HebronLess than 48 hours after a double attack by two Palestinians in the center of the Etzion settlement bloc north of Hebron in the southern West Bank, the shooting took place a few kilometers away on a settlement road reinforced with the latest tracking devices, near the Tarqumiya crossing west of the city.
Today’s operation resulted in the killing of 3 Israeli police officers, and came at a time when the occupation’s security and military forces were at their peak after the Etzion operation, and amid a state of alert that all West Bank cities have been experiencing since the outbreak of the war on Gaza on October 7, in addition to measures and closures that preceded this date.
The two Hebron operations raise questions about whether they were organized by Palestinian factions or individuals, and why the occupation authorities did not succeed in preventing them before they occurred, especially with a long record of settlement street operations in the West Bank since the first Intifada in 1987.
According to data from the Palestinian Information Center “Ma’ti”, 4,012 shootings targeting occupation soldiers and settlers have taken place in the West Bank since 2018.
Attrition and intelligence failure
Director of the Yabous Center for Research and Studies in Ramallah, Suleiman Basharat, believes that what is happening indicates that Israel is now on the verge of a phase of horizontal attrition in the West Bank, after the resistance operations moved from the northern areas of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley to the southern areas.
He added that this move in itself constitutes a failure in the Israeli policies that tried to confine the resistance work to the northern West Bank and to launch a military operation to besiege this model without it moving to other areas.
Regarding the form and nature of the development in the southern West Bank, Basharat said, “If we link the implementation of the car bombing operation and then the shooting operation in the Hebron area today, this excludes the hypothesis of individual action and indicates that there is an organizational structure based on preparation, planning, and implementation.”
Hence, “we are now on the verge of another phase in the form and nature of resistance work in the West Bank, which may establish the basis for expanding the state of confrontation in light of the Israeli continuation of the war on the Gaza Strip, and also in light of the escalation of practices by settlers and the Israeli army in the West Bank,” the Palestinian researcher added.
Basharat points out another matter, which is that the Israeli occupation is now suffering from a complex failure on the intelligence level. “It is unreasonable for all these military operations to be launched in sensitive areas and at the height of the strict security measures and succeed in causing this number of deaths and injuries, without this being an indication of a state of confusion in the Israeli security system.”
He did not rule out that the reason for this failure was the discrepancy between the vision of the Israeli security and military establishment and the momentum that the political level is trying to impose to establish a new reality or to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians.
renewed will
On the other hand, the director of the Yabous Center continues, “It is difficult to ignore that without the Palestinian will to confront and a popular incubator and environment that rejects the continuation of the occupation and its practices, the resistance actions cannot succeed or continue. They are not the product of a moment in time, but rather throughout the Israeli occupation since 1948, and the state of Palestinian struggle is ongoing.”
He added that resistance operations may decline at certain stages, but they will soon return to the forefront as a real response to the occupation’s practices against the Palestinians. “It has become clear in recent days that the Palestinians no longer have any choice but to defend themselves in light of the failure of the international legal, human rights and political system to provide the most basic elements of protection for the Palestinians, but on the contrary, in light of clear American and Western support for the occupation.”
For his part, Professor of Media at Hebron University and political analyst Saeed Shaheen says that the success of the two Hebron operations within a very short time frame “confirms the failure of the Israeli security system.”
He explains that the continuation of the operations comes “despite attempts to cauterize and tame national consciousness over the past two decades, and the Israeli security establishment’s adoption of a carrot-and-stick policy to dissuade the Palestinians from supporting their people in Gaza in the face of the war of extermination.”
He added that the heavy questions that trouble the conscience of the Palestinian regarding the situation in Gaza made him move with simple tools to confront the occupation’s settlement plans aimed at killing the dream and stifling the idea of resistance and liberation.
Security confusion
The media professor continued, “Today’s operation and yesterday’s operations are an indication that there are armed and resistance cells operating in an organized manner and with precise planning, and that this will represent a major challenge to the Israeli security system and will make it reconsider its approach to dealing in a different way that is not based on viewing the Palestinian in the southern West Bank as submissive and susceptible to all forms of collective punishment.”
He pointed out that the occupation’s sanctions have made life almost impossible, “especially if we take into account the ongoing closure and dismemberment of the West Bank since October 7, in addition to the fact that some checkpoints are still closing some towns since Operation Defensive Shield, which came in the wake of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2000.”
In the opinion of the Palestinian academic, Israel is unable to confront these operations because most of them come from individual decisions or within very small organized cells, which confuses the security level within the occupying state.
He concluded that the Palestinian does not accept surrender and submission despite the iron fist policy and the atrocities and crimes he is committing against the Palestinian people.