The West Bank between the hammer of the Israeli army and the anvil of the settlers

The West Bank between the hammer of the Israeli army and the anvil of the settlers

Dr. Aql Salah*

In this article, we start from a rule that has governed the history of the Palestinian people. Its title came to emphasize the ongoing suffering and tragedy of the Palestinian people due to the continuation of the occupation that has shed Palestinian blood to the point of genocide. In returning to the rule that stipulates the use of a year instead of a year in all dates that have occurred since the Balfour Declaration was announced in 1917, this is because a year is used for what is good (rain, rain, ease, and prosperity), and a year for what is evil (hardship, fatigue, and injustice). This was clear in the Quranic usage, where years were mentioned for evil, drought, and famine, and years for good. Examples include Surat Yusuf: {You shall sow for seven years in succession}, {Then there will come a year in which people will be given relief}. Based on this rule, the Palestinian people’s entire life is years - oppression, injustice, siege, war, displacement, destruction, killing, burning, demolition, arrest, and genocide - all of which are the result of the Balfour Declaration and the ongoing brutal practices of the occupation. The Palestinian people have not lived a single year in their lives.

Last year ended, leaving behind the biggest crime in history against Gaza, as this criminal war claimed the lives of about 10% of the people of the Strip, between martyrs, wounded, and missing under the rubble and in Israeli prisons from the prisoners of the Strip who were executed while alive and bound, and the geographical, architectural, and infrastructure of the Strip was destroyed. This bloody war raised a number of questions related to the war of extermination and starvation and the failure to hold Israel accountable and punish it. International legal movements and activities did not provide satisfactory answers to these questions, and to everything that Palestine has gone through and is going through over the course of 77 years of occupation, and to the global role in stopping the war, and to how to preserve the rights of peoples seeking liberation from the occupation.

These questions and others that are on the mind of every Palestinian are what prompted us to review the history of the occupation of Palestine; seeking a deeper understanding of the nature of the stage and these complex questions, even if we have not decided to reveal the answers to them, over the course of more than fifteen months of the ongoing war on the Strip, and resistance that has extended for more than seven decades, reflecting an aspect of our Palestinian national culture and history that began with disobedience, passing through the revolution and uprisings, and arriving at the Al-Aqsa Flood.

Posing the question may be one of the most prominent cognitive techniques that the Palestinian citizen often resorts to in order to shed light on the role of the Israeli government and settlers in targeting the Palestinian presence in the West Bank in particular and in Palestine in general, as if one of the aspects of targeting that Gaza is experiencing is the ongoing war of extermination of the Palestinian people and the geographic war on the West Bank to besiege the Palestinian presence and end this presence in Area B, which is 20% of the area, and Area C, which is 60% of the area, according to the classifications of the Oslo Accords in 1993, and to confine this presence to Area A, which is equal to 20% of the area of the West Bank, which will be more densely populated, leading to the oppression of the Palestinians there to the point of immigration due to the lack of possibilities for development and decent living. The starting points, statements, plans, and practices of the Israeli army and settlers express the current reality in the West Bank, and even before the Al-Aqsa flood, the war on the citizen and Palestinian geography was and still is raising a fundamental question: "Has the West Bank become subject to the settlers' state?"

All of this leads us to address the Israeli targeting of Palestine from two sides, each of which complements the role of the other. The first side is embodied by the hammer of the Israeli army, which is skilled at manufacturing killing, genocide, and decisions aimed at annexing the West Bank. The second side is represented by the anvil of the settlers who seek to establish their own settlement state in the West Bank, which is only committed to the law of the Torah, which stipulates that the West Bank is part of their state. This leads us to shed light on these ongoing occupation practices.

The brutal practices of the occupation for more than seven decades against the Palestinian people express the rampant stupidity of the occupation that treats the result and not the cause. The occupation persecutes the resistance and the Palestinian people and seeks bloody solutions in order not to recognize Palestinian rights. It has not even adhered to the agreements it signed, although they do not meet the minimum Palestinian national rights. These treatments throughout the life of the occupation have not succeeded in ending the resistance of the Palestinian people and their demands for freedom, independence, and the ambition to build a Palestinian state.

Even the ministers of the far-right government are part of the alliance with the settlers in the criminal targeting of the Palestinian people. On January 6, 2025, Bezalel Smotrich, Minister of Finance and Minister of Civil Administration in the Ministry of War, demanded that the cities of Qalqilya, Nablus, and Jenin be transformed as well as Jabalia. He had previously demanded that the town of Hawara be burned, which is what happened. In addition, he continues to pirate and withhold the clearance revenues, which in recent months amounted to about 70% of the monthly clearance value. He devotes most of his efforts to supporting and legalizing settlements and outposts. As for Itamar Ben-Gvir, Minister of National Security, who is working to eliminate the Palestinian presence in the West Bank, and give the settlers a free hand to attack the Palestinian people and give them the power and most of the support to kill Palestinians and burn their property, by arming more than 200,000 settlers with the best types of machine guns, and giving them the freedom to seize the property of Palestinian citizens by force and other decisions that serve to protect the settlers in order to displace the Palestinian people through control at the stage The first is on Area C, which was decided upon, and then Area B, where decisions were made to confine the Palestinian presence and withdraw the powers of the Palestinian Authority from it and transfer it to Area C. All of this is in line with the plan to annex the West Bank. In the end, all of the government’s decisions, starting with the checkpoints and gates at the entrances to cities and villages, the raids, the destruction of infrastructure, field executions, the restriction of movement and freedom of movement, the denial of the right to housing and forced displacement, the violations against educational, media and health institutions, the targeting of religious sites and freedom of worship, the violations against Palestinian prisoners, hundreds of whom have been killed since 1967, the decisions to confiscate lands, build settlements and systematic demolitions, which have reached the outskirts of cities classified as “A”, as happened in the northern mountain, New Nablus and the suburb. These areas are considered to be in the heart of the city of Nablus, and the daily arrests in the West Bank, are in line with the biblical understanding that the West Bank is part of the greater state of Israel.

As for the settlers' practices, they have been given complete freedom to brutally attack the Palestinian people and land. One settler can control a vast area of land and then establish a settlement on it. This explains the increase in the number of settlement outposts to about 180, including in Area B. In addition to canceling the disengagement in 2005, which stipulated the withdrawal from four settlements in the northern West Bank, and the return of the first settlement, Homesh, Channel 14 reported on January 9, 2025, that the first step to cancel the disengagement law is through the security components in the Homesh settlement: by installing surveillance cameras, lighting poles, and security components in Homesh. We are talking about steps that have a major impact in providing security and protecting settlers in the settlement and in the religious school in the northern West Bank.

Israel is working day and night to end the resistance in the northern West Bank for the return of the remaining settlements, namely Sanur, Ganim and Kadim. In addition to this, there is the pastoral settlement that surrounds every governorate and has come to control what remains of Areas B and C, all with the protection and blessing of the government. In this regard, we can highlight the statement of the Al-Baidar organization that the Israeli army and settlers carried out 2,977 attacks on Bedouin communities in the West Bank during the year 2024, which resulted in the displacement of 67 Bedouin communities and 340 families. In the same vein, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced on January 4, 2025, that 2024 represents the worst year for settler violence in the West Bank, with 1,400 settler violence incidents. This is confirmed by the slogan "No Future in Palestine" written on banners placed by settlers on the Nablus-Ramallah road in the Shilo settlement.

All of the above, from the practices of the army and the settlers, were expressed on January 6, 2025, through the official accounts of the settlers on social media, through a map of the “Kingdoms of Judah and Israel,” dating back to the year 928 BC, which shows an imaginary control over Palestinian, Jordanian, Egyptian, Lebanese and Syrian lands. All of this expresses the criminal mentality that governs Israel under a false biblical cover.

*Palestinian writer and researcher specializing in ideological movements.