A Palestinian was shot dead on Tuesday by the Israeli army in the city of Nablus, in the northern occupied West Bank, the latest in a series of violent incidents in two weeks, which have claimed 30 lives. A total of 14 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks and 16 Palestinians in Israeli Army operations in the West Bank., which have triggered strong armed clashes. Analysts warn that the celebrations of Ramadan and Jewish Passover could be clouded by a total escalation of violence.
The first attack was on March 22 in Beersheba, in southern Israel. Five days later, while the Arab, Israeli, and American leaders met in a historic summit, the second arrived in the north of the country. Hardly two days passed and there was a new attack in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. The fourth attack reached the heart of the capital on the festive night of last Thursday. This Tuesday a new frustrated stabbing without victims in the north of the country occupied the news. Altogether, they have killed 14 people. Israel lives its bloodiest days of the last three decades.
military offensive
In response, the Israeli authorities have deployed their entire military arsenal inside and outside Israel’s borders. “We will be in all places at any time necessary to stop these terrorist attacks; Israel goes on the offensive“announced the prime minister, Naftali Bennett. The first two attacks were carried out by Palestinian citizens of Israel while the rest were carried out by Palestinians from the occupied West Bank. Therefore, this offensive has been extended to several fronts. The first on the border, since the Israeli Government has announced a plan to 86 million euros to reinforce the separation wall.
On the other hand, the Army has deep into Palestinian townships to arrest and punish those involved or related to the attackers. In Jenin, bastion of the Palestinian resistance, arrests and incursions into the refugee camp, where the Tel Aviv attacker was from, follow one another. The raids by Israeli troops have sparked clashes and fatal shootings on the Palestinian side. In addition, only this Sunday four people, including two women, were killed in separate incidents in the occupied territories. Following the vandalism of the Jewish holy site of the Joseph’s Tomb on saturday in Nablus, the Israeli Army is also deployed in this northern city. A 34-year-old Palestinian activist, the lawyer Mohamed Assafdied this Tuesday after being shot in the chest while taking his children to school.
possible escalation
Almost a year ago, the repression of the Israeli forces on the Palestinian protests lit a large-scale conflict. Israel’s offensive on the Gaza Strip has left more than 250 Palestinians dead and dozens of buildings and infrastructure destroyed. On the Israeli side, 13 people were killed. This Ramadan the fear of a repeat of the violence seems about to become a reality. “A potential problem is the number of Palestinian deaths, of which the Israelis are little aware,” he analyzes Amos Harel in ‘time’. “The death of the fighters in Jenin reinforces the spirit of resistance and widens the circle of revenge”point.
Many analysts stress that this spiral of violence was a tragedy foretold. More of half a century of Israeli occupation over the West Bank has doomed the Palestinians to anger and frustration. “Young they have lost hope in everything, without work, disorientation and daily attacks by the Israeli forces; They lost many colleagues, friends, and neighbors,” he explained. Fathi Hazem, the father of the Tel Aviv attacker, to ‘Al Jazeera’ when asked about the reasons that could have led his children to open fire in a bar. It seems that the occupation seams they are not able to bear this suffocation any longer.
Ignorant of the “other side”
“Furthermore, many former members of Israel’s security level have confessed that keeping millions of people under a system sustained by force can never guarantee safety in the long term, but Israel’s political, military and cultural elites have continued to ignore these warnings,” denounces the editor-in-chief of the magazine ‘+972’, Edo Konrad. And it is that the attacks on Israeli soil have taken by surprise a population that ignores, in general terms, the oppression of the Palestinian people, living in “a psychological bubble to eliminate any interest in “how the other half lives”.
Konrad points out that “that bubble it only shakes at sporadic moments in which a rocket, a knife or a gun is turned against us from the “other side”, forcing us to remember the millions we have living under our boot “. This time, the collective punishment It has also reached Israeli citizens with the withdrawal of social benefits to the relatives of the attackers. Furthermore, Israel’s alliances with Arab states and the consequent abandonment of the Palestinian cause aggravate the anger. They only seem to have knives and bullets to raise your voiceeven if it is in a gasp overflowing with despair before dying.