Muhammad Hawash: The challenges facing the national movement today are completely different from what they were during the days of the first intifada.
 Dr. Tamara Haddad: The occupation must not be given a pretext by resorting to the armed option

 Ziad Al-Hamouri: Jerusalemites and the people of the interior play the main role in defending Al-Aqsa Mosque
 Hazem Al-Qawasmi: Palestinians have learned that immigration is not a solution that preserves peoples’ dignity and identity
 Suleiman Shuqayrat: The President must immediately invite the PLO’s interim leadership framework and form a national consensus government
 Annan Najib: With steadfastness, confrontation and adherence to the national soil, we can ward off the specter of displacement
 Dr. Muhammad Najib Bou Taleb: What is happening in the West Bank does not only represent a retreat from "Oslo" and a violation of international obligations, but it is also a moral and political downfall.

The extensive military campaign that the Israeli occupation army began implementing in cities, villages and camps in the northern West Bank, mainly in conjunction with other areas in the West Bank, carried many indicators and fears among the Palestinians, both officially and popularly, that went beyond its results on the ground, from killings and destruction and sabotage of buildings and infrastructure, to the possibility that this is just the beginning of implementing more dangerous plans, foremost among which is the so-called "decisive plan", which aims to uproot Palestinians from their homes and lands. In addition to all of this, Ben Gvir announced his intention to build a Jewish synagogue inside Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Perhaps the way in which the occupation army is conducting its campaign or war on the cities and camps of the northern West Bank shows that it is borrowing the model of the war of extermination that it has been waging on the Gaza Strip for about eleven months, leaving behind huge and frightening numbers of martyrs and wounded, in addition to the destruction that has befallen all aspects of life in Gaza, in addition to the displacement operations that the occupation state has turned into a new and brutal weapon against the defenseless citizens. Therefore, it hastened to send notices to the residents of the Nour Shams camp in Tulkarm of the necessity of evacuating it “temporarily.”
But these rapidly unfolding events, despite their seriousness, were not met with the required attention from all Palestinian levels, political, factional, union, and intellectual, which were supposed to sound the alarm and call for continuous meetings to discuss ways to confront such Israeli plans.

Very broad popular battles of a peaceful nature

Writer and journalist Muhammad Hawash said: “The challenges facing the Palestinian national movement and the Palestinian people today are completely different from the challenges during the first Intifada, when the popular and national movement in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem were fighting very broad popular battles. It had a peaceful and popular character in which all segments of the Palestinian people participated, from unions, institutions, factions and parties. The goal was to recognize that the Palestinian people have rights and have a representative and political address, which is the PLO. This stage was crowned with recognitions by the international community and Israel. The political and popular movement today is different from the movement that accompanied the first Intifada in terms of goals and discussions.
He added: "Today we are demanding goals that have been recognized by Israel, the United States, and the international community, which recognizes the right of the Palestinian people to the form of the Palestinian entity, the level of sovereignty of this entity, and the level of agreement with Israel on what it wants."
Hawash stressed that Israel is currently witnessing a retreat from its approval of the agreements, but officially it is still committed to the Oslo Accords. It is not strange that the idea of Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich and his threat to cancel the Oslo Accords if international recognition of the State of Palestine under occupation increases, and thus this means that the agreements still exist even if Israel wanted to punish the Palestinian people for their resistance on the ground, and the recent activation of the legal path that gives initial indications of the possibility of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Defense Minister being held accountable by the International Criminal Court. I believe that the level of factional debate is very low regarding this issue.
He added: "Regarding the level of official discussion, I believe that the Palestinian Authority, regardless of the policies it follows, are policies that are not popular among Palestinians, because it goes down paths that Palestinian society believes have been tried, specifically the diplomatic and legal path."

Popularity of arms and resistance

He continued: "Unfortunately, the focus in the public, political and factional discussions among the Palestinian people is on issues that are not the ones that should be a priority in the political discussion, meaning that what is popular is confrontations, the use of weapons and responding to weapons with weapons, not using methods and techniques that strip the Israelis of the pretexts behind which they stand, and prevent the Palestinians from continuing the political, public and militant struggle."
He pointed out that there is an overlooked essential point, which is that the Arab media dominates the Palestinian media with regard to the roles of the Palestinian factions, the role of the PLO, and the role of the Authority. Everyone wants the Authority to be a fighting faction, and there is a popular belief that there is no meaning to the Authority if it does not bear arms against the Israeli project, and I believe that he is essentially right in that the public has nothing to convince it that other political and popular paths may be effective at this stage to protect the Palestinian people, their goals, and their land, because Israel's goal is to try to nibble away at Palestinian land, annex it, and strip the Palestinian of his connection to his land.

The Palestinian Authority is the address for all forms of resistance

Hawash stressed that the Palestinian National Authority is a political address for all the Palestinian people and for all forms of political, diplomatic, popular and military resistance, and without it there would not have been a battle in the Gaza Strip and military confrontations in the West Bank with the Israeli army.
He believed that "the discussion should focus on the need to activate the position of the Palestinian National Authority, and that it should bear responsibility for not conducting a broad discussion about this, and that it responds in the Palestinian media to popular demands, i.e. emphasizing the importance and effectiveness of military action."
He stressed that "there is another problem, which is the absence of an intermediary link between the political level, which represents all forms of the Palestinian people's integrated struggle, and the different levels of official, civil and factional organizations and institutions, and the leaders of the factions and their audiences, such that the movement of interaction and discussion about the fateful issues related to supporting the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, managing daily Palestinian life, and warding off the dangers of any new colonial projects is absent."

Implementation of the conflict resolution plan

For her part, academic and political researcher Dr. Tamara Haddad stressed that “the diagnosis of the Palestinian situation has become clear to all Palestinians, regionally and internationally, and that the plan to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the model that is being implemented in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by following a systematic plan to implement that document that was agreed upon between the Likud Party and religious Zionism, during the formation of the current right-wing coalition government, and one of its most important principles is to give the Palestinian people the choice between forced displacement if they do not live in peace, or arrest or killing if they do not accept the option of displacement or living in peace.”
She added: "In light of the plans and actions that are being implemented today in the northern West Bank and refugee camps, the picture of Smotrich's plan has become clearer and more detailed. Therefore, it is time to find a plan in the face of a horizontal and vertical blockage, and the Palestinian situation has become between the hammer of the occupation and the anvil of continued American support, leading to the liquidation of the Palestinian cause."
Haddad stressed the necessity of finding steps to rectify the stage we are going through, through, first, strengthening the role of the PLO, and restoring its prestige by enhancing the participation of all Palestinians through developing a program that confronts displacement plans, and completing its constructive role to be compatible with the idea of Palestinian liberation.

Working legally in accordance with UN and international resolutions

Second, to work legally in accordance with international and UN resolutions that reject the displacement of Palestinians from their land and to reject the imposition of a fait accompli by Israel by changing the topography of the West Bank, geographically and demographically, to facilitate settlement construction and bring settlers to the West Bank.
Third, turn to Europe, as there are countries that are now working to change the tone of their discourse to establish the two-state solution and end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the Middle East.
She stressed that the Palestinian political position needs unity, in addition to intensifying efforts at the popular, international, regional, diplomatic and legal levels, and communicating with parties and international powers to maintain the vitality of the Palestinian cause and not end it.
Fourth, activating the national debate and activating the role of factions, opinion makers, intellectuals and those with national expertise to get out of the current impasse by forming a front that saves the Palestinian situation, and strengthening the steadfastness of the Palestinian people by forming popular protection committees to confront the extremism of the settlers.
Fifth, the Palestinian people will go out in massive marches to send a message to the outside world that the West Bank is facing danger and a humanitarian catastrophe and that the Gaza scenario will move to the West Bank.
Sixth, not to give the occupation a pretext by resorting to the military or armed option because this option at the present time is one of the most dangerous options for destroying the West Bank, as is happening in the Gaza Strip, and what is required is to deal wisely and cautiously by the Palestinian leadership so that things do not get out of control.

Implementing the Beijing Declaration and Achieving Reconciliation

Haddad explained, "There are arguments and pretexts used by the occupier, claiming that the West Bank is full of weapons, to expand its military operations, the goal of which is to embarrass the Palestinian Authority and weaken it in front of the Palestinian people."
She stressed that "the plans for displacement and the construction of a Jewish synagogue will be thwarted through the unity of the Palestinian situation by implementing reconciliation, the latest of which is the Beijing Declaration, declaring a Palestinian state under occupation, and disavowing any duty towards the occupation, reactivating the role of the authority and involving popular activities and establishing the Palestinian presence by supporting it financially and finding solutions to the problem of the difficult economic situation of the Palestinian people."

There is a big difference between the current reality and the period of the first intifada.

In turn, Jerusalemite political analyst Ziad al-Hamouri stressed that “the current period cannot be compared to the period of the first intifada, as the Oslo Accords were full of problems, the most important of which, in addition to the loss of Jerusalem, were the issues of water, borders, refugees, and others, and perhaps one of the most important results that we see today is the disintegration of the Palestinian people.”
Al-Hamouri pointed out that "the current situation of the Palestinian issue is the worst ever," explaining that "the Israelis are clearly announcing the liquidation of the Palestinian existence." He added: "The events began in Gaza and today are moving to the West Bank, and of course Jerusalem has always been a target, and the events on October 7 began in the name of the Jerusalem Flood and the defense of Al-Aqsa."
Al-Hamouri explained that "the occupation had drawn up plans before October 7 to build the temple, and this was announced by the government, which disclosed the existence of funding allocated for this purpose, and red cows were brought."
He continued, "Today we see that the Israeli extremists, including the government, are clearly announcing that they will allocate funds to change the Palestinian narrative and build the Israeli narrative."
He pointed out "the main role played by the people of Jerusalem and the people of the occupied interior in 1948 in defending and confronting the Israeli measures, and they believe that they will succeed in confronting the Israeli measures that prevent the people of Jerusalem from reaching the Old City and Al-Aqsa Mosque."

It's a shame we couldn't get our unity back.

“In any case, we have not regained any unity, and this is a shame for us as Palestinians,” Hamouri added. “We have gone to the farthest places in the world, from Moscow to China and elsewhere, to reconcile. Is it reasonable that we kill and liquidate each other and cannot sit together? Are we unable to unite our efforts in the face of this monster that is attacking us all? At the same time, you see that despite all the differences within Israeli society, they all gather around one idea, which is that this land is theirs, and that we are strangers to it.”
Al-Hamouri added: “There is a feeling that the Israelis are in the midst of the Zionist idea that aims to eliminate the Palestinian presence, and since 1948 they have been on this path, and today they feel that their state has reached a dead end, and they are concerned that the life of this state is limited, so they want to defend its existence.”

Factional failure

He explained, "What is happening in terms of displacement in the West Bank and elsewhere is met with the failure of the factions and forces that played a role in the first intifada, and today we are witnessing a state of chaos and multiple meetings all over the world."
Al-Hamouri stressed, "Today, it has become clear to everyone that the Palestinians are the rightful owners, and that the Palestinian narrative is the correct one. Our people are a mighty people and will confront all these conspiracies, and this is perhaps the most prominent example despite all the pain we have witnessed in Gaza, where the occupation has not been able to implement its plans there to this day, especially in the matter of displacement, despite the destruction and killing, but displacement has not succeeded and has not succeeded until now in the West Bank."

categorically reject immigration

Hazem Al-Qawasmi, a member of the Arab Studies Association, said: “The Palestinians learned after the 1948 Nakba, the 1967 setback, and all the wars and uprisings that followed in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Jerusalem, as well as from the repercussions of the Arab Spring and the displacement that occurred to the Arab peoples, especially the Syrian and Iraqi peoples, that migration is not a solution in which peoples preserve their dignity, identity, civilization, livelihood, and way of life.”
He added that the Gazans who left the Gaza Strip during this last war wish to return even to a destroyed house, because living as a homeless person in another country far from all the details of your life that you lived with dignity in your country with your neighbors, family and friends is a humiliating life that has no taste or color. The people of the West Bank and Jerusalem adopt this strict position of not emigrating and leaving their homelands not because of the presence of a guiding Palestinian leadership or national or academic discussions, but because of everything they have seen and witnessed with their own eyes on satellite screens, and they will not repeat this mistake of leaving their homes, family, friends and decent lives to be displaced in the corners of the earth.
Al-Qawasmi continued, "For this same reason, the plans of Smotrich and all the fascist Israeli leaderships will fail in terms of displacement and also in terms of harming Al-Aqsa Mosque. The people of Jerusalem and the Palestinians in general have their successful experience in confronting any aggression on Al-Aqsa, the latest of which was the failure to install the iron gates. The Palestinian people, Muslims and Christians alike, will not hesitate to sacrifice what they have most precious in order to defend their land, their holy sites, and their existence in this holy city."

Netanyahu's government and the nation-state law

Political analyst Suleiman Shuqayrat, a member of the National and Civil Action Committee in Jerusalem, said, “Since the formation of the current Netanyahu government, it has adopted the Nationality Law, considering Israel the state of the Jewish people and that it alone has the right to self-determination on the entire land of Palestine, considering it a liberated land, not an occupied one. In doing so, it wanted to achieve the following:
First, it decided to settle the issue of land, and move towards annexing the West Bank to the Zionist state, and eliminating any possibility of establishing an independent Palestinian state, which it considers an existential threat to the State of Israel. The means to achieve this is to accelerate the pace of settlement construction and confiscation of land, and on the other hand, to accelerate the pace of demolishing Palestinian homes in Jerusalem and Area C, sometimes under the pretext of lack of permits, and under the pretext of demolishing the homes of those who carried out operations everywhere, and this is accompanied by accelerating the Judaization of Jerusalem, including an attempt to impose spatial division on Al-Aqsa Mosque and double the number of settlers storming it with the participation of ministers and Knesset members, and the statements of the Minister of National Security that he will build a Jewish synagogue inside it, thus expressing the government’s position, as well as what Smotrich previously announced that the Palestinian has 3 options: either leave, or be killed, or submit to what the Netanyahu government wants, and finally, it passed a law in the Knesset that prevents acceptance of a Palestinian state.
Secondly, the Nationality Law included the removal of what was called the danger of the Palestinian demographic factor, i.e. closing the horizon of the possibility of the state transforming into a democratic state governed by the principle of equality among people without discrimination. Thus, the Zionist state declared a comprehensive war on the rights of the Palestinian people, and placed them between overlapping options of destruction, killing, voluntary and forced displacement, and surrender.

The escalation of Arab normalization

Shakirat stressed that in light of the accelerating pace of normalization with Arab countries, the occupation forces escalated their attacks on the camps and cities of Jenin, Tulkarm and Nablus, with assassinations and arrests in the entire West Bank and Jerusalem. Therefore, the October 7 earthquake occurred as a strategic response to the occupation government’s policy and its program of normalization, the pace of which accelerated with Arab countries and resolved the conflict by liquidating the rights of the Palestinian people, foremost among which is their right to independence, statehood and return, embodying their right to self-determination.
“In response, the occupying state launched a war of genocide in Gaza, using aerial bombardment on the widest scale to kill the largest possible number of Gazans and the widest destruction of their homes, houses, schools, universities and mosques to make their lives unbearable, with the aim of displacing them and forcing them to flee towards Egypt. When they failed to achieve this, they were forced to bring in their ground forces because the declared goals could not be achieved from the air alone. However, they were surprised by the steadfastness of our people until today, with an open horizon for months to come. Therefore, the occupation resumed its attack on the northern West Bank to practice the same methods of killing and destruction, and to attempt to divide Al-Aqsa spatially, as happened in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron,” he added.
Regarding the solution and how to respond to the war of genocide, he said: There is no alternative to an immediate end to the Palestinian division by implementing the Beijing Agreement, and the President taking an immediate call for the interim leadership framework of the PLO and forming a national consensus government to respond politically and strategically to the war of genocide, which will lead to the mobilization of the energies of our people inside and outside the homeland, and doubling the regional and international popular solidarity movement, isolating the policy of America and Israel, and forcing them to surrender to the rights of our people as recognized by the United Nations and international law.

Rebuilding the Palestine Liberation Organization

Jerusalemite journalist Anan Najib said, “By steadfastness, confrontation, and adherence to national soil as a right guaranteed by all international systems and laws, we can first ward off the specter of the displacement of Palestinians.”
Najib pointed out that there is an absence of a Palestinian leadership that unites all components of the Palestinian people, including factions, forces and influential people, which negatively affects the Palestinian cause. Perhaps our current calamity lies in the absence of a political leadership center that unites all Palestinians and is capable of finding practical solutions and outcomes that confront the occupation’s plans aimed at displacing us and nibbling away at what remains of our land. This prompts us to raise our voices about the necessity of rebuilding the Palestine Liberation Organization based on the Palestinian National Charter as a reference and holding elections for the National Council, which will in turn produce true representatives of the Palestinian people, who have become a byword for steadfastness and defiance.
Najeeb added: “The fact is that the popular presence in Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is a pure right of Muslims, is the main pillar for thwarting the plans of Ben Gvir and Smotrich, and this is popular, but officially, Jordan, which has guardianship over the holy sites in Jerusalem, must activate whatever pressure cards it has to thwart these plans. As for the statements of denunciation and grievance that have become the mouthpiece of the official Arab regime, they no longer convince the smallest child in the Arab world that there is official Arab and Islamic interest in the holy sites in Jerusalem.”

The plan is part of a larger project.

Tunisian sociology professor Dr. Muhammad Najib Bou Taleb said that what is happening in the northern West Bank is part of the Israeli occupation’s plan to swallow up more Palestinian lands, in preparation for displacing its residents and planting settlers in them.
He pointed out that this plan is part of a larger project that has been implemented since the establishment of the State of Israel, translating the goals of the Zionist movement by a group of fanatics who rely on the mentality of religious conflict, stressing that what we are witnessing today in terms of the rise of extremist discourse represents a retreat from the slogan of the civil state in favor of the slogan of the religious state.
He pointed out that the calls of senior officials in Israel to establish a synagogue and slaughter a cow in Jerusalem are based on myths and illusions that have no historical, religious or political basis.
The Tunisian analyst confirmed that the operation is comprehensive, as it affects southern Gaza and the northern West Bank, in the camps of the West Bank cities as well as in the camps of Gaza, stressing that it stems from the theory of fragmenting and exterminating the Palestinian people and displacing those who remain.

The occupation has no allies or commitment to peace and calm

He pointed out that what is happening in the West Bank does not only represent a retreat from the Oslo Accords and a breach of international obligations, but is also a moral and political downfall, indicating that the Israeli occupation does not have any allies or commitment to peace and calm at this time, and the evidence for this is the generalization of the destruction that occurred in the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, through invasions, assassinations, and the destruction of infrastructure in cities and villages, in addition to giving extremists and settlers free rein to attack land and honor.
Bou Taleb believed that the issue is linked to the fate of the current Israeli government, pointing out that this internal path, despite its complications, has an end according to the repercussions of political awareness. He also pointed out that the issue is also linked to the return of the American political mind to its senses after the end of the election campaigns in the United States.