West Bank – Not 24 hours had passed since the Israeli occupation assassinated Palestinian resistance fighters Ihab Abu Hamed and his companion Mahmoud Mansour last Friday afternoon in the city of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank, until the response came by killing an Israeli settler in the same city at the hands of “unknown persons,” according to what the Israeli occupation army spokesman described. .
The assassination of Abu Hamed and Mansour is the second carried out by the occupation since October 7, 2023, against resistance fighters in the city of Qalqilya, and it was very similar in purpose, location, and method of implementation to its predecessor, which targeted the resistance fighters Alaa Nazzal and Anas Qaraqi early last December.
The occupation detained the bodies of the martyrs and refused to hand them over to their families, in what appears to be an attempt to eradicate the phenomenon of resistance in the city of Qalqilya, where it has spread recently and has become effective and influential.
Armed resistance emerged in Qalqilya less than a year ago, as did several areas in the northern West Bank, such as Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarm.
The resistance in Qalqilya took on the beginning of an “individual character,” embodied by the martyr Alaa Nazzal, who was assassinated by the occupation and his companion Anas Daoud at the beginning of last December. However, resistance fighters then rushed to form the “Leoth Al-Majd Groups” affiliated with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and affiliated with the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah), according to journalist and person familiar with the conditions of Qalqilya, Ahmed Shawar.
Months later, the “Qalqilya Brigade – Al-Quds Brigades” affiliated with the Islamic Jihad Movement was formed, and although its flashes faded at first, it returned and announced in a statement, at the beginning of this month, the launch of its first resistance action by detonating an explosive device with an occupation force that stormed the city.
Individual character
As for the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), it had previously claimed responsibility – according to Shawar – for detonating an explosive device at the Israeli military checkpoint north of the city.
She soon claimed responsibility for carrying out an armed ambush, and opened fire on a bus of settlers, injuring two of them, one of them seriously. The most dangerous thing is that she photographed the ambush and lured the occupation soldiers to a car bomb that she used in the operation.
Despite this, the resistance actions and its formations in Qalqilya, according to Shawar, focused on confronting the occupation army’s incursions into the city, and targeting its surrounding military checkpoints as well as its military points on the separation wall.
In the face of all of this, Israel is pursuing these resistance fighters with all its might, and is striving to prevent their expansion and spread in the city, which is located on the dividing line between the territories occupied in 1967 and those occupied by Israel in 1948.
Therefore, Shawar told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “Israel carried out assassinations against these resistance fighters, pursued those who remained of them, and put strong pressure on them to surrender themselves, and arrested their families for the same purpose.”
Causes and factors of resistance
This emergence of armed resistance in Qalqilya and its growing strength is attributed by the coordinator of the National Forces in Qalqilya, Adwan Barham, to the “unity of the situation” that the city is experiencing with all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Adding to this is the specificity of its suffering and the siege of occupation and settlement that took over most of its lands.
The Qalqilya region has great strategic importance as it is located above the Western Water Basin, which constitutes 64% of the West Bank’s groundwater.
Barham told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “We are now living inside a bottle. The occupation closes two out of three main outlets to the city, and the only eastern outlet sets up a military point next to it for the army and closes it whenever it wants.”
Political and economic pressures also contributed, according to Barham, to the emergence of armed resistance. As for its delay, he attributes it to “the maturity of the appropriate conditions for the event, which confirms that Qalqilya is not isolated, but rather connected to what is happening in the homeland.”
The National Forces Coordinator believes that the resistance in Qalqilya has a popular incubator and enjoys sympathy from the people, but it is not the same as the resistance enjoyed in the refugee camps in the northern West Bank, where social cohesion, overcrowding, and the complex geography of the place help it more than in open areas such as cities.
Despite this, the occupation will not succeed in eradicating the resistance in Qalqilya, says Barham, just as it did not succeed elsewhere in the West Bank thanks to the popular incubator and understanding of the existence of this resistance, in addition to the general rule that “as long as there is occupation of the land, there is resistance.”
Israel surrounds the city and villages of Qalqilya with more than 25 settlements and settlement outposts that it has erected on its lands since 1975. It controls more than half of its area, and is inhabited by hard-line settlers such as Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whose population is equal to the Palestinian population of the governorate.
Only 3% of the governorate’s land, estimated at about 170 thousand dunums, is classified as Areas “A” and “B,” which are administratively subject to the Palestinian Authority in accordance with the Oslo Accords, and 97% of them are Areas “C,” which are security and administratively subject to the Israeli occupation, where it is difficult for citizens to reach their lands.
Resistance to proving existence
Qalqilya suffered like other Palestinian cities after October 7, 2023, according to the director of the Wall and Settlement Authority in the northern West Bank, Murad Shteiwi, who hails from the region.
According to Shteiwi, the occupation closed the entrances to its villages with barriers and iron gates, and installed 3 military towers and a permanent camp in others, such as the town of Azzun, and turned the area into a military barracks, killing 26 Palestinians from it since the war on Gaza.
The occupation also took a military decision through the Supreme Court to speed up the construction of a settlement bypass road through the villages of eastern Qalqilya, and further restricted the movement of citizens by tightening its military measures at its entrance, and escalated its incursions and attacks on the city under the pretext of pursuing wanted persons.
For his part, the expert on military affairs, Major General Youssef Al-Sharqawi, saw that what is happening is “a state of challenge and existential conflict” between the Palestinian people, represented by their rising youth, and the occupation, and that the Qalqilya resistance is an extension and reflection of the situation in the northern West Bank, which has been resisting for several years.
In an interview with Tel Aviv Tribune Net, Al-Sharqawi expected that resistance would escalate in light of the blockage of any political horizon and the silence of the Palestinian Authority. He added, “The absence of a position from the Authority means the growth of the state of resistance, as the Palestinian people will not allow the occupation to break it and end its existence.”
The settlers had previously incited against Qalqilya, and claimed that they were living in terror that threatened the settlements surrounding it, such as the settlements surrounding Gaza.
According to estimates published by the Israeli “Wala” news website last Sunday, the number of militants in Qalqilya is less than in other cities such as Tulkarm and Jenin, but they are trying to imitate the patterns of resistance in those cities and carry out shooting operations, and they receive money from abroad.