst on the ground and wounded. Only when his gun ran out of bullets did he stop firing, even whilst he was being shot on the ground.
This year, a total of 50,000 Israeli settler extremists forced their way into al-Aqsa mosque, a higher amount than any previous year. Israeli forces injured hundreds of worshippers at the Holy Site and even killed a young Jerusalemite. The Temple Mount settler groups aim to slowly take over the site, eventually to destroy the Mosque’s there and build the Jewish ‘Third Temple’. This, along with ongoing efforts to ethnically cleanse the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighbourhoods, has provoked countless protests throughout the year, met by overwhelming Israeli brutality.
In the West Bank, which Israel’s new government threatens to annex, a 20-year long legal battle was lost by local Palestinian inhabitants of Masafer Yatta, giving way for the destruction of their homes and forced displacement. The collection of Palestinian townships, located in the south Khalil (Hebron) hills, has slowly been bulldozed out of existence, a process which is ongoing, with the relative silence of the international community.
To cover every major event this year would take a book length report in of itself, which is why I have decided to highlight some of the most notable trends that will undoubtably influence the trajectory of the conflict in the coming year. This year has been the year in which the armed struggle has returned to the West Bank and has undermined an already illegitimated Palestinian Authority (PA), which is on the verge of collapse and is viewed rightfully as a band of collaborators by the majority of Palestinians. The younger generation are fed up and are fighting back, they do not care for factionalism, nor do they seek peace talks whilst their land is being stolen and settlements built, they are picking up guns and fighting for what is there’s. Being involved with various interviews with resistance movements this year, one common phrase has consistently come out of the mouths of West Bank fighters this year, “what is taken by force, must be returned by force”. 2022 became the year of the Lions, the year of the resistance and this resistance will continue in 2023 as the new Israeli government adopts some of the most barbaric policies to date, in order to continue its settler colonial project. At this point, the Palestinians have no other option, they must resist or cease to exist and they refuse to live crawling on their knees.