Palestinians under international law have a right to liberate their land by all means of resistance. But with their right of return stripped, it’s about time the world wakes up to realise that Palestinians are not terrorists or militants, as the media misrepresents.
The legal right of resistance, armed or civil, against any illegal arrest or excessive amount of force being used on a citizen by a state or local authorities is a basic right for every human.
2022 was the deadliest year on record for West Bank Palestinians since the end of the Second Intifada, only showing how tensions and violence are failing to cease year by year.
But it’s Israel’s regular breaches of international law causing Palestinians to resist their occupier.
The high death tolls of Palestinians being killed annually (146 in the occupied West Bank last year) is causing a new generation of Palestinian fighters to rise and resist Israeli military raids in their communities. From burning tyres, to throwing stones, to last year’s common night-confusion activities in Beita village, Palestinians aren’t using poverty as an excuse to remain idle.
Even whilst chained in Israeli prisons, Palestinian prisoners and detainees openly carry out hunger strikes to resist their detention. Only recently, prominent activist 45 year-old Khader Adnan was found dead in Israeli custody after refusing food for 87 days.
The phenomenon of resistance or the liberation movements were seen throughout history, where natives launched certain movements in order to gain independence and the right to self determination and territorial integrity.
During the Nakba, internally, Zionist Jewish leaders used the euphemism “transfer” when discussing plans for what today would be called ethnic cleansing, the IMEU wrote on a fact sheet. The Nakba’s roots lay in the emergence of political Zionism in 19th century Europe, when some Jews, influenced by the nationalism then sweeping the continent, concluded that the remedy to centuries of anti-Semitic persecution in Europe was the creation of a state for Jews in Palestine and began emigrating as colonists to the Holy Land, displacing indigenous Palestinians in the process.
Though it is well established under international law, even Palestinians living in refugee camps in their own homeland cannot return to their villages. When they rise to resist their occupiers, the world calls them terrorists, yet they are defending themselves whilst the UN and complicit world leaders turn a blind eye to Israel’s breach of international law.
But why do Palestinians resist in the first place? Well it’s down to the crimes Israel commits daily. Peaceful demonstrations in support for those under administrative detention are violently suppressed, moreover the detainment of even children daily and the allowance of settlers to raid Palestinian villages only provokes Palestinians to act in self defence.
Whilst Israeli settlers stand alongside the world’s ‘most moral army’ to attempt to drive Palestinians out of their lands, it only makes sense that Palestinians stand up for themselves to firm their roots in their land whilst the world turns their backs to a persecuted population.
Back to early January last year, an Israeli police tow truck, while raiding Umm al-Khair village in South Hebron Hills to confiscate unregistered cars, crushed the well-known elderly man Haj Suleiman al-Hathaleen as he tried to peacefully stop them. He died in hospital several days later from his wounds. His murder goes to show that even during peaceful resistance, Palestinians are restricted from self defending their people and their land.
We have seen the Israeli government and their armed forces altogether oppressing Palestinians, appropriating their culture and land, killing innocent civilians, bombing the houses of civilians and hospitals in Gaza, murdering journalists and giving no social or equal rights to a native Palestinian. Even at funerals of Palestinians, mourners are restrained.
This has caused the international community and human rights organisations to recognise Israel as an apartheid state. Arab access to the residency in all Jewish neighbourhoods was banned, which formalised the seizure of private and collective properties owned by non-Jews, preventing most indigenous Palestinians who were made into refugees from returning to their homes. The ‘absentee property law’ defines this.
The Israeli army routinely breaks into Palestinian homes, intimidates Palestinians and takes them from their families. The objective is twofold: to prevent Palestinians from fortifying these areas, and to send a clear message to the community that Israel can reach them anywhere, wrote Razi Nabulse in an article published last year on Middle East Eye.
While giving citizenship rights to Jewish citizens, the zionists have called Israel “the only democracy in the Middle East” and boast of them having freedom of speech but last years brutal and unjustified killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist on May 11 2022, by an Israeli soldier while she was reporting in Jenin about the true face of the Israeli army. And many more cases of cold blooded, brutal and inhumane crimes committed by the Israeli forces in occupied Palestine are evident for those who search.
Yet whilst these war crimes continue to victimise indigenous Palestinians, those who condemn Palestinian resistance and label it as ‘terrorism’ expect for Palestinians to continue to consume oppression at the cost of their homeland being stolen?
These series of constant attacks on the Palestinians and their identity, culture or even holy sites continue all whilst Palestinians rise to resist in order to protect and regain their homeland from further being stolen or damaged.
The Palestinians have never failed to bravely defend themselves. The zionist attempts of displacing the Palestinians has forced them to pick up weapons in self defence. From the Second Intifada to every Ramadan every event of resistance only shows Palestinians won’t have Israel attempting to ethnically cleanse them.
The Israeli army’s frequent and well-known violations against innocent civilians only convinces Palestinians to boldly persist in their struggle for freedom further. All they want is to defeat Israeli apartheid afterall.
Israel criminalises activities that involve Palestinians resisting the military occupation, however Palestinians don’t stop resisting, even if it will end them up in jail.
The Palestine Observer 