Tulkarem, occupied West Financial institution – Tea, espresso, and assault rifles lie on the desk exterior Maysa’s* entrance door within the Nur Shams refugee camp within the northern Israeli-occupied West Financial institution.
Each occasionally, she emerges with extra trays of drinks and biscuits for the small group of younger Palestinian fighters gathered in her alleyway underneath rows of material canopies overlaying the areas between the camp houses.
“These are our sons, our souls. All they want is a dignified life,” says Maysa, a 40-something-year-old lady with a glowing face and heat smile.
“Individuals all around the world, all international locations, declare to be democratic and wish to stay free. What about our youth?
“They have no other option but the path of armed resistance,” she says, standing behind the seated fighters. “There are no more lands left – the occupation took everything.”
The fighters of the Nur Shams refugee camp are a part of a wider phenomenon of re-emerging Palestinian armed resistance to a long time of Israeli occupation within the West Financial institution.
Centred within the northern areas, it began in the Jenin refugee camp greater than two years in the past in June 2021 earlier than spreading to Nablus, Jericho and Tulkarem amongst different locations.
The event noticed the rise of armed teams made up of younger males aged 17 to 35, with the bulk of their early 20s. With restricted capabilities, the teams are centered on defence throughout Israeli navy raids on the camps and attacking Israeli navy checkpoints and unlawful settlements.
Together with his rifle strapped throughout his chest, Ziad*, a senior chief of the Tulkarem Brigades, is a person of few phrases. “It is our right to defend ourselves,” the fighter, who’s in his mid-20s, tells Al Jazeera.
Israel’s ongoing battle on the besieged Gaza Strip, the place greater than 18,200 Palestinians, together with over 7,000 kids, have been killed, solely “encourages more men to join the resistance”, he provides.
The newest Israeli assault started on October 7, when the Gaza-based Hamas armed resistance group launched a shock operation on Israeli territory simply exterior the Strip, throughout which about 1,200 individuals had been killed and a few 200 taken captive.
Intensifying raids
Over the previous two years, Israel severely intensified its deadly raids on the northern occupied West Financial institution and has killed dozens of fighters in drone assaults and focused assassinations. This severely hampered a few of the resistance teams’ skill to proceed.
However armed resistance in Tulkarem stays, significantly within the Nur Shams refugee camp, one in all two camps within the metropolis, collectively residence to over 34,500 Palestinians who had been expelled by Zionist militias from their houses in Haifa, Jaffa and Caesarea in the course of the 1948 Nakba.
Regardless of many lethal raids on each camps in the course of the previous two months, which noticed dozens of civilian and fighter casualties, Israeli forces have been unable to enter Nur Shams on foot, deterred by obstacles and a major variety of improvised explosive gadgets.
Whereas smaller, hand-thrown canisters are usually extra frequent, the previous two years have seen a spike in the production of bigger canisters full of flammable powder. These handmade bombs, used throughout the northern occupied West Financial institution, are supposed to sluggish the military’s raids down and may injury Israeli armoured automobiles, even rendering them inoperable.
“The occupation army thinks a thousand times before they enter Nur Shams,” says journalist and Tulkarem resident Sami al-Sai.
“They do not enter it on foot. They bring in the bulldozers because the amount of explosive canisters in Nur Shams is unprecedented,” he tells Al Jazeera.
Throughout a 30-hour raid on each camps on October 19 and 20, the Israeli military killed 13 Palestinians, together with 5 kids, and injured 25 others.
“The army used unmanned drones – they killed seven people in one hit. The rest were killed by snipers, including some of the children,” says al-Sai.
Rising assist for armed resistance
Israeli military raids have extra deeply impacted Tulkarem’s different camp, which has sustained heavy injury to roads and infrastructure. As a result of the military has not been capable of enter Nur Shams on foot, and there have been no makes an attempt in a number of weeks, the fighters suppose a raid is imminent.
“We expect them to come at any moment. They might come while we are sitting here talking,” says Ziad, including that the “fighters are ready”.
For Ziad and different fighters, the previous three a long time of Israel’s intensifying navy occupation and unlawful settlements, in addition to fruitless negotiations, implies that “armed resistance is the only solution”.
“What was taken by force can only be retrieved by force,” says Ziad, quoting a well known speech by late Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser. “It is useless to engage in negotiations,” he provides.
Widespread assist for armed resistance has elevated throughout the occupied West Financial institution over the previous two years with many slain fighters rising as symbols of resistance and hundreds attending their funeral processions.
Sitting throughout from Ziad, is Laith*, one other senior fighter in his late 20s.
“Despite the lack of capabilities, there is armed resistance in the West Bank that is hurting the occupation,” says Laith. “Even if we are killed, 10 more will appear,” he tells Al Jazeera.
The younger males are effectively conscious of their mortality, understanding they could quickly be killed, he provides, however they’re prepared to present their lives for the trigger. “Nothing happens overnight,” says Laith. “It requires a lot of sacrifice and we have to work hard, so the next generation can pick up where we leave off and lead us to liberation.”
Israeli and PA stress
Two armed resistance teams had been fashioned in Tulkarem in lower than a yr.
In Nur Shams, fighters started to return collectively after 25-year-old Saif Abu Libdeh was killed by the Israeli military in Jenin on April 2, 2022.
Abu Libdeh had been laying the groundwork for the formation of an armed resistance group within the camp. He hung out in Jenin studying from the fighters there and appeared in press conferences and navy parades together with his face lined.
Following a number of large-scale Israeli military raids on Nablus, Jenin and Jericho in January and February this yr, the Tulkarem Brigades-Saraya al-Quds armed group, which is loosely affiliated with the Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), started to emerge extra prominently.
Months later, a second group was fashioned after the killing of fighter Ameer Abu Khadija on March 23, the Tulkarem Brigades-Quick Response is affiliated with the Fatah political celebration’s armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
One of many key components contributing to the formation of the armed resistance teams over the previous two years was fighters from throughout the Palestinian political spectrum coming collectively regardless of longstanding internal strife on the management degree of their events – together with Hamas, Fatah, the PIJ, Widespread Entrance for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.
The teams’ skill to unite youthful fighters – who’re affiliated with the standard armed teams however usually don’t take orders from them – has made them a goal for each the Israeli occupation and the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority (PA), which has pressured many fighters to simply accept bribes and amnesty in change for turning of their weapons.
On a number of events throughout funeral processions for slain fighters, PA security forces have turned violent. They’ve fired tear gasoline at crowds, carried out preemptive arrests of occasion members, forcefully confiscated Hamas, PIJ and PFLP celebration flags, and fired stay ammunition into the air.
The PA additionally cracked down on widespread protests within the occupied West Financial institution on October 17 in opposition to Israel’s bombing of the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, killing a 12-year-old Palestinian girl in Jenin.
Mehraj Shehadeh is the daddy of senior fighter Jihad, who was killed on November 6 in a focused assassination together with three different fighters. Sitting in his lounge within the Tulkarem refugee camp, Shehadeh says his son and others “sent a strong message to all the leaders – from [PA President] Mahmoud Abbas to Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh”.
“They said: ‘We are the ones who unite the people on the streets – not you.’ They united people with their rifles and their blood,” he instructed Al Jazeera. Regardless of working within the PA safety providers himself, Shehadeh doesn’t agree with all PA insurance policies, significantly in opposition to the fighters.
“If they had 30 bullets, they would split them between one another,” he continues, describing the fighters as a “school”.
“There were more than 17,000 people at their funeral. It was one of the largest funeral processions in Tulkarem’s history.”
*Names have been modified to guard the identities of residents and fighters.
