Israel and the international community repeat the mistakes, and the occupation has no right to self-defense while we have the right to resist it
For decades, the international community, including Israel›s allies, has treated the West Bank and Gaza Strip as occupied Palestinian territories, and Israel›s practices in these territories as illegal and lacking legitimacy. If the passage of time does not grant the occupier any rights, then the people whose land is occupied have the right to resort to all forms of struggle to liberate their land, including armed resistance. Therefore, the occupier has no rights in the territories it occupies other than to withdraw unconditionally, including the illegality of so-called «self-defense.»
It appears that the continued negative engagement with the developments of the Palestinian issue by Israel and the international community will perpetuate the state of conflict, expected to increase in the coming period due to Israel›s continued occupational policies in the West Bank and Jerusalem. If the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood was a natural reaction to the occupation and its crimes, after the world turned a deaf ear to the screams of the Palestinian people for 76 years, what is happening in the West Bank today indicates that Israel insists on the same occupational and colonial policy rejected by all Palestinians, who will confront the plans to strip them of their land and freedom in various forms of struggle.
Since mid-2024, the Israeli occupation forces have launched a military operation that particularly targeted the northern area of the occupied West Bank. The intensity of this operation has increased in recent weeks, specifically since the beginning of the truce deal in the Gaza Strip, as if there was a side deal struck between Israel and the United States, with coverage from some European countries, allowing the Zionist army to act freely in parts of the West Bank, specifically in the cities and camps of Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, and others, resulting in the martyrdom of dozens of Palestinians and the complete destruction and displacement of entire neighborhoods.
In reading what is happening, the «Israeli military operation» can only be seen in the context of the annexation and decisive plan, which is the official program of the fascist government in Israel. The most prominent elements of this announced program include annexing large areas of the West Bank, amounting to two-thirds of its area, and displacing its population and arresting or killing those who refuse. More specifically, the only charge against the Palestinian resistance factions in the West Bank, which fight in defense of their people, land, and camps, is their refusal of this plan and also the separation of the West Bank from the Gaza Strip or the exploitation of Palestinian land for settlement purposes and serving the annexation plan.
To this end, Israel has taken a number of measures, whether at the level of the army and civil administration, or in terms of applying Israeli laws to settlements or confiscating Palestinian lands. This confirms that Israel wants to pass this plan gradually and under misleading titles including «fighting terrorist organizations» or «right to self-defense» and other labels that have all been exploited to serve that plan called by the Western countries, especially the United States and some European countries.
The escalating aggression on some cities of the West Bank for about two months has led to the displacement of more than fifty thousand Palestinians, after the destruction of hundreds of homes, some of which were burned, and land leveling, in addition to destroying infrastructure. This is a policy officially adopted by the Israeli army, which deployed its tanks and aircraft in targeting homes and destroying them over the heads of their residents. The humanitarian problem has worsened unprecedentedly due to restrictions imposed on the work of the Relief Agency because of Israeli laws recently enacted that prevented it and its staff from conducting any service operations for the refugees and displaced from areas destroyed by the Israeli army.
Despite this, Western countries have closed their eyes to what is happening and settled for statements of condemnation and complaint, without translating their positions into deterrent actions. Instead of exerting serious pressure on Israel to force it to recognize the rights of the Palestinian people, they practiced a policy of blackmail against the Palestinian people, and this was evident in the suspension or cutting off of the financial contribution designated for the UN agency (UNRWA), in an open bias in favor of Israel, which claimed that some UNRWA staff participated in the October 7 battle, without providing any evidence to support its claims.
More than 90 percent of the residents of the Tulkarm camp, for example, were forced by the occupation forces to leave the camp, and more than twenty thousand were forced to leave the Jenin camp, as well as hundreds of families from the Nur Shams and Al-Far›a camps were forcibly displaced, making the number of displaced from the northern West Bank camps more than fifty thousand displaced. This was accompanied by systematic destruction of infrastructure, including water and electricity networks, and health and educational centers, with the aim of making the camps uninhabitable, as expressed by more than one Israeli official.
All these crimes committed by the occupation in the West Bank and its camps will not achieve their goals, and the Palestinian people are capable of thwarting the plans of the occupying state for ethnic cleansing and displacement through their steadfastness on their land and their valiant resistance. We are certain that the popular movements of the free peoples across all countries of the world, their parties, political elites, positions, and initiatives towards the governments of Western countries will provide the Palestinian people with the determination to continue resisting and confronting the war of genocide, making those steadfast and resistant in Palestine feel they are not alone, and that the free people of the world are part of this victorious battle based on right, history, justice, law, and the resilience of the Palestinian people and their steadfastness on their land and the support of honorable parties, unions, institutions, organizations, and global community figures.
We invite you to continue your supportive activities, whether through movements in the streets, through social media platforms, or through direct financial support for the relief of those steadfast in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, or in all forms of expression in rejecting the war crimes committed by Israeli fascism in partnership with many Western and Atlantic countries. Just as the resilience of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip triumphed over the Western Israeli war machine, we are certain that victory in the West Bank will be the ally of the Palestinian people and the forces and peoples supporting them, and we have every confidence in our friends and allies in continuing their support and solidarity with our people until the Zionist Western plans in Palestine and the region are thwarted.