المكتب الوطني للدفاع عن الارض ومقاومة الاستيطان منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية
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By: Madeeha Al-A’raj
The national Bureau for Defending the Land and Resisting Settlements stated in its latest weekly report , that Israeli Occupation brutal war against Gaza revealed the hidden that extended from Joshua bin Nun to Netanyahu as the war has entered its 7th week with no mercy, as he described the people of the Gaza Strip as the Amalekites, whom the prophecy of the ‘Prophet Isaiah’ heralded the necessity of exterminating them, as a condition for establishing security on the State’s borders, the Israeli army prepared for a ground operation against the Gaza Strip, as former settlers has begun dreaming of returning to the place, which Sharon withdrawn from in 2005 unilaterally.
In a televised speech on 25th last Oct. Netanyahu gave himself free rein to support his policy and invoked ancient Biblical Myths to justify his intention to continue the war of extermination on the Gaza Strip. He remembered the ‘prophecy of Isaiah’: ‘We are the children of light, but they are the children of darkness, and the light will triumph over the darkness’ and we will fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah. You will no longer hear about devastation in your land. We will be a reason for your people to be honored. We will fight together and achieve victory, to reach the Amalekites of the era, who must be exterminated.
He added, ‘You must remember what Amalek did to you, as our Holy Book tells us, and we remember that already, as we fight with our brave soldiers and teams who are now fighting in and around Gaza and in all other regions of Israel.’ He also recalled the legends of the First Book of Samuel: “Go and fight the Amalekites. Completely annihilate them and all that they have. Do not spare them. Kill all the men, women, children, and infants, and kill their oxen, sheep, camels, and donkeys, and fight them until they end.”
Netanyahu is not alone in his brutal war against the ‘Amalek of the era.’ Behind him is a convoy of neo-Nazis, politicians, rabbis, academics, soldiers, and settlers, dreaming of returning to Netzarim and Gush Katif with its small settlements, which included 21 settlements that extended along the coast of the Gaza Strip and were inhabited by 8,600 settlers. This convoy extends from Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben Gvir, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu from the “Jewish Power” party, and Education Minister Yoav Kisch from the “Likud” party to Rabbi Manes Friedman, who talks a lot about “Torah values” or “the Jewish way” in war and includes the move to return settlements to the Gaza Strip and does not end with reserve soldiers coming from West Bank settlements.
In such an atmosphere, it seems natural for the supporters of this convoy to raise about 15 banners at the entrance to Jerusalem that read, “We are returning to Gaza,” with reference to a platform for collecting donations for the settlement. It also seems natural for artists to join the war, chanting in front of the soldiers, songs of “returning to ” Gush Katif, we play volleyball on the beach, we establish Nova Beach on the Gaza beach – and the people of Israel are alive.” In a hysteria fueled by the war of genocide and the invocation of myths, the percentage of supporters of the dream of a return to settlement in the Gaza Strip according to the results of a poll published by the Maariv newspaper last week, it turns out that 44% want to maintain Israeli control over the Gaza Strip, and that 22% of those polled support Israel remaining in the Gaza Strip, including establishing settlements.
Settlers escalated their attacks over the weeks of aggression against the Gaza Strip to the point that they became a serious threat to the lives of Palestinian citizens, especially, in Bedouin communities and settlements throughout the West Bank, in addition to the lives of citizens in many towns and villages near the settlements. These attacks escalated in an unprecedented manner with the occupation government, the extremist Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, distributing thousands of permits to carry weapons to the settlers and allowing them to agree with the army to wear the military uniform of the border guards.
According to the National Bureau for Defending the Land and Resisting Settlement’s data, about 21 Palestinians have been martyred at the hands of settlers since the beginning of this year, 9 of them during last October, a number that far exceeds the number of Palestinians who were martyred at the hands of settlers in any of the previous ten years.
In parallel with the war of extermination and dreams of the return of settlement to the Gaza Strip, the Occupation Authorities are waging a displacement war in a number of areas of the West Bank using their well-known tools ‘settler militias’, exploiting the circumstances of the aggression against the Gaza Strip and the occupation army imposing martial law on the Palestinians in the areas adjacent to the settlements and outposts. The judiciary in Israel facilitates the task for these militias, especially after the Israeli Supreme Court decided in May 2023 that Israel has the authority to declare a large part of the South Hebron’s Hills area as a firing zone and displace about a thousand Palestinian residents who have lived there for generations.
Since the issuance of the decision, the new Israeli government headed by Netanyahu has escalated the displacement efforts at both the official and unofficial levels. The army imposed very severe restrictions on the freedom of movement of the population, in addition to those already in place in that area, and installed new barriers and closed roads with cement cubes and piles of soil, besides other arbitrary measures. A few settlers, who are participating in the displacement process, were recruited into the reserve during the war. They formed emergency teams for this mission and carry out their mission within the framework of their military service.
As for members of the occupation police, they threaten Palestinians who file complaints. According to the Israeli media, these emergency teams arrest whoever they want and do whatever they want in the streets of Mount Hebron, for example but not limited to, where you always see cars with yellow lights, which are the emergency team cars that increased here during the war. These extremist settler emergency team members are armed and now wear military uniforms instead of civilian clothes. In the past weeks, they have completed the displacement of 16 Palestinian communities, 6 of which are in the south of Mount Hebron.
Thugs of the emergency teams are the heroes of the transfer and ethnic cleansing in the south of Mount Hebron and in the areas south of the towns of Al-Samou’ and Al-Dhahiriya and in Masafer Yatta. They started with the village of Zanouta, which was raided by settlers coming from the “Havat Matrim” settlement, followed by the village of Razim near Al-Samou, then the Tiran community, the village of Susya and others. The residents of the “Al-Qanoub” community, located east of the town of Sa’ir, in the Hebron Governorate also found that settlers had demolished their homes after forcing them to leave at the beginning of this month and set up tents in the place, knowing that 5 families consisted of 27 individuals were living in the there.
Within the context, the right-wing settlers are working to limit Palestinian construction in Areas C, as Hebrew sources reported that the right-wing settler “Ragbim” movement, which follows up the construction in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, published a map through which it claimed the Palestinian Authority plans to build along the contact line, which poses a threat similar to what happened during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. According to data presented by “Ragbim,” 7,675 buildings were erected in the area 4 km wide from the contact line in the West Bank, which are supposed to remain empty for security considerations.
The sources also indicated that since the beginning of the aggression on the Gaza Strip, security and political theories have been re-examined, as Abraham Benjamin, director of the policy department in the “Ragbim” movement said, “The ‘Time Bomb’ in the West Bank is much more dangerous than Hamas in Gaza. We have been warning throughout the previous years against intensive and dangerous Palestinian construction’, while sources in the Civil Administration confirmed that they have been working over the past years to limit the construction that threatens the Israelis.
Abuses of the Emergency Brigade Thugs, which have become synonymous with the “Hilltop Youth” and “Pay the Price” terrorist thugs, does not stop work to displace the Palestinians from their areas, but rather goes beyond that as both Smotrich and Ben Gvir provided money and weapons, they are displaying their strength in every direction, including preventing farmers from picking their olive fruits, a step on the way to later turning them into security areas and a vital field for settlement expansion in all the governorates of the West Bank, with a focus on the governorates of Nablus, Salfeet, Ramallah, and Hebron, encouraged by Smotrich, Ben Gvir, Zvi Sukkot, and heads of settlement councils, such as, Yossi Dagan and Shlomo Neman, where more than 350 violent attacks were recorded by settlers, who were moving around in military clothing against olive pickers over the last weeks of the brutal war waged by Israel on the Gaza Strip, compared to only 38 last year, knowing that more than 50 of these attacks were carried out by regular soldiers, who have been using live ammunition as well as poisonous gases to incite terror among the citizens and expel them from their olive fields in all areas adjacent to the settlements, and even in broader areas that the occupation army declared them as closed military areas.
On the other hand, according to the Institute of Applied Sciences ‘ARIJ’, the Occupation Authorities has recently issued new military orders aimed at seizing large areas of Palestinian land under the pretext of protecting natural reserves and forest areas. The first targeted area is about 8,857.7 dunums of Palestinian land located to the west of the Dead Sea, starting from the Avinat settlement, along bypass road n. 90. The second area is about 409.8 dunums of Palestinian land under the pretext that it is a natural reserve to the west of the Dead Sea area, while the third areas in Jenin Governorate, estimated at about 1,212 dunums. It is known that many of these areas are later converted into settlements or military bases.
List of Israeli Assaults over the Last Week Documented by the National Bureau:
Jerusalem:
- Demolishing a house in the Al-Issawiya town belonging to the citizen Mahran Darwish, where he lives with his family of 5 members, under the pretext of building without a license,
- Demolishing a residential building in the town of Al-Za’im belonging to the Jerusalemite citizen Mahmoud Muhammad Abu Al-Hawa, consisting of 4 floors, each measuring 360m2 on a land of 1,360m2, under the same pretext
Hebron:
- Demolishing 6 homes, a sheep barn, and a well, and destroyed a water network and agricultural crops in Masafer Yatta in the village of Sha’ab al-Batam. The homes belonged to citizens Ishaq Mahmoud al-Jabareen and Ibrahim Jibreen al-Jabareen, and they house about 20 citizens, they were left out in the open, with the aim of expanding the “Avigal” settlement adjacent to the village.
- Demolishing a water-well, water line connecting to the Wadi Ajhish area, and destroyed agricultural crops near the Ma’in community in the Ghaziwa area.
- Cutting down a number of fruit trees, and demolished a tent and its facilities, as well as agricultural equipment and a water network were stolen near the “Khavat Ma’on” settlement.
- Torching the Zanuta Mixed Basic School, south of Hebron, which led to the burning of 3 classrooms, and beaten school employees.
- Attacking homes of citizens in the Qaywis area in Musafer Yatta, and beaten citizens Khaled Musa Al-Najjar, 70, and vandalized Jibril Musa Al-Na’min’s property, and seized their equipment.
- Injuring 2 citizens and 2 foreign journalists and assaulted them under the protection of Israeli occupation forces near the village of Susiya, south of Hebron.
- Attacked and beaten the citizen Saeed Al-Amour in the village of Al-Rakeez, searched his house, and wreaked havoc on its contents.
Bethlehem:
- Preventing citizens from picking olives in the town of Nahalin and the village of Kisan after they stormed the “Al-Matarsiyeh” area north of Nahalin amidst gunfire, and forced farmers to evacuate their lands and warned them against returning to the area.
- Seizing an excavator in the village of Al-Jabaa, belonging to the citizen Naeem Hamdan, who was reclaiming a citizen’s land in the “Hasniyeh” area, south of the village.
- Stealing the contents of an agricultural room in the Kaisan wilderness, including solar cells, an electricity generator, and livestock rearing items, belonging to the citizen Saleh Ahmed Abayat, others attacked the citizen, Ibrahim Aweidah Sawark, 38, beaten him, and stole a number of heads of livestock from him.
Ramallah:
- Expelling several farmers from their lands in the Al-Muzaira’a area, north of Sinjil, and prevented them from completing the olive harvest in an area located between residential homes under the pretext that it is close to the old Nablus Street.
Nablus:
- Attacking olive pickers in the village of Burin and stole the fruits, picking machines, mattresses, and their personal phones.
- Preventing farmers in the village of Al-Sawiya from picking olives and forced them to leave their lands in the eastern area of the village. A young man was also injured by live bullets in the thigh area after settlers shot him while he was in Khirbet Tana, which is part of the Beit Furik lands. He was transferred to the hospital to receive treatment.
- Storming 2 water springs in the village of Qaryut, others attacked farmers in Khirbet Yanun, which belongs to the lands of Aqraba, and forced them to leave their lands and stole equipment and the olive crop.
- Seizing about 2.5 dunums of land from the towns of Huwwara and Burin under the pretext of using them for military purposes.
- Attacking the olive pickers, opened fire on them, scattered the fruits on the ground, and forced the farmers to leave, smashed the windows of one of the vehicles in the Yanun village.
Salfeet:
- Detaining the Harb family for several hours, including citizen Naeem Harb and his son Firas, before releasing them while they were picking olives in the village of Iskaka, east of Salfeet.
- Uprooting 12 olive trees in the “Al-Ras” area, west of Salfeet, and stole 20 other fruits, which belonged to the citizen. Ibrahim Al-Hamad, and still preventing the people of Salfeet from reaching their lands in that area t collect their olives.
Qalqilia:
- Banning the construction of homes within the structural map of the city of Qalqilya, Area A, as the owners of these houses have licenses issued by the Planning Department in the Municipality of Qalqilya, as they are within the structural map of the city and have the authority to allow construction. Citizen Bassam Yassin from the city of Qalqilya said, ‘His house is located in Khallet Yassin, north of the city of Qalqilya.” He was surprised when the occupation army stormed the city and went to his house and held up a decision issued by the district commander the occupation army during the past weeks that bans construction in the house on the second or third floor.
