The resistance in the West Bank faces difficult scenarios

The funeral of the martyr Mahmoud Jaber and 4 martyrs of Nour Shams camp - West Bank - Tulkarm (Al Jazeera)

The general situation in the West Bank today is similar to the era that prevailed between 1967 and 1987. The signs of transformation and a return to the roots today in the West Bank are similar to those that prevailed on the eve of the first intifada in 1987, while the general setback and weak resistance in the West Bank are similar to those years between the 1967 setback. And the first intifada.

The period between the setback and the first intifada was largely quiet in the West Bank, which experienced the shock of the sudden occupation and the terrible defeat of the Arab community. It is true that guerrilla action existed, but it did not express a general situation in society, and was concentrated abroad, with a few limited, time-spaced actions inside.

This was considered normal behavior for a society that had to absorb the shock of a setback, when people in some towns went out to receive the tanks coming to them, thinking that they were Arab tanks, only to be surprised that they were Israeli, and that the occupation army only needed to cross the road in order to occupy the land. The Arabs did not give them weapons to fight, nor did they fight with their armies as was hoped. In order for people not to be burdened with more than it could bear during that period, it is sufficient to point out that the greatest confusion that society made to the Zionist project was that they did not leave their cities and villages as happened in the 1948 war, which is what the Zionist institution has not been able to swallow until today.

In recent years, a new, rebellious generation has emerged, characterized by its ferocity and rejection of reality. It attempts to bridge the gap between the original and the unexpected, loving resistance, but it does not have sufficient experience, acts spontaneously, and does not possess the capabilities of good armament.

After the setback, it took the West Bank and Gaza Strip two full decades to take the initiative. The first intifada was the “Intifada of Stones,” which was considered the greatest popular liberation movement of the twentieth century. Then came the stage of the Palestinian Authority, the Al-Aqsa Intifada, but the most dangerous stage was the stage that followed the end of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, and here the state of differentiation began between the reality of the resistance in the West Bank and its reality in the Gaza Strip.

One of the fundamental differences between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is that the end of the Al-Aqsa Intifada included an Israeli withdrawal from the Strip in 2005, and the resistance in Gaza has accumulated in quantity and quality since the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000 until the present day, and this was helped by the Hamas movement’s control over the reins. In Gaza since 2007, while a situation prevailed in the West Bank similar to the situation after the setback of June 1967, and the situation before the Nakba in 1948, where it was stripped of all elements of military and societal power and all factors of resilience.

From 1936 to 1947, the British Mandate authorities worked to kill, deport, and imprison all the resistance elite in Palestine, which was exhausted and liquidated in the context of the persecutions that followed the 1936 revolution. When the Nakba came, society was exhausted, and its resistance leadership was dead, imprisoned, and deported. Just as was the case in the West Bank on the eve of the end of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, in which the Palestinian Authority was re-engineered after the election of President Mahmoud Abbas in 2005 in a way that ended all manifestations of armed resistance and entered society into a consumerist lifestyle that was not compatible with the reality of a people under occupation.

Today, the West Bank stands on a hot plate similar to the threshold of 1967, as if the two decades after the setback were similar to the last two decades. To prepare for a new phase that began two and a half years ago with sporadic cases of resistance in the West Bank and bold individual operations, even though the “Al-Aqsa Flood” further revealed the fragility and weakness of this situation due to well-known objective and subjective circumstances.

The countries of the region are striving with all force, while international powers and the Palestinian Authority share with them the need to maintain the status quo policy in the West Bank, and not to actively engage in the resistance with Gaza, while Israel has reclassified the border with Jordan as a security hot border to prevent arms smuggling into the West Bank. Despite their success in neutralizing the West Bank so far, it is doubtful whether this will continue.

The battle of “Al-Aqsa Flood” revealed the depth of the bad situation that the West Bank is going through, which has not yet left, even if it is on its way to leaving the cycle of alienation that it entered during the Fayyad period and what followed (former Prime Minister Salam Fayyad assumed the premiership from 2007-2012), which was engineered. According to the policies of neoliberalism and the World Bank, and in accordance with the requirements of the International Quartet for economic peace, and the era of President Mahmoud Abbas, who does not believe at all in armed resistance, and is too haunted by the bitterness of fear of failure and Israeli superiority in his historical relations with the Palestinians.

During this period, extending from 2005-2023, income levels increased significantly in the West Bank. This is not due to the authority’s economic policies, but to Netanyahu’s policies in allowing about 200,000 workers from the West Bank to work internally as part of the containment policy.

In exchange for this free calm in the West Bank over the past two decades, the West Bank was presented on a golden platter to the settlers who had complete control over the reality of life in the West Bank in all its details, and they advanced more than they dreamed, and there was no actual action left for them to take to complete their project in the West Bank. Except for the official announcement of the annexation of the West Bank, knowing that the actual annexation has taken place.

This period contributed to the dismantling of the resistance incubator in the West Bank. The West Bank did not resist with weapons, nor did it resist popularly, and all slogans of popular resistance were nothing but memorial stops to take pictures, with the exception of some serious popular actors who had limited influence. The popular resistance that is officially chanted has rules and entitlements that we have not seen in the West Bank over the past two decades.

In the face of all this, a new, rebellious generation has emerged in recent years, distinguished by its ferocity and rejection of reality. It attempts to bridge the gap between the original and the unexpected, loving resistance, but it does not have sufficient experience, acts spontaneously, and does not possess the capabilities of good armament. The majority of the bold operations in the West Bank were individual in nature, and were carried out With a primitive, locally manufactured weapon that fails its owner after several shots, the results are mediocre.

The resistance in the West Bank is described as having no sponsor. It is true that many groups, especially in the northern West Bank, receive support and funding from the resistance movements, but the resistance movements are still unable to build an infrastructure that will actually support the resistance in the West Bank, especially since the Israeli policy of mowing the grass uses a fist. Iron resistance is exaggerated, compared to the capabilities of the West Bank resistance fighters. So as not to allow them to accumulate, while the Palestinian Authority maintains the security coordination that guarantees its survival, and considers these groups a threat to its control.

The situation is exacerbated by the weakness and fragility of the popular support incubator in the West Bank. As a result of the re-engineering of society in the past two decades, the relationship between the West Bank and Gaza in this war was described as a relationship of disappointment, as there is no other description worthy of this situation.

According to these challenges, the resistance in the West Bank faces difficult scenarios. The general state of passive neutrality and weak random resistance has become unconvincing, but what is striking is that it is developing towards becoming experienced in the face of the determination of a young generation to bring about transformation. This is helped by the prolonged battle in the Gaza Strip, the increasing violence of settlers and the occupation army in the West Bank, and the piracy in withholding Palestinian tax funds and preventing the entry of workers, as this leaves no room for explosion.

The file of the war on Gaza will be closed at some point, and then the stage of difficult questions will begin in the West Bank and the struggle over the paths. Without delving too much into that, the estimates do not indicate a return to the stability around which the various forces are trying to reset the West Bank. There is something different that does not need to be discussed. Very intelligent for the younger generation to read about the changes that the “Al-Aqsa Flood” brought about in it.

This transformation will impose itself in more violent forms, and because history, even if its events are similar, they do not coincide, the end of these two quiet decades in the West Bank will result in a new situation that is neither the first intifada nor the second Al-Aqsa Intifada, but the definition of its features is linked to the results of the war on Gaza.