Douglas: The life of a Palestinian has become a matter of life or death, and therefore self-defense must be done (Al Jazeera)
Nablus -
Israel has never dropped from its agenda its measures to militarize the West Bank, and time after time it increases its iron grip on the West Bank’s cities and villages, whether in difficult circumstances or in a state of stability, to the point that the Palestinians have become living inside cages, and no one is any longer safe if he leaves his home to return. mechanism.
With the start of the aggression against Gaza, the occupation established a strict closure imposed on Nablus (the largest city in the northern West Bank), through dozens of Israeli checkpoints and settlements that reflect the implementation of Israel’s plan to blockade the West Bank and turn it into “cantons and ghettos” that disturb the lives of the Palestinians, displace them, and Judaize their land at the hands of settlers. Influential and powerful people who commit the most heinous crimes.
On the other hand, in the face of the oppression and arrogance of the occupation, the state of resistance in all its forms - especially armed ones - took root and confronted the occupation project that aims to weaken the authority and make it fail, according to what the Chargé d’Affaires of the Nablus Governorate, Ghassan Daghlas, said, who confirmed in an interview with Al Jazeera Net that “the goal of the Israeli siege is political, not security.” Because whoever resists does not pass through the occupation’s barriers.”
The following is the text of the interview:
Israeli occupation soldiers deploy near Deir Sharaf checkpoint west of Nablus (Al Jazeera)
With the completion of the encirclement of Nablus from its four sides with the occupation’s military checkpoints and settlements, have the occupation’s plans to transform the West Bank into cantons and ghettos turned into a reality?
Nablus was besieged with checkpoints a year and a half before last October 7, but the siege increased even more after the war. There is a complete closure of checkpoints and severing of areas, like the Hawara checkpoint, which was closed 10 days before the war, in addition to the closure of the entrances to cities and villages between Nablus and Ramallah in the south, and Tulkarm. to the west, Jenin to the north, and the villages of Nablus to the east through the Beit Furik checkpoint, which besieges and isolates about 26 thousand citizens.
What Israel is imposing is a political siege before it is a security siege, because whoever thinks about any security action (resistance) does not pass through an Israeli military checkpoint, and the occupation also wants to kill the economic situation of which Nablus represents the backbone of the West Bank. It paralyzes the movement of tens of thousands of students in its most important institutions. They are Al-Najah and Al-Quds Open Universities.
They want to isolate Nablus from the rest of the cities through 10 fixed and mobile checkpoints surrounding the city and its villages, and military points and towers on its mountains, in addition to other closures through dirt and stone barriers within one village, thus paralyzing the northern and central parts of the West Bank. This is collective punishment for the satisfaction of the settlers, because the leaders Terrorists live in settlements on the lands of Nablus, and this is a dangerous matter.
When the economic situation is paralyzed by preventing entry and exit to the largest population center in the northern West Bank, this matter has its consequences for Israel, as it imposes a fait accompli policy and turns the West Bank into cantons by separating cities and villages with dozens of military checkpoints and settlements, causing complete paralysis.
Settlers accompanied by the occupation army prevent the construction of a road to the village of Madama, south of Nablus (Al Jazeera)
Nablus, like other cities in the West Bank, is witnessing an escalation in the pace of settlement and settler attacks. How do Palestinians confront this?
Nablus is surrounded by 14 settlements from all sides and 52 settlement outposts, no less dangerous and bad. These settlements are inhabited by 29 thousand settlers, and the most dangerous thing is that they contain the leaders of their extremist gangs. The “price tag” groups live in the “Yitzhar” settlement south of the city, and the “Hills Youth” leadership lives in Yesh Kodesh settlement.
Due to the leaders of settler terrorism, the volume of settler attacks increased by 208% compared to before the war, and about 60% of the olive harvest near the settlements was not reached by citizens and they were not able to enter their lands, and this is happening for the first time.
The life of a Palestinian has become a matter of life and death in light of the settlers’ targeting of safe citizens in their homes, which requires self-defense, especially since the occupation army strongly supports these settlers. Indeed, the settlers themselves have now taken control of matters, and they are the ones who give military orders and implement them as well, and we have seen that. By closing the Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus and setting up military checkpoints between villages, they bragged about detaining people, stealing their money, and attacking them, as well as inciting them against the Palestinians and killing them.
We, as official and popular bodies, have activated the popular guard and protection committees and crisis cells more than once, but sometimes the citizen is targeted inside his home and after midnight, so he must defend himself and protect his home.
The occupation storms the cities and villages of the West Bank - including Nablus - every now and then, and targets Area A, which is under the Palestinian Authority. So what exactly does it want?
The occupation storms Area A and city centers with dozens of military vehicles, arrests prisoners and transfers them to administrative detention or releases them after days. It is clear that the occupation intends to weaken the Palestinian Authority in a more and more humiliating way. Sometimes it storms city centers during the day during the work of Palestinian security personnel to destabilize the situation. Security and stability and sowing chaos, corruption and strife, in disregard of any authority on earth.
The awareness and culture of the citizen are the only ones that break this situation. There is a clear occupation program to eliminate any national situation. They want a state of chaos to prevail in this country, but in the end the Palestinian citizen will not surrender and will not lose or destroy the means. As it is said, “If I become hungry, I will eat the flesh of my rapist.” This is from an economic standpoint, and the same applies to the issue of humiliation, as many young people preferred martyrdom to arrest, while the prisoners were stripped naked and forced to kiss the Israeli flag.
It is a message that pressure will generate explosion, as this is a people who want freedom, and have experienced the catastrophe and setback and lived through displacement, and will not repeat it and will be planted in their land and country.
No matter what the occupation and its tools bet on, it could not weaken the authority, and the people still resort to it. The occupation wanted chaos, but it did not happen because security exists. The authority is required to preserve the national project and the security of its people, and to push all political forums to criminalize the occupation.
The occupation assassinated dozens of resistance fighters in Nablus in recent months (Al Jazeera)
The Palestinian citizen rejected Israeli militarization and created a rare state of resistance that quickly spread. Was the occupation able to break it?
Resistance ebbs and flows, and in the recent period all the spotlight was focused on Gaza and the genocide and massacres there, but despite that there was resistance in the West Bank, and this appears in any storming of any city or village. Sometimes the occupation army storms a village with an entire battalion, but it faces resistance that confirms that the people The Palestinian has not and will not be defeated, because children as well as adults know that the occupation wants to expel us from our land, which makes his resistance legitimate and his patriotism continuing.
When we see children being killed and starving, the occupation forces us to resist in all its forms. It is true that the Palestinian citizen is looking for a state of popular resistance, but the occupation sometimes drags us into squares that we do not want, and when international systems and policies fail to force Israel to yield to the demands of the Palestinian people, this frustrates him, and the occupation is Who is responsible for this situation, in addition to the silent world that does not force the occupation to submit to the decisions of international legitimacy.
War, like peace, needs a collective decision, and so does resistance. Individualism in resistance weakens us more, and its consequences are for the faction or the group itself. But if there is a decision, consensus, and rallying around the resistance, it is more important, and everyone bears the price of this decision, whether profit or loss, and so the resistance today is in the West Bank. Closer to individual work.
A popular resistance event to remove the Deir Sharaf checkpoint west of Nablus was suppressed by the occupation with bullets (Al Jazeera)
In the past months - especially after the war on Gaza - we no longer see popular resistance. Was the military repression carried out by the occupation soldiers a reason for this?
Popular resistance cannot stop, but when all the spotlight is focused on a specific side, as is happening in Gaza, and when there are orders for the Israeli occupation army to kill, taking advantage of the state of war, and when the settlers are handed 34 thousand weapons at once and in front of the cameras, and when they brag about extermination and killing, When they go to arrest a citizen and shoot his mother and father, and when the assassination is based on name, as happened with the martyr Muntaser Saif in the village of Burqa, north of Nablus, then we must protect our people.
For us, the resistance exists, but announcing its activities is tactical and for the benefit of the people. We do not want to kill them, and this is neither cowardice nor fear. Rather, every time has a state and men, as the occupation targets even ambulances with its fire.
The people's position changed clearly after the first 5 days of the war on Gaza, and they realized that it was a war on the Palestinian people and the entire Palestinian existence, starting from a state of deterrence to a war of extermination to thinking about the issue of displacement and Jerusalem, and Israel's ambitions increased even more, so stopping it requires field unity on the ground. .
We have bypassed all occupation measures, built some of the buildings that were demolished, and sheltered their owners until we finished the restoration. In many areas, we did not leave the Palestinian alone to fight. The evidence is on the ground and the state of civil peace is referred to as Lebanon. Suffice it to say that we concluded 89 deeds of reconciliation between citizens. Within 5 months, there is solidarity among citizens and a very terrible unity situation.
Source: Al Jazeera