Israeli occupation forces violently raided the Aqbat Jabr refugee camp, located near Ariha (Jericho) city in the occupied West Bank, killing five Palestinians and injuring tens of others. The raid came after the Jericho area was besieged for eight days and brings the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire to 42 so far this year, 8 of which were children. The Western media has, by and large, largely ignored the story, or completely misrepresented it.
Last year was the deadliest for Palestinians living inside the occupied West Bank since 2005, according to the UN, with this year’s death toll far exceeding last year’s at this time. Despite the deaths of 42 Palestinians so far this year, representing more than one killed per day, Western mainstream media is ignoring, justifying and/or distorting the true image of the suffering inside the occupied territories. When 7 Israeli illegal settlers, who were participating in an active war crime, were killed in a revenge attack by a lone Palestinian gunman last month, the incident received wall-to-wall coverage throughout Western media. This coverage wrongfully portrayed the incident and refused to acknowledge that the attack was in an illegal settlement, instead depicting the site as a “neighborhood in Jerusalem”.
The reality is that Western corporate media goes above and beyond the level of propaganda of their own governments in order to shield Israel from criticism and holds a clear bias in favor of Israeli lives, over Palestinians. Last Saturday, when a 13-year-old Palestinian from Silwan carried out a shooting against armed settlers, injuring 2, the incident was described as a terrorist attack and the Western media, for the most part, failed to mention it was carried out in an illegal settlement area. Illegal settlers who are actively living in stolen Palestinian homes and on confiscated land — who are carrying automatic weapons and serve in the Israeli military — are not civilians, they are combatants. However, when Palestinians living in besieged refugee camps pick up weapons to fight back against Israeli militants who violently raid their area, they are portrayed as terrorists, and when they are killed it is presented as a good thing by Western media. This is exactly what we see in the coverage of the latest raid on the Aqbat Jabr refugee camp, which resulted in 5 Palestinians being killed.
Palestinians living inside the refugee camp announced the formation of a new armed group, this came after a siege was imposed upon the Ariha (Jericho) area. In an interesting turn of events, despite the camp being considered a stronghold for the Fatah party, the group that emerged pledged its loyalty to Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas. Since September of 2021, armed groups began to emerge in the occupied West Bank, aiming to target the Israeli military and settlements in order to combat illegal settlement expansion and claim back their land. The epicenter of the revived armed struggle, which has been almost non-existent in the West Bank since the early 2000s, has so far been the northern West Bank; in particular the Jenin refugee camp, the Balata refugee camp, and the old city of Nablus. Such an armed presence in the Jericho area has come as a great surprise and it is even more surprising that young men that are aligned with Hamas have formed the group; as the majority of the armed formations in the rest of the West Bank belong to Fatah aligned al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and the PIJ aligned al-Quds brigades.
Israel fears that its illegal settlements may be in particular danger from any armed presence in the Jericho area, this is due to the openness of the illegal settlements to gunfire. Jericho is situated in the Jordan Valley area, which Israel is currently sizing up for annexation and is where some of the most stark examples of what the world’s leading human rights groups call Apartheid. Those that visit Palestinian communities located near Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley, will witness Palestinians living without a water or electrical supply, whilst the settlers live in heavily guarded gated facilities equipped with pools and usually the settlers there will be working on cultivating stolen Palestinian land for things like dates and wine, which are sold all around the world.
The refugee camps inside the West Bank have become a hotbed for newly formed armed groups, with even places like the Dheisheh camp, in Bethlehem, forming a small armed group that belongs to the PFLP party. This return to armed struggle comes after around 17 years of adopting a largely peaceful struggle against the occupying forces, during which no armed groups existed and only the occasional lone-wolf attacks on settlers or soldiers would occur. The younger generation of Palestinians are fed up with living under occupation, facing constant checkpoints, harassment, settlement expansion, confiscation of lands, the bulldozing of homes, arrests for throwing stones and the murder of family members. There is no family in the West Bank that hasn’t in some way suffered through all of the above listed hardships and more. For those living in the refugee camps, they are also displaced and were ethnically cleansed from their original villages, towns, and cities. On top of this there is a lack of jobs and opportunity for young Palestinians, whilst the Palestinian Authority has served as an aid to Israel’s illegal occupation and has presented no path towards a viable State.
This is all to say that the young people that are now picking up weapons are doing so in order to fight for their freedom from occupation, to expel the settler colonizers who are stealing their lands, and to wrestle back their dignity. On a day to day level, the armed groups serve as a defensive force to attempt to make Israel pay a price for raiding Palestinian villages and refugee camps, instead of them operating there with complete impunity and the backing of Western governments. For these reasons the young armed men are supported wholeheartedly by the majority of the Palestinian people. These are not highly skilled fighters, they do not serve as a conventional military force, and they are limited to home-made and/or light weapons at this time.
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, an occupied people maintain the right to use armed force in order to expel their illegal occupier. To add to this, it is tantamount to a warcrime for an occupying power to transfer any segment of its citizenry into occupied territory. The illegal settlers are participating in the Israeli government’s active war crimes. To add another layer to this, those settlers who are armed and routinely attack Palestinian communities are essentially committing double-war crimes. When the so-called international community does nothing about the expansion of illegal settlements and daily war crimes committed by Israel against the occupied Palestinian people, it is only natural that the native inhabitants of the land are going to take matters into their own hands – an action, again, that is protected under international law. This is what we saw in Aqbat Jabr refugee camp this Monday morning, Palestinians armed themselves and five of them were killed whilst combating Israeli forces who were illegally raiding the area. This is not a case of a “terror cell” being hunted down by an army for the purpose of protecting its citizens. The settler-colonization of Palestinian land and illegal occupation are the root cause behind all the violence against Israelis, and when armed Palestinians who are defending their homeland are killed, they are not terrorists or thugs, they are resistance fighters.
