2023-10-20 19:00:13
An explosion, and a deflagration that resonates all the way to the West Bank. On the evening of October 17, several tens of thousands of Palestinians, keffiyeh around their necks, took to the streets of Ramallah, Jenin and Nablus. Hamas, the Islamist group behind the attack on October 7 which cost the lives of 1,400 Israelis, announces that an Israeli bombing of the Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza left several hundred dead. The Jewish state attributes the explosion to Islamic Jihad. The American intelligence services and several Western media investigations, including those of the “Guardian”, “Le Monde” and “Libération”, also favor the probability of a defective rocket or missile coming from Gaza.
But that evening, the West Bank went up in flames, like several Arab capitals, to protest against the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the continuous Israeli bombardments having caused the death of 4,100 Palestinians and the displacement of nearly a million people. between them. Among the demonstrators, the anger is such that it even directly targets Mahmoud Abbas, 88 years old, head of the Palestinian Authority since 2005 and accused of abandoning the Palestinian cause.
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The return of the Palestinian cause
Since the outbreak of the new conflict, all Palestinians in the West Bank, from cafes or apartments, have been tuned to television or radio to follow the progress of the situation in Gaza. Because October 7 marked the return to the forefront of the Palestinian question, as evidenced by the numerous demonstrations in the Arab world, but also in Cuba, the United States and Europe.
At the rate of bombings in Gaza, residents of the West Bank also have to face increased repression from the Israelis on their territory. Since October 7, clashes with the Israeli army or settlers have left more than 79 Palestinians dead and more than 1,300 injured, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. On October 13 alone, 16 Palestinians were killed after clashes with the Israeli army. There has not been such a deadly week for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005.
Explosion at Ahli-Arab hospital in Gaza: a tipping point in the war between Israel and Hamas?
Faced with this increase in violence, residents are avoiding any contact with the army of the Hebrew State but also with the settlers who are increasing the abuses in Palestinian territory, helped by the far-right Israeli minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, who claimed in a tweet to have provided them with weapons.
To avoid having to fight on a second front, Israel has further tightened its policy in the West Bank. “Since the start of the conflict, there has been an even stricter and more severe lockdown of the entire West Bank by the Israeli authorities,” reports Hasni Abidi, director of the Center for Studies and Research on the Arab and Mediterranean World in Geneva. Multiplication of check points, roadblocks and even unjustified arrests… Palestinians in the West Bank are increasingly suffering reprisals from the conflict in Gaza. While the roads are all controlled by the Jewish state, they hardly ever travel outside their city. Nearly 500 of them, wanted by the Israeli army, have been arrested since October 7 – almost 300 of whom were linked to Hamas, according to the IDF.
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Israel-Hamas war: in Gaza under the bombs
This increased repression is part of a context of tensions already omnipresent before the conflict. Because the violence has never stopped in the West Bank. The territory, which the Oslo Accords in 1993 envisaged would be the heart of a future Palestinian state, is, thirty years later, fragmented by Israeli settlements. More than 3 million Palestinians are suffering from the growing presence of settlers, whose number has quadrupled in three decades, from just over 100,000 to nearly 500,000. And this, despite a dozen resolutions condemning the occupation of the West Bank voted for by the UN. Bezalel Smotrich, ultra-religious Finance Minister, in the Netanyahu government since December 2022, would even like to see the number of settlers reach 1 million. To protect the Jewish inhabitants of the West Bank, in particular, the majority of Israeli IDF forces were in this Palestinian territory before the Hamas attack on October 7.
Violence that has never stopped in the West Bank
Tensions already appeared to have reached a point of no return between the Israeli army and the Palestinians in recent months. Israeli raids having intensified, the assault of 1,000 Israeli soldiers on Jenin last July, the most violent in twenty years, or that of May 2022 which led to the death of the American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, bear witness to this . On the Palestinian side, militia groups have continued to emerge, mainly in the refugee camps of Nablus or Jenin, bringing together for the most part young activists and fighters for the Palestinian cause. Like La Fosse aux Lions, a Palestinian armed group born in Nablus, which claimed responsibility for several assassinations of Israeli soldiers, and has since been decimated by the IDF.
The Palestinian Authority, entangled in its financial concerns and its security cooperation with Israel, seems incapable of putting an end to this cycle. It has even lost control of towns in the northern West Bank, which have become, according to the Israeli army, strongholds of Palestinian Islamist groups and hosting fighters financed by Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
“Even before October 7, the Palestinian Authority was conspicuous by its absence and was already discredited in the eyes of the Palestinians, reduced to a municipal authority without power and to its president Mahmoud Abbas, who failed to respond to the demands of its population in the face of the growing occupation”, analysis by Hasni Abidi.
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The Palestinian Authority discredited in the eyes of the Palestinians
The October 7 attack could further discredit the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority police forces even had to repel demonstrators this week with tear gas and grenades, when they wanted to protest in front of Mahmoud Abbas’ offices in Ramallah. “The people want the fall of the president”, several protesters even chanted. Considering their authority to be too passive, some of the Palestinians in the West Bank have not failed to show their support for Hamas. This is evidenced by the green tag on a wall in downtown Ramallah, representing Mohammed Deif, head of the military branch of Hamas and mastermind of the October 7 operation, the numerous green flags in the hands of demonstrators, or the celebrations in the streets of the West Bank on October 7, while the Hamas assault was still underway.
Palestinian protesters, wrapped in a Hamas flag, burn tires to express their support for Gaza near the Huwara checkpoint, in the occupied West Bank, October 13, 2023. (NASSER ISHTAYEH – SIPA)
“There is a part of the inhabitants of the West Bank who do not adhere to Hamas but to its objectives. At the launch of its operation on October 7, the group displayed its desire to release Palestinian detainees in Israel, to protect the Mosque Esplanade in Jerusalem and to put an end to the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. These are motivations that obviously speak to Palestinians in the West Bank,” analyzes Hasni Abidi. In the West Bank, since October 7, anger has been brewing. It could well mark the emergence of a new political situation.
Israel-Gaza: on the edge of the abyss
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