A Third Palestinian Intifada: A New Armed Uprising Takes Hold

A third Palestinian intifada: With political leaders becoming increasingly unpopular, a new armed uprising takes hold

RT

A slew of armed attacks against Israeli soldiers inside the West Bank has sent shock waves throughout the military and intelligence establishment in Tel Aviv. On the Palestinian side, the territory has witnessed a level of violence not seen since the early 2000s and is encouraging a popular armed struggle.

Last Saturday, a lone Palestinian gunman exited a vehicle at a checkpoint in East Jerusalem, opening fire and killing an Israeli soldier and injuring two others. The attack took place at the Shuafat refugee camp checkpoint, a segment of East Jerusalem that, despite being annexed by Israel in 1980, has been enclosed by a separation wall that cuts the refugee population off from the rest of Jerusalem. So far this year, around 120 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank alone, a higher death toll than in Gaza.

The attack on Saturday was of particular importance in influencing events on the ground; embarrassing Israel’s security establishment, and resulting in tough crackdowns on Palestinians, spurring on a further escalation in the days following the shooting. Video footage of the incident revealed that a single armed gunman, wielding a handgun, was able to fire eight bullets at Israeli forces and flee with relative ease after his gun jammed. Stationed at the checkpoint were Israeli soldiers, police and private security guards, none of which were able to prevent the attack and so far the Israeli authorities have failed to even capture the unnamed gunman.

As a reaction to the shooting, the Shuafat refugee camp, which Israeli forces originally raided in the belief that the attacker was hiding there, was completely closed off as a form of collective punishment. Videos, as well as eyewitness reports, from within the refugee camp also revealed a particular brutality with which Israeli military forces cracked down on the camp residents. The images coming out of the camp, combined with Palestinian solidarity with the armed attacker at the checkpoint, led to Palestinians taking to the streets to confront Israeli forces throughout the West Bank and wider East Jerusalem area.

On Tuesday, the newly declared armed movement that is based in Nablus city, Areen Al-Aswad, announced on Telegram that they had been behind another attack on Israeli forces, which had resulted in the killing of Staff Sergeant Ido Baruch. 

The group, known in English as the ‘Lions Den’, had carried out the attack using operatives who fired from a speeding car at Israeli forces, near the Deir al-Sharaf area. Following this, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid offered his condolences to the family of the Israeli soldier and vowed to arrest the perpetrators, imposing a strict military lockdown in Nablus and surrounding areas.

On Wednesday, the people of Shuafat refugee camp and Lions Den armed group called for civil disobedience, and this later received wide support from student unions throughout the West Bank. 

In the Jenin refugee camp last year, the ‘Jenin Brigades’ armed movement was declared. On September 2 this year, ‘Areen Al-Aswad’ announced its formation in the Old City of Nablus. However, these groups are not the only threat to Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank, the violent and non-violent struggle is now part of a decentralized popular movement. These developments have struck fear and confusion into both Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Palestinian quasi-governmental entity that maintains limited powers in some areas of the West Bank.

What both Israel and the Palestinian Authority are failing to understand is that the current round of tensions cannot be traced back to a single event, as was the case in the 2015-16 escalation. If we take a look at the newly formed armed movements, the most well-established of which are located in the north of the West Bank, their fighters are primarily between 18 and 25 years of age and taking note of this is very important.

There is no way for Israel or the Palestinian Authority to stop the current trend of armed struggle in the West Bank by confronting it with limited violent operations; such as the arrest campaigns carried out by the PA’s security forces or ‘Operation Break the Wave’ by Israel, the latter having gone on since March 31. There are only two ways of facing this; a full-scale Israeli military operation or granting significant concessions to the Palestinians of the West Bank, rebooting the “peace process” and the acceptance of Hamas as a real political representative of the Palestinians. If Israel and its Western allies do not choose quickly, chaos will continue to spread.