West Bank -

most of them are masked, one of them went out to talk to us, and asked not to be photographed or recorded, and did not declare his name, and told Al Jazeera Net that "the life of the Palestinian resistance in the occupied West Bank is difficult, and he pays the tax of belonging to his homeland."

To justify their extreme precautions, he continued, "We do not feel safe from the deception of the occupation, as the number of people wanted by his intelligence is much greater than the announced names."

They take care of all this so as not to be assassinated or arrested, and they believe that the occupation security services are using deception to try to plant their agents among them.

On Tuesday, the occupation managed to reach 3 of them in the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, they are: Adham Mabrouka, nicknamed the Shishani, Muhammad al-Dakhil, and Ashraf al-Mabsalt, and assassinated them by firing about 80 bullets at their vehicle.

After that, it took us two days to reach a number of them in one of the camps, and they were still affected by the assassination of their comrades in Nablus.

However, one of the masked fighters sees that their numbers increase with each crime carried out by the occupation. He describes it, saying, “It is as if the person who is martyred grows his head in the body of others.”

Because the occupation will not be able to assassinate the resistance approach.

"We are against any armed phenomenon and security chaos, and only legitimate weapons are directed at the occupation," he says.

Resistance fighters from Jenin camp give statements to the media (Anadolu Agency)

Where do they live and how do they move?

We asked him how do you live now?

“We move from one area to another, and we stay in crowded places such as camps and old towns in the occupied West Bank,” he said, describing their living conditions as “often deplorable.”

Another masked man approaches and tells Al Jazeera Net, "There is good help from the people and sympathizers of the resistance, and they are many, but there is no clear official or organizational support. We get the weapons personally and with self-financing."

The Palestinians note that the armed groups of the resistance are clearly concentrated in the Jenin camp, with about 20 names wanted and wanted by the occupation, and there are dozens of others in the Balata and Askar camps and the old city of Nablus.

They say that what drove them to all this was the crimes of the occupation, the assault on male and female prisoners, Jerusalem, and the aggression on Gaza.


Edit or testify

Some of the resistance fighters say that they do not belong to any Palestinian organization, and that they have reached an irreversible path, and they do not regret that their goal is "either liberation or martyrdom."

Most of them are between 18 and 22 years old.

Despite their young age, they consider themselves to have struggled experience;

Because some of them were arrested in the occupation prisons when they were young, and psychological torture, deprivation and persecution were practiced against them, which generated a reaction of resistance.

Most of them heard about the first Palestinian intifada in 1987 from the memories of their people about it, but in the second intifada (2000-2004), they were children at the time or not yet born.

We asked them about their economic and living situation, and one of them replied: "Among us are those who are considered among the downtrodden groups in society, and some of us from our family are in a good economic condition or even excellent, but most of the oppressed groups."

Many of them were threatened by the Israeli occupation intelligence with death and abuse, either by talking to them directly after reaching their phones, or by calling their families.

Barghouti: The occupation fears a shift in the use of weapons in the West Bank (Al-Jazeera)

Fear of the moment of an explosion

The Hebrew media does not delve into the details of armed cells in the West Bank, according to Khaldoun Barghouti, a specialist in Israeli affairs, because the occupation knows that there are thousands of weapons in the West Bank.

Al-Barghouti says that the occupation talks about that in a way that serves its security and political goals only, and it only takes action if these weapons are used against its goals;

The assassination of the three young men in Nablus came after 5 shooting attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers in recent weeks.

Barghouti believes that the large number of weapons in the West Bank worries Israel, especially with the factors and points of explosion unknown in advance.

With the escalation of the settlers' attacks, to the extent that it may erupt the apparent calm in the West Bank, the Israeli fears of the expansion of the armed Palestinian resistance rise.

Official Israeli statistics record 353 attacks by settlers against Palestinians during 2020, while the number increased to 563 attacks in 2021.

The occupation police had clearly declared that curbing the settlers in the West Bank is not a priority at the moment, due to the presence of other security concerns inside (among the 48 Palestinians).

All this may prompt and precipitate the settlers’ perpetration of a major crime, as happened when the Dawabsheh family was burned in Nablus in the summer of 2015, which blew up the situation for many months at the time.

Barghouti believes that the occupation security services know that there are weapons that are used in internal Palestinian conflicts, and do not interfere in them, as in the recent events in the city of Hebron in the southern West Bank.

But what it fears - according to Barghouti - is that this weapon will turn against its soldiers and settlers, as happened in the Lod area inside, which was considered a hotbed of criminal gangs, but with the development of events in Jerusalem and Gaza during May 2021, the weapon was used against the occupation police.

Barghouti says that the occupation knows that there are attempts to form regular armed cells, especially from Fatah and Hamas in the West Bank.

Although the general atmosphere indicates that they are immature attempts, the formation and activity of cells may be formed in a rapid moment in any explosion of events.


They are not the choice of the Palestinian leadership

On the official Palestinian level, the assassination of the three activists in Nablus coincided with the convening of the Central Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Ramallah, in the central West Bank.

Although it is not a new step, the Council renewed previous decisions to suspend the PLO's recognition of the State of Israel until it recognizes the Palestinian state, as well as halting security coordination;

protesting the practices of the occupation.

However, analysts believe that the option of going to an intifada is not a priority for the current Palestinian leadership, which has chosen to resist the occupation at the international level and by peaceful means.

President Mahmoud Abbas declared more than once his opposition to armed resistance, and his support for peaceful popular resistance only.

And the matter did not stop there, as the Palestinian Authority is accused - according to observers - of chasing and arresting Palestinian resistance fighters, and its role was clear in dissolving the military wings of the resistance factions in the West Bank after the Palestinian division in 2007, with American support known at the time, the "Dayton plan", relative to the advisor. US Department of State Security Keith Dayton.

The plan was to strengthen and support the Palestinian president at the expense of Hamas, through supporting his Palestinian security forces, and strengthening its relations with Israeli security.

The second Palestinian Intifada (the Al-Aqsa Intifada) in 2000 was known as the armed organizational action, after the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's support for this trend.

Observers believe that Arafat at the time allowed the Palestinian organizations and factions to carry out armed action against Israel, and even supported this action with money and weapons, in addition to the involvement of Palestinian security personnel themselves in armed confrontations with the occupation.

The funeral of the bodies of 3 of the pursuers who were assassinated by Israel on Tuesday in the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank (Al-Jazeera)

Palestinian security denies persecuting them

A previous publication of one of the martyrs of Nablus was spread on social media, in which he talked about his arrest by the Palestinian security services, which was denied by the Palestinian security spokesman, Major General Talal Dwaikat, to Al Jazeera Net.

Dwaikat said, "None of the three martyrs was arrested by the Palestinian security," noting that all of these are "rumors to create a gap between the Palestinian citizen and the authority, behind which the occupation stands."

Dweikat believes that the occupation seeks to perpetuate division, strike national unity, and repudiate its responsibility, especially since the three martyrs are the sons of the Fatah movement (the ruling party), and "they were practicing their lives normally."

In response to the accusations of security coordination between the authority and Israel before the assassination, Dwaikat replied: "Everything related to the use of the term security coordination is to make accusations, with the aim of offending the authority, because the occupation deals with it like any Palestinian resistance organization, and views it as an enemy, and seeks to strike it and discredit it."

Fatah leader Jamal Al-Tirawi spoke about his intervention to release suspects arrested by the authority (Al-Jazeera)

national case

As for Jamal Al-Tirawi, one of the cadres and leaders of the Fatah movement and a member of the dissolved Legislative Council, he doubted the absence of an arrest process for one of the martyrs, telling Al Jazeera Net: "I personally intervened in the release of the martyr Adham Mabrouka, who was detained by Palestinian security in Jericho prison two years ago." .

Al-Tirawi told Al-Jazeera Net: "The martyrs are the sons of the Fatah movement, and they carry a national agenda, and there is no shame that the Palestinian people are resistant to their occupier."

He added: "Also, most of the armed cells in the West Bank are from the sons of "Fatah", and they express the movement's will to resist and get rid of the occupation, although everyone knows that there are Fatah leaders who went to areas far from this goal."

Al-Tirawi describes the young armed resistance fighters as the most miserable and poor, and have been subjected to injustice, despite that they are the owners of the ideology of resisting the occupier and rebelling against it.

Regarding their numbers, Al-Tirawi answers: "There are no statistics on the armed resistance, but each of them belongs to the idea of ​​resistance and response to the Israeli massacres that are being carried out against the Palestinian people."