Instability in the West Bank leaves new insurgent groups

YABA, West Bank (AP) — Intermittent bursts of M-16 bursts shattered the calm in a West Bank town surrounded by barley fields and olive groves. Palestinian youth in Yaba used to want to cultivate, according to locals, but now more and more they want to fight.

Last week, dozens of them, dressed in ski masks and carrying guns with pictures of their dead comrades plastered on the magazines, stormed a schoolyard, presenting the new group of insurgents of Yaba and paying tribute to its founder and another gunman, who were killed in an Israeli army. raid last month.

“I wouldn’t want to make my parents cry, says Yousef Hosni Hammour, 28, a close friend of Ezzeddin Hamamrah, the group’s late founder. But I’m ready to die a martyr.”

Similar scenes are repeated throughout the West Bank. From the Jenin refugee camp in the north to the southern city of Hebron, small groups of disillusioned Palestinian youth are taking up arms against an indefinite Israeli occupation, challenging Palestinian political leaders whom they despise as collaborators with Israel.

With fluid and overlapping affiliations, these militias have no clear ideology and operate independently of traditional chains of command, although they receive support from established insurgent groups. Fighters from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other groups attended last week’s ceremony in Jaba.

With its almost daily detention raids, Israel has over the past year attempted to crush fledgling militias, leading to an increase in death and unrest unprecedented in nearly two decades.

While Israel argues these operatives are seeking to prevent future attacks, Palestinians argue the escalation in violence has helped radicalize men too young to remember Israel’s brutal crackdown on the Second Intifada ago. two decades, which deterred the others from the older ones.

This new generation grew up stagnant, in a territory torn apart by internal struggles and fragmented by barriers and controls.

More than 60 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the start of the year, following the takeover of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history. Nearly half were insurgents killed in battle with Israeli forces, according to an Associated Press tally, although casualties also included stone-throwers or bystanders who were no strangers to violence.

At least 15 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks during this time, including two who were shot on Sunday in Hawara, just south of Jaba. In response, Israeli settlers burned down dozens of buildings in an incident that claimed the life of a Palestinian.

“It’s as if the new government has freed the hands of soldiers and settlers and told them that now they can do whatever they want,” said Jamal Khalili, a local council member from Yaba.

At the recent funeral, children wearing black insurgent bands on their foreheads approached the gunmen, eager to see their heroes.

“The result is what you see here,” Khalili added.

Last week, an Israeli military raid on the city of Nablus sparked a shootout with Palestinian insurgents that left 10 people dead. The target of the operation was the most important emerging armed group, the Lion’s Den.

According to Israeli security officials, its army has weakened the Nablus-based militia in recent months, killing or arresting most of its key members. But they have acknowledged that their gunmen, who roam the Old City and post clever videos on Telegram with a cautious message of heroic resistance, are now inspiring attacks across the land.

“The lion’s den is starting to become an idea you see everywhere,” said an Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an intelligence assessment. stones or incendiary bombs, the insurgents now open fire with M-16s. which are often smuggled from Jordan or stolen from Israeli military bases.

According to the official, the army monitors the Yaba group and others in the cities of Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarem, but he acknowledged that they have difficulty gathering information on these small, loosely organized insurgent groups.

The Palestinian self-government rules parts of the West Bank and works closely with the Israeli military against its domestic rivals, particularly the insurgent group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.

With Palestinian youth increasingly viewing the Palestinian Authority (PA) as an arm of the Israeli security forces rather than the foundation of a future state, Palestinian security forces are reluctant to intervene against nascent militias. More often than not, Palestinian forces rarely venture into insurgent strongholds such as the Old City of Nablus and the Jenin refugee camp, according to locals and the military.

The Yaba insurgents said the Palestinian security forces had not taken strong action against them. According to locals, the group, founded last September, quickly grew to around 40-50 members.

Hammour described the Palestinian leadership as corrupt and out of touch with Palestinian reality, but said “our goals are far more important than creating problems for the Palestinian Authority.”

With the PA’s popularity plummeting, experts say it cannot risk stoking tensions by detaining widely admired fighters.

The Authority “suffers from a crisis of legitimacy,” said Tahani Mustafa, Palestinian analyst at the International Crisis Group. “There’s a huge disconnect between the elites at the top and the groups at the bottom.”

The Palestinian authorities recognize that their control is slipping.

“We are concerned that any of our actions against (these groups) will generate a backlash on the streets,” an intelligence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak. to journalists.

With Israeli army raids intensifying, the troubled power structure in the West Bank and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government increasing settlements in the occupied territories, frustrated Palestinians say they are not pursuing any Islamist or political agenda, just wanting to defend their cities… and resist an Israeli occupation that has lasted 55 years.

For Mohammed Alawneh, 28, who lost two brothers in clashes with Israeli forces two decades apart, the Yaba group is a “reaction”. He said he would support peace if it meant an end to the occupation and the formation of a single state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. For now, he said, it is clear that Israel does not want peace.

Hamamrah, the late commander of the Jaba group, threw stones at Israeli soldiers as a teenager and later joined an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas’ Fatah party, his mother, Lamia, said. After 10 harrowing months in an Israeli prison, he became religious and reserved. He was talking about revenge.

After his death, Lamia discovered that he had helped form the group and that Islamic Jihad had supplied them with weapons, including the gun that Hamamrah fired at Israeli troops on January 14.

The army followed him to Yaba, where they shot him and another gunman, Amjad Khleleyah. His car, crushed and stained with blood, now stands in the center of town like a macabre monument.

At the funeral, Hamamrah’s friends told her to be proud of a son who became a fighter and inspired the whole village.

But Lamia was crying all the time. Malak, her 14-year-old daughter, also wants to die as a martyr.

“I’m just a mother who lost her son,” she said. “I want this all to end.”