Ayman Ahmed
In the early hours of November 26, thousands of heavily-armed zionist occupation troops, backed by helicopter gunships, attacked the Palestinian city of Tubas. Troops stormed Palestinian homes turning several houses into temporary military barracks in the northern West Bank city. Residents were forcibly removed from their homes, according to a report in Middle East Eye. Tammun, Tayasir, al-Far’a and Aqaba were also attacked.
As part of what the occupation forces claimed was targeting “terrorists”, an all too familiar zionist pretext, roads were blocked and earth mounds erected. Tubas was essentially put under lockdown, obstructing the movement of people across the area.
An Israeli army spokesperson confirmed in a statement that the military, Shin Bet intelligence agency and Border Guard forces are involved in conducting the large-scale assault. Its mission was to stop what they described as “terrorist activities” in the occupied territory.
Resistance to attacks by the occupation forces or the heavily-armed squatters is immediately branded as “terrorism”. International law and several UN General Assembly resolutions recognize the right of people under occupation to resist their occupiers “by whatever means necessary”.
Videos posted online showed occupation forces setting up equipment on the roofs of civilian homes. Ambulance crews attempting to reach Palestinians in need were blocked. The occupation army prevented evacuation of 30 medical cases, including 20 patients who needed kidney dialysis. One person died at home and and his body had to a hospital.
Local media reported seeing Apache helicopters flying over Tubas, reportedly firing arbitrarily at civilian homes. The occupation forces kidnapped 32 Palestinians from their homes while 10 were injured in Israeli firing.
Military raids were also reported across other cities in the occupied West Bank including in Tulkarm, Nablus and Hebron.
Attacks by the occupation army and the even more unruly squatters have escalated in the West Bank since the so-called ceasefire went into effect in Gaza on October 11. For the record, there is no ceasefire there since the zionist war criminals continue their barbarous attacks on defenceless Palestinians.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, more than 300 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks and nearly 900 injured in the 50-day period since the ceasefire agreement went into effect. That averages to six people including children being killed every day. Some ceasefire!
The latest escalation in occupation forces attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank were preceded by weeks of zionist squatter violence. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) documented at least 260 violent attacks by Israeli squatters in the West Bank in October.
The pattern of Israeli violence is quite familiar. Heavily-armed squatters descend on Palestinian villages to torch homes and vehicles and even kill civilians. This is often done with the protection of and in coordination with the Israeli military. Many squatters are army reservists. Anti-Palestinian racism is in their genes.
Squatters have attacked people as well as homes, businesses, warehouses and mosques. Before the Noveber 26 military assault, at least 10 Palestinian youth were shot and killed bringing the death toll in the West Bank to more than 1,000 since October 2023.
October is the month of olive harvest. Olives are the only source of earnings left for Palestinians in the West Bank. Zionist squatters launch their attacks when Palestinians are picking olives.
The British daily, The Guardian reported: “Violence has increased across the occupied West Bank as Palestinian farmers try to harvest their olive trees before the end of the season, in the face of a concerted campaign of harassment by groups of armed and aggressive Israeli settlers.
“Dozens of new incidents have occurred in recent days across much of the occupied territory as settlers step up a broader effort to intimidate and harm Palestinian communities.”
Quoting an Israeli activist Aviv Tatarsky, the British daily wrote: “It’s really bad at the moment. The settlers are operating with total impunity.” Tatarsky has worked in the West Bank for decades.
Leading a precarious existence since the zionist occupation of the West Bank in June 1967, olives have become the only source of revenue for Palestinians. The dates they produce have been taken over by the zionists and are selling them under misleading labels to fool unsuspecting Muslims, especially in Ramadan.
Palestinian farmers are left with only a fraction of the dates to sell. The zionists have imposed severe restrictions on Palestinian export of dates. The occupation regime also charges exorbitant prices for transportation from the West Bank to Jordan from where they are shipped abroad.
Olive harvest is being targeted through systematic attacks. Prior to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Palestinian farmers in the West Bank used to earn about $130 million annually. Now it has been reduced to a fraction of that, exacerbating an already deep economic crisis.
The so-called Palestinian Authority (PA) led by the corrupt Mahmood Abbas and his cronies pocket about $1 billion annually they get from Israel and the US. Instead of helping Palestinian families, the PA acts as zionist informants and collaborators against their own people.
Olive harvest benefits about 110,000 farmers in the West Bank directly. Another 50,000 people earn much of their livelihood from working with the trees and produce. The zionist squatters, aided and abetted by the army, are targeting the source of Palestinian earnings.
Squatter attacks take different forms. At the end of October, 55-year-old Afaf Abu Alia was badly beaten with a club by a masked squatter. Even as she lay cowering on the ground with a gushing wound to her head, the squatter struck her repeatedly.
She was picking olives on a farmland she rents near the village of Abu Falah. The assault was captured on video.
“One of [the settlers] attacked me and started beating me—hitting my head, my arms and legs, and kicking my legs with their boots,” she told the BBC. “I fell down. I wasn’t aware of what was happening, my mind went blank—I was only feeling the pain. I felt like my soul was leaving my body. The only thing I thought about was my children.”
At the hospital, Afaf received 20 stitches in her head with bruises on her arms and legs from the attack. Now recovering at home, she told the BBC that she was still in pain that left her unable to sleep.
On November 13, the zionist squatters attacked the Hamida Mosque, near Deir Istiya in the occupied West Bank. They set fire to furniture, copies of the Qur’an, lecterns and prayer rugs.
In preparation for Friday prayers the following day (November 14), Palestinians moved the charred furniture, lecterns and smoky curls of carpet from the mosque and piled them around the entrance. Many shook their heads in disbelief as to what kind of people would attack a place of worship and desecrate it in this manner.
Palestinians should know better. The zionists have a horrible record of attacking mosques, some resulting in mass murders as happened on February 25, 1994. Brooklyn-born squatter Baruch Goldstein entered the Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Khalil (aka Hebron) while Muslims were performing Fajr prayers in the month of Ramadan.
He shot and killed 29 Palestinians and injured 150 others before he was overpowered and killed. Far from condemning Goldstein’s barbaric conduct, the demented zionist squatters built a monument on his grave.
The zionists’ real target is Masjid al Aqsa. There are frequent incursions onto the holy compound led by the national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a hardcore neo-Nazi. He and his fellow neo-Nazis have made no secret of their plans to destroy the Masjid al Aqsa to build their mythical third temple on its ruins.
Yuli Novak, executive director of the Israeli human rights body, B’Tselem says that settler attacks are a form of Israeli state violence. “They are Israeli civilians living in the West Bank being armed by the state. Sometimes, many of them wear [army] uniforms. Sometimes these are soldiers on reserve duty that are on a break,” she told Al Jazeera in an interview.
She was quite candid about the real perpetrators of the violence asserting that most of the killings and destruction in the West Bank are carried out by official Israeli forces, not settlers. “So this is another arm of the violence that Israel inflicts on Palestinians,” Novak said.
Her assessment was confirmed by the November 26 assault by occupation forces on a number of West Bank cities and towns. At the time of compiling this report, the attack was continuing.
Hypocritically, a number of Israeli officials, including the indicted war criminal Benjamin Mileikowsky (aka Nethanyahu), war minister Israel Katz and military commanders ‘condemned’ squatter violence in the West Bank. Novak, however, dismissed such condemnations. She said the move was an attempt to blame Israel’s policies on a “small group of crazy settlers”.
Are “crazy settlers” using helicopter gunships to attack Palestinians in the West Bank or perpetrating the genocide in Gaza where a child is killed every hour? This has gone on for more than two years. The horrendous death toll in Gaza and the total destruction of its infrastructure form part of Israeli state policy.
Building squatter colonies across the West Bank has been pursued by successive regimes. The current one, led by Netanyahu is dominated by hardcore neo-Nazis who insist on occupying the whole of the West Bank as well. In their demonic plans, there is no room for Palestinians.
In July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israeli occupation of the West Bank is illegal. The top United Nations tribunal called for removing Israeli settlements from the territory.
The arrogant zionists have dismissed such rulings with contempt. The zionist war minister Katz said as much. The regime, he said would “continue to develop and foster the settlement enterprise throughout Judea and Samaria (sic)”.
Annexation of the West Bank is a long-standing policy of the squatter colonial regime. On October 20, the Knesset (the zionist entity’s parliament) gave preliminary approval by a vote of 25-24 to annex the West Bank.
It is illegal under international law to annex any territory that is considered to be occupied, but the zionists have never cared for any law. The Knesset vote is the first step in a four-vote process to completely take over the West Bank.
Netanyahu and his ruling Likud Party did not support the vote, we are told. Such gimmicks can fool only the naïve. After all, the zionists have relentlessly pushed for building more squatter colonies all over the West Bank. There are currently 700,000 squatters living in 16 colonies across the West Bank. More squatter colonies have been approved.
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