This headline in the Israeli newspaper the Jerusalem Post only tells part of the story: “The Lions’ Den Other Palestinian Groups are Endless Headache for Israel PA.”
It is true that both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority are equally worried about the prospect of a widespread armed revolt in the Occupied West Bank and that the newly formed Nablus-based brigade the Lions’ Den is the epicenter of this youth-led movement.
However the growing armed resistance in the West Bank is causing more than a mere ‘headache’ for Tel Aviv and Ramallah. If this phenomenon continues to grow it could threaten the very existence of the PA while placing Israel before its most difficult choice since the invasion of major Palestinian West Bank cities in 2002.
Though Israeli military commanders continue to undermine the power of the newly formed group they seem to have no clear idea regarding its roots influence and future impact.
In a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz claimed that the Lions’ Den is a “group of 30 members” who will eventually be reached and eliminated. “We will lay our hands on the terrorists” he declared.
The Lions’ Den however is not an isolated case but part of a larger phenomenon that includes the Nablus Brigades the Jenin Brigades and other groups which are located mostly in the northern West Bank.
The group along with other armed Palestinian military units has been active in responding to the killing of Palestinians including children elders and on October 14 even a Palestinian doctor Abdullah Abu Al-Teen who succumbed to his wounds in Jenin. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health over 170 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and Gaza since the beginning of the year.
The Palestinian response included the killing of two Israeli soldiers one in Shuafat on 8 October and the other near Nablus on 11 October.
Following the Shuafat attack Israel completely sealed the Shuafat refugee camp as a form of collective punishment similar to recent sieges on Jenin and other Palestinian towns.
Citing Israel’s Hebrew media the Palestinian Arabic daily Al Quds reported that the Israeli military will focus its operations in the coming weeks on targeting the Lions’ Den. Thousands more Israeli occupation soldiers are likely to be deployed in the West Bank for the upcoming battle.
It is difficult to imagine that Israel would mobilize much of its army to fight 30 Palestinian fighters in Nablus. But not only Israel the PA too is terribly concerned.
The Authority has tried but failed to entice the fighters by offering them a surrender ‘deal’ where they give up their arms and join the PA forces. Such deals were offered in the past to fighters belonging to Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades with mixed degrees of success.
This time around the strategy did not work. The group rejected the PA’s overtures compelling the Fatah-affiliated governor of Nablus Ibrahim Ramadan to attack the mothers of the fighters by calling them ‘deviant’ for “sending their sons to commit suicide”. Ramadan’s language which is similar to language used by Israeli and pro-Israel individuals in their depiction of Palestinian society highlights the massive schisms between the PA’s political discourse and those of ordinary Palestinians.
Not only is the PA losing its grasp of the narrative but it is also losing whatever vestiges of control it has left in the West Bank especially in Nablus and Jenin.
A senior Palestinian official told the Media Line that the Palestinian “street does not trust us any more” as they “view us as an extension of Israel”. True but this lack of trust has been in the making for years.
The ‘Unity Intifada’ of May 2021 however served as a major turning point in the relationship between the PA and Palestinians. The rise of the Lions’ Den and other Palestinian armed groups are but a few manifestations of the dramatic changes underway in the West Bank.
Indeed the West Bank is changing. A new generation that has little or no memory of the Second Intifada (2000-2005) had not experienced the Israeli invasion then but grew up under occupation and apartheid feeding on the memories of the resistance in Jenin Nablus and Hebron.
Judging by their political discourse chants and symbols this generation is fed up with the crippling and often superficial divisions of Palestinians among factions ideologies and regions. In fact the newly established brigades including the Lions’ Den are believed to be multi-factional groups bringing for the first time fighters from Hamas Fatah and others into a single platform. This explains the popular enthusiasm and lack of suspicion among ordinary Palestinians of the new fighters.
For example Saed Al-Kuni a Palestinian fighter who was recently killed by Israeli soldiers in an ambush on the outskirts of Nablus was a member of the Lions’ Den. Some have claimed that Al-Kuni was a leading member of Fatah’s Brigades and others say he was a well-known Hamas fighter.
This lack of certainty regarding the political identity of killed fighters is fairly unique to Palestinian society at least since the establishment of the PA in 1994.
Expectedly Israel will do what it always does: amassing more occupation troops attacking assassinating crushing protests and laying sieges on rebellious towns and refugee camps. What they fail to understand at least for now is that the growing rebellion in the West Bank is not generated by a few fighters in Nablus and a few more in Jenin but is the outcome of a truly popular sentiment.
In an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth translated by Al-Quds an Israeli commander described what he has witnessed in Jenin during a raid:
“When we enter (Jenin) armed fighters and stone throwers wait for us in every corner. Everyone takes part. You look at an old man … and you wonder will he throw stones? And he does. Once I saw a person who had nothing to throw (on us). He rushed to his car grabbed a milk carton and he threw it on us.”
Palestinians are simply fed up with the Israeli occupation and with their collaborating leadership. They are ready to put it all on the line; in fact in Jenin and Nablus they already have. The coming weeks and months are critical for the future of the West Bank and in fact for all Palestinians.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC).
