October 28, 2024
By Nasser Kandil
• Since the Sword of Jerusalem battle, when Palestinians from the 1948-occupied territories took a bold stand that rattled Israeli leaders and security, the Israeli security apparatus has invested heavily in suppressing any Palestinian engagement in subsequent confrontations. This was starkly evident during the recent Al-Aqsa flood, as efforts to mobilise solidarity with Gaza amid the onslaught faced tremendous hurdles within Palestinian towns and cities in Israel, despite a fervent desire for action among 1948 Palestinians.
• This relentless repression has now erupted into heroic individual operations by Palestinians within Israel, targeting occupation forces and settlers with remarkable precision and focus on Israeli soldiers. These operations have been executed with minimal resources – a policeman’s weapon seized with a knife, and a soldier disarmed and shot with her own gun. Most recently, the young Palestinian Rami Nator, known as “Nasrallah,” carried out a high-impact truck ramming operation, leaving 50 injured, 15 critically.
• Israeli television commentators are now questioning Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, asking if his violent, racist policies against Palestinians have indeed improved settler security. With brutal crackdowns, arming extremist settlers in the West Bank, and provocative incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque, Israel seems to have opened a new front within, one with casualties surpassing some battlefield fronts.
• Policies that ignored Palestinian political rights, fueled by the illusion of reshaping the region by sidelining the Palestinian cause, have driven resistance in the West Bank and Jerusalem over recent years and led to the Al-Aqsa flood. Now, these same policies are bearing bitter fruit within Israel, raising the spectre of an internal war between settlers and native Palestinians that some Israeli thinkers dread – a conflict that now threatens to extend to Israel’s very heart.
