Photo: Palestinians inspect burned cars that were set on fire by Jewish settlers in the village of Burqa, northwest of the West Bank city of Nablus on June 5, 2023. (Photo: Mohammed Nasser/APA Images)
Key Developments (June 1 – 5)
- On Monday, June 5, Israeli forces killed Mohammad Tamimi,
who was only two years old. Tamimi was fatally shot near his village of
Nabi Saleh north of Ramallah two days earlier on Saturday and succumbed
to his wounds on Monday. Israeli military forces had ambushed a
Palestinian car on Saturday near the military watchtower erected at the
entrance of Nabi Saleh, and as Israeli forces chased the vehicle and
fired bullets directly at it, they shot the two-year-old in his head and
his father in the shoulder as they stood in front of their home near
the entrance of the village. Tamimi’s body was withheld by Israeli
forces briefly and released later in the afternoon to Palestinian
authorities. His final burial in his home village is scheduled for
Tuesday, June 6.
- Also on Monday, the body of Hatem Abu Nijmeh,
killed almost a month and a half ago by an armed Israeli settler in
Jerusalem after allegedly carrying out an attack that injured at least
eight, was delivered to his family. Abu Nijmeh’s body was returned on
the condition that only 25 people attend the funeral and that they must
pass an Israeli security background check. Israeli authorities continue
to withhold at least 130 Palestinian bodies, including that of the late Khader Adnan, who died inside the Ramleh prison clinic after 86 days on hunger strike.
- On Saturday, June 3, an Egyptian police officer conducted an armed attack on Israeli forces stationed near the Egyptian-Israeli border, killing two Israeli military personnel
while fatally wounding a third, who succumbed to wounds hours later.
The Egyptian officer was also killed in the exchange of fire.
- On Thursday, June 1, at around 2:00 a.m., Israeli forces invaded
Tulkarem refugee camp, after which armed confrontations between the army
and local residents ensued. Israeli forces have continued to conduct
nightly raids on Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank. Tulkarem
became more active in armed resistance activities earlier this year with
the rise of the “Tulkarem Rapid Response Brigade.”
- Also on Thursday, Israeli forces arrested more than 20 young men
from the town of Taquo’ in Bethlehem and conducted “field
interrogations,” releasing several of the men afterward and detaining
others.
- Hours following the raids on Tulkarem and Bethlehem, Israeli forces
also invaded the Aqbat Jabr refugee camp in Jericho with several
military vehicles, and additional military forces were deployed on
Jerusalem Street in Jericho. Israeli forces have continuously targeted
the Aqbat Jabr refugee camp following the rise of the Aqbat Jabr brigade.
In January of this year, Israeli forces invaded the camp, destroyed
several homes belonging to the families of men affiliated with the
brigade, and extrajudicially assassinated five of them.
- At around the same time as the invasion of the Aqbat Jabr brigade in
Jericho, Israeli forces shut down public streets and entrances for
Luban Sharqiyyeh located south of Nablus. The military was facilitating
ease of access for settlers who wanted to perform prayers on the lands
in the area.
- Also on June 1, Israeli settlers invaded the Al-Aqsa mosque with the
protection of the police. This comes after Israeli incursions on
Al-Aqsa and the non-Jewish holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem
peaked earlier this year during the Muslim and Christian holidays. This
has historically been a strategy and a tactic by Israeli settlers to
affirm their presence on Palestinian lands, later claiming them as their
own by the judicial decree of Israeli authorities and the Supreme
Court.
- Israeli settlers continue coordinated attacks on Palestinians in the
West Bank. On Monday, June 5, a group of settlers burned a Palestinian
vehicle and injured one youth in a collective assault on Palestinians
near the village of Kufr Thilth east of Qalqilya. Israeli forces on the
scene injured at least four Palestinian youths who confronted the
invasion. On the same day, Israeli settlers set fire to several civilian
vehicles in the village of Burqa. Israeli settlers also continued their
assault on the Ein Samiya area near the village of Kufr Malek in
Ramallah. All this comes weeks after Israeli settlers and the military forcibly displaced and dispossessed the area’s Palestinian Bedouin community on May 24, despite having lived there for nearly three decades.
- The Palestinian novelist, analyst, and thinker Walid Daqqah,
remains imprisoned and denied early release by Israeli prison services
as his health deteriorates due to a rare bone marrow cancer.
In-Depth
The Zionist settler colonial enterprise has always been advanced by
two distinct groups: Zionist “pioneers” who have been at the forefront
of colonization, and official or semi-official military bodies to
enforce it (such as the Haganah before 1948, or the Israeli army after
the founding of the state). Not much has changed in that respect during
the past century of Zionist colonial presence in Palestine. Israeli
settlers continue to colonize what remains of Palestine in the West
Bank, establishing outposts on hilltops and asserting their presence in
holy sites, while the Israeli army facilitates the colonial project and
attempts to put down any resistance to it. It is a division of roles
that is as old as Zionism’s early years.
But those roles don’t always remain so neatly divided, as settlers
themselves regularly carry out attacks against Palestinian communities,
whether unprovoked or in retribution for Palestinian resistance to
colonization. In those situations, the settlers are always accompanied
by an army escort that ensures their safety, which either does not
intervene when the settlers attack Palestinians or actively participates
in the lynching. In that way, settlers become the Israeli state’s
attack dogs, and the lines become blurred between state and civilian.
Neither is this phenomenon isolated to settlers in the West Bank. Every
Israeli is a settler living in the Israeli settler colony, but not in
the same sense that the U.S. is a settler colony. Rather, Israel is
unlike many other contemporary settler colonies in that almost every
Israeli citizen serves or has served in the army due to Israel’s
mandatory universal conscription. What’s more, most of Israel’s armed
forces — the reserve force — are composed of nominal civilians who go
about their daily lives but are called in by the army command when
needed several times throughout the year. Many began to discover
this fairly recently, especially in the case of the Israeli Air Force,
when reservist pilots said they would disobey the Netanyahu government’s
orders were it to override the judiciary.
All of this blurs the traditional lines between the state and its
citizenry. What ends up happening is that the typical Israeli civilian
will more than likely either serve in the reserve forces, serve as an
active duty soldier, or take up residence in the West Bank countryside
or in Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem to serve as the spearhead of
the state’s colonial drive.
Last week was as clear an illustration as any of this division and
blurring of roles between the state and its settlers. Israeli settlers
attacked the al-Aqsa Mosque with the protection of the police, the
village of Burqa with the protection of the army, and the village of
Kufr Thilth with the army’s active role in shooting at and wounding the
Palestinians who attempted to defend themselves from the settler mobs.
All the while, the Israeli army continued its deadly campaign of
repression of Palestinians in Bethlehem and Nabi Saleh and of the armed
resistance groups in Tulkarem and the Aqbat Jabr refugee camp. In many
cases, the same soldiers that carry out the arrests and extrajudicial
assassinations are also West Bank settlers. They are actively supported
by a right-wing Israeli government that has been captured by West Bank
settler interests.
But it must also be stressed that much of what has been described
above predates the advent of the current right-wing government. Many of
the distinctions between this government and previous “moderate” Israeli
governments have, in this sense, been exaggerated, not because there
aren’t meaningful differences between these governments in terms of
short-term dynamics, but because the current state of settler resurgence
and military repression, far from being an aberration or the product of
a fundamentalist government, is simply furthering Zionism’s
century-long historical trajectory.
Mondoweiss Highlights
Walid Daqqah continues to face death in Ramleh Prison’s clinic, by Mariam Barghouti
56 years of occupation: Explaining the Palestinian ‘Naksa’, by Yumna Patel
Key Figures
- Since the beginning of the year, 28 Palestinian children and minors
have been killed by Israeli forces, most recently two-year-old Mohammad
Haitham al-Tamimi.
- In an unprecedented record, 1,083 Palestinians are imprisoned by Israel under the illegal practice of administrative detention.
|