In recent years, the West Bank has witnessed a remarkable escalation in resistance activity against the Israeli occupation, as the resistance factions adopted tactics that are more painful to the occupation forces, and the scope of their operations expanded to include new areas in addition to the Jenin camp, which became a symbol of resistance.
According to a report prepared by Islam Khader, the occupation forces made great efforts in an attempt to restrict the resistance, and resorted to a policy of gradually nibbling away at Palestinian lands, through establishing settlements and outposts, deploying hundreds of military barriers and checkpoints, and paving roads to serve the settlers, with the aim of severing the Palestinian geography and preventing the spread of the resistance.
However, the Palestinian resistance surprised the occupation by changing the equation on the ground, as the scope of its operations expanded to include other cities such as Nablus, Tulkarm, and Tubas, and its forms diversified to go beyond momentary clashes to more complex and qualitative operations.
New factions
New resistance factions emerged in these cities, as the Lions’ Den Battalion disturbed Israel in Nablus. It was launched from the city’s old town and was formed from resistance fighters who belonged politically to various factions. In Tulkarm, the Tulkarm Battalion, affiliated with the Al-Quds Brigades, was active in the Nour Shams camp, along with a second battalion called the “Rapid Response”, which was stationed in the Tulkarm camp and included fighters from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and the Al-Quds Brigades.
The first half of last year also witnessed the implementation of hundreds of individual and factional operations that affected wide areas, including Hebron, occupied Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv.
The methods of carrying out the operations varied to include direct shooting attacks, planned stabbing operations, car attacks, double ambushes, in addition to the return of the suicide operations that struck deep inside the Israeli entity.
Israel is trying hard to understand the mechanisms that enabled the resistance factions to escalate their field operations, but it lacks answers for its domestic audience, which has come to realize that Israeli deterrence has become a thing of the past, and that it has no choice but to use brute force and demographic expansion, in a desperate attempt to restore its lost image and military prestige.