Israel is escalating the conflict, not reducing it

Written by: Rasem Obeidat

The former Prime Minister of the State of Israel, Naftali Bennett, after his accession to the presidency of the government of the State of Israel, borrowed the term “reducing” the Palestinian-“Israeli” conflict from Israeli history professor Micah Goodman, who published on July 15, 2021, an article in French entitled “Israel’s Surprising Consensus on the Palestinian Cause.” Concretely, this concept means the pursuit of every policy that will greatly enhance Palestinian autonomy without threatening Israeli security, and at the heart of this conflict reduction plan will be an effort to create geographical contiguity among the autonomous Palestinian islands in the West Bank, and link this autonomy to the rest of the world. The goal of this strategy is to transform the fragmented and fragile network of self-governing islands of the West Bank into a continuous and prosperous political system.

This concept is based on a truce of expansion and security in exchange for economy and facilities in the Gaza Strip, and economic peace and security cooperation in the West Bank. Jerusalem, and the rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy.

However, it seems that the entity state, whether during the era of the Bennett government, which adopted this slogan, and the Lapid-Gantz government that succeeded it, chose to escalate the conflict rather than reduce it. And many West Bank settlements in the last two months of March and April of this year.

After these operations, the entity's government launched a series of military operations in order to restore the deterrent force, and to face the widespread criticism and accusations leveled at it by the Israeli public and the Israeli opposition forces, of weakness and submission in front of the Palestinian organizations. Its main square is Jenin and its camp, given that Jenin constitutes the main incubator for the forces of resistance, and “mowing the grass” with the aim of pruning and eradicating the forces of resistance, and preventing them from continuing to grow, rise, solidify and take root, and they are directed mainly against what the entity state calls the “lone wolf” operations that It is difficult to detect it during the preparation and planning stage. In parallel with that, an operation known as "breaking waves" was launched, which is based on continuous exhaustion by carrying out continuous operations of raids, assassinations, liquidations and pre-emptive arrests, to prevent the crystallization of structures and organizational structures for the resistance forces, and to keep the Jenin resistance in its local framework, in a way that enables it to besiege and liquidate it, but it seems that these military operations, despite the large number of martyrs and detainees, and the extent of destruction, destruction and widespread devastation, but the "oil slick" is being defeated I came from Jenin to the rest of the northern regions of the occupied West Bank, especially Nablus and its camps, and this is an indication that the entity state could not regain its deterrence force, and the West Bank is living in an uprising atmosphere similar to the previous uprisings, but there is a difference in terms of style, form and size of participation, and we can call it On what is happening with a special kind of uprising that mixes stones, incendiary bombs, "Molotov cocktails", firearms, knives, and run-over operations, and it was remarkable that individual and organized shooting operations targeting settlers and occupation soldiers are on the rise, and this is the depth of the security and political crisis of the entity state, and the escalation of criticism Accusations of inadequacy and submissiveness, inability to control matters, loss of security for Israeli society, loss of confidence in the security and military institutions, and with the approach of the fifth early elections, and the fear of losing them to the opposition and the return of Netanyahu again as prime minister, we found that that government led a systematic process of escalation over the entire area. Historic Palestine, where it launched an aggressive war on the Gaza Strip on 5/8/2022, under the pretext of targeting the Islamic Jihad Movement, thwarting its military operations, and directly escalating it in the West Bank. West through a campaign of assassinations in the city of Nablus, and then Jenin, and the escalation was also the master of the situation in Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa.

In the West Bank, settlements escalated in an unprecedented manner, and in Jerusalem, the plans to Judaize Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa and finish off the city did not stop, seeking to liquidate the refugee issue, racial discrimination against our people in the Palestinian interior -48-, and aggression and siege on the Gaza Strip.

In the field reality, in the West Bank, assassinations, liquidations, arrests, and incursions did not stop, and the fear that the escalation of military operations in the West Bank would come to change the voters’ view towards the right and extremism and thus give Netanyahu the opportunity to form the next Israeli government, making the military, security and political institutions study a group Among the options, including keeping the pace of the current escalation as it is, easing the conditions for the current escalation, pressuring the authority to double its security coordination, and working to curb the resistance forces through arrests and collecting weapons, and it seems that this option has fallen, as it in itself is described as a transformation The conflict has turned into a Palestinian-Palestinian conflict for the sake of the state of the entity without a political horizon, and the authority tried to feel the pulse of the resistance fighters by negotiating with them to hand over their weapons, to join the apparatus of the authority, to give them salaries and to ensure that they would not be arrested by the occupation, but it seems that the resistance fighters represented by the "Black Den" battalion refused this, as well The entity's government has studied the escalation of specific assassinations by drones, or the expansion and escalation of the operation known as "breaking waves".

It seems that the entity government will continue its escalation operations with the approach of the fifth early elections, along the historical area of Palestine, especially in the northern West Bank, apart from the aggressive nature of this state that aims to liquidate the resistance forces, which has become a source of concern and headache for the entity state, as it believes that any operations A quality that would constitute a shift in Israeli public opinion in the direction of Netanyahu and the right-wing forces allied with him, and therefore it is putting pressure on the Palestinian Authority and its security services and through many Arab security agencies, as well as through America, which received the Minister of Civil Affairs and member of the Executive Committee of the organization Hussein Al-Sheikh last week, And I asked him clearly to work to dismantle the centers of resistance in the northern West Bank and to collect weapons, and that the security of the entity state is a priority over anything else, as there is no political horizon at the current stage, and the entity state also retracted from signing the draft maritime demarcation agreement with Lebanon, after the observations it made The Lebanese government is against it, and the escalation of opposition to this demarcation from within and outside the ruling coalition, which makes its passage the price of losing the Lapid-Gantz alliance for the elections, and therefore the escalation will remain the master of money. Stand by that government, which employs settlements, Palestinian blood, and Al-Aqsa in the issue of the Israeli elections. It will also work to close any political horizon in the relationship with the Palestinian Authority, and keep this relationship within the framework of “economic peace and security coordination.”