Tulkarem, occupied West Financial institution – Tea, espresso, and assault rifles lie on the desk exterior Maysa’s* entrance door within the Nur Shams refugee camp within the northern Israeli-occupied West Financial institution.
Each now and again, she emerges with extra trays of drinks and biscuits for the small group of younger Palestinian fighters gathered in her alleyway beneath rows of material canopies overlaying the areas between the camp houses.
“These are our sons, our souls. All they need is a dignified life,” says Maysa, a 40-something-year-old girl with a glowing face and heat smile.
“Folks all around the world, all international locations, declare to be democratic and wish to reside free. What about our youth?
“They don’t have any different possibility however the path of armed resistance,” she says, standing behind the seated fighters. “There are not any extra lands left – the occupation took every thing.”
The fighters of the Nur Shams refugee camp are a part of a wider phenomenon of re-emerging Palestinian armed resistance to many years of Israeli occupation within the West Financial institution.
Centred within the northern areas, it started within the Jenin refugee camp greater than two years in the past in June 2021 earlier than spreading to Nablus, Jericho and Tulkarem amongst different locations.
The event noticed the rise of armed teams made up of younger males aged 17 to 35, with the bulk of their early 20s. With restricted capabilities, the teams are centered on defence throughout Israeli navy raids on the camps and attacking Israeli navy checkpoints and unlawful settlements.
Along with his rifle strapped throughout his chest, Ziad*, a senior chief of the Tulkarem Brigades, is a person of few phrases. “It’s our proper to defend ourselves,” the fighter, who’s in his mid-20s, tells Al Jazeera.
Israel’s ongoing warfare on the besieged Gaza Strip, the place greater than 18,200 Palestinians, together with over 7,000 youngsters, have been killed, solely “encourages extra males to hitch the resistance”, he provides.
The newest Israeli assault started on October 7, when the Gaza-based Hamas armed resistance group launched a shock operation on Israeli territory simply exterior the Strip, throughout which about 1,200 individuals have been killed and a few 200 taken captive.
Intensifying raids
Over the previous two years, Israel severely intensified its lethal raids on the northern occupied West Financial institution and has killed dozens of fighters in drone assaults and focused assassinations. This significantly hampered among the resistance teams’ capability to proceed.
However armed resistance in Tulkarem stays, notably within the Nur Shams refugee camp, one among two camps within the metropolis, collectively house to over 34,500 Palestinians who have been expelled by Zionist militias from their houses in Haifa, Jaffa and Caesarea through the 1948 Nakba.
Regardless of many lethal raids on each camps through the previous two months, which noticed dozens of civilian and fighter casualties, Israeli forces have been unable to enter Nur Shams on foot, deterred by obstacles and a major variety of improvised explosive gadgets.
Whereas smaller, hand-thrown canisters are sometimes extra frequent, the previous two years have seen a spike within the manufacturing of bigger canisters crammed with flammable powder. These handmade bombs, used throughout the northern occupied West Financial institution, are supposed to sluggish the military’s raids down and might harm Israeli armoured autos, even rendering them inoperable.
“The occupation military thinks a thousand occasions earlier than they enter Nur Shams,” says journalist and Tulkarem resident Sami al-Sai.
“They don’t enter it on foot. They create within the bulldozers as a result of the quantity of explosive canisters in Nur Shams is unprecedented,” he tells Al Jazeera.
Throughout a 30-hour raid on each camps on October 19 and 20, the Israeli military killed 13 Palestinians, together with 5 youngsters, and injured 25 others.
“The military used unmanned drones – they killed seven individuals in a single hit. The remainder have been killed by snipers, together with among the youngsters,” says al-Sai.
Rising assist for armed resistance
Israeli military raids have extra deeply impacted Tulkarem’s different camp, which has sustained heavy harm to roads and infrastructure. As a result of the military has not been capable of enter Nur Shams on foot, and there have been no makes an attempt in a number of weeks, the fighters assume a raid is imminent.
“We count on them to return at any second. They may come whereas we’re sitting right here speaking,” says Ziad, including that the “fighters are prepared”.
For Ziad and different fighters, the previous three many years of Israel’s intensifying navy occupation and unlawful settlements, in addition to fruitless negotiations, signifies that “armed resistance is the one answer”.
“What was taken by pressure can solely be retrieved by pressure,” says Ziad, quoting a well known speech by late Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser. “It’s ineffective to interact in negotiations,” he provides.
Standard assist for armed resistance has elevated throughout the occupied West Financial institution over the previous two years with many slain fighters rising as symbols of resistance and 1000’s attending their funeral processions.
Sitting throughout from Ziad, is Laith*, one other senior fighter in his late 20s.
“Regardless of the shortage of capabilities, there may be armed resistance within the West Financial institution that’s hurting the occupation,” says Laith. “Even when we’re killed, 10 extra will seem,” he tells Al Jazeera.
The younger males are properly conscious of their mortality, figuring out they might quickly be killed, he provides, however they’re keen to present their lives for the trigger. “Nothing occurs in a single day,” says Laith. “It requires loads of sacrifice and we now have to work laborious, so the subsequent technology can choose up the place we depart off and lead us to liberation.”
Israeli and PA strain
Two armed resistance teams have been shaped in Tulkarem in lower than a yr.
In Nur Shams, fighters started to return collectively after 25-year-old Saif Abu Libdeh was killed by the Israeli military in Jenin on April 2, 2022.
Abu Libdeh had been laying the groundwork for the formation of an armed resistance group within the camp. He frolicked in Jenin studying from the fighters there and appeared in press conferences and navy parades together with his face coated.
Following a number of large-scale Israeli military raids on Nablus, Jenin and Jericho in January and February this yr, the Tulkarem Brigades-Saraya al-Quds armed group, which is loosely affiliated with the Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), started to emerge extra prominently.
Months later, a second group was shaped after the killing of fighter Ameer Abu Khadija on March 23, the Tulkarem Brigades-Quick Response is affiliated with the Fatah political occasion’s armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
One of many key components contributing to the formation of the armed resistance teams over the previous two years was fighters from throughout the Palestinian political spectrum coming collectively regardless of longstanding inside strife on the management stage of their events – together with Hamas, Fatah, the PIJ, Standard Entrance for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.
The teams’ capability to unite youthful fighters – who’re affiliated with the normal armed teams however typically don’t take orders from them – has made them a goal for each the Israeli occupation and the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority (PA), which has pressured many fighters to just accept bribes and amnesty in change for turning of their weapons.
On a number of events throughout funeral processions for slain fighters, PA safety forces have turned violent. They’ve fired tear fuel at crowds, carried out preemptive arrests of occasion members, forcefully confiscated Hamas, PIJ and PFLP occasion flags, and fired reside ammunition into the air.
The PA additionally cracked down on common protests within the occupied West Financial institution on October 17 towards Israel’s bombing of the al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, killing a 12-year-old Palestinian lady in Jenin.
Mehraj Shehadeh is the daddy of senior fighter Jihad, who was killed on November 6 in a focused assassination together with three different fighters. Sitting in his lounge within the Tulkarem refugee camp, Shehadeh says his son and others “despatched a powerful message to all of the leaders – from [PA President] Mahmoud Abbas to Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh”.
“They stated: ‘We’re those who unite the individuals on the streets – not you.’ They united individuals with their rifles and their blood,” he advised Al Jazeera. Regardless of working within the PA safety providers himself, Shehadeh doesn’t agree with all PA insurance policies, notably towards the fighters.
“If that they had 30 bullets, they might break up them between each other,” he continues, describing the fighters as a “faculty”.
“There have been greater than 17,000 individuals at their funeral. It was one of many largest funeral processions in Tulkarem’s historical past.”
*Names have been modified to guard the identities of residents and fighters.