Israel launched a military assault in the West Bank this week that led to the deaths of several Palestinians in Jenin and Ramallah. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers also attacked and killed Palestinians and burned their property in various areas of the West Bank.
The escalation came after a meeting of the general secretaries of the Palestinian factions headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Al-Alamein, Egypt, on 30 July. The gathering discussed a Palestinian national strategy to confront the Israeli escalation and Tel Aviv’s avoidance of reaching a political solution with the Palestinians.
During the invasion, the Israeli army killed three Palestinians, whom it claimed were members of a military cell of the Jenin Brigade, an armed formation of Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank.
According to the Israeli army, one of those killed was Nayef Abu Saweiss, a military commander in the Jenin Brigade who was communicating with officials in the military wing of Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip.
This crime was preceded by Israeli settlers killing a Palestinian youth a few days earlier in the village of Burqa near Ramallah. The settlers also set ablaze several properties belonging to Palestinians. Washington described the attack as “terrorism” in a rare public rebuke from the US administration to Israel.
The US State Department condemned the “terrorist attack” by Israeli settlers and called for full accountability and justice. The Israeli army said it had arrested two settlers for their involvement in the crime.
Former Israeli defence minister Benny Gantz, a leading member of the Israeli opposition, warned against escalating what he called “national terrorism” by Israeli settlers in the West Bank under the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Attacks by Israeli settlers in the West Bank have increased recently, most notably a large-scale attack on the town of Hawara in Nablus in the northern West Bank in February. There was another assault on the towns of Urif and Turmus Ayya in June, when Palestinian vehicles and homes were torched.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that “the brutal incursions and assassinations by occupation forces across the Occupied West Bank are part of a policy of escalation on the ground to serve purely colonial goals of gradual overt and covert annexation of the West Bank.”
In a statement on Monday, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said the Israeli escalation made a mockery of the positions, demands, and efforts underway to achieve calm.
It called on the international community to stop simply managing the conflict and hold an international peace conference based on the fundamentals of international peace, including the Arab Peace Initiative, that would lead to serious negotiations between the two sides under multilateral auspices.
As part of the continued Israeli escalation on the ground, a Palestinian man from Jenin shot and killed an Israeli security agent on Saturday before he too was killed.
The Palestinian factions, especially Hamas and Islamic Jihad which are intent on forming military cells in the West Bank, described the attack as a natural response to the Israeli escalation in Occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The meeting of the general secretaries of the Palestinian factions in Al-Alamein concluded with few results, due to the deep rifts between Fatah and Hamas and the climate preceding the meeting.
Islamic Jihad, the Al-Saeqa Party, and the Popular Front – General Command (two small factions of the Palestine Liberation Organisation [PLO]) boycotted the meeting. Islamic Jihad did not attend because the Palestinian Authority (PA) has refused to release political detainees arrested in the West Bank.
The gathering in Al-Alamein concluded with the formation of a committee of the factions to continue dialogue on various issues that could end divisions and achieve national unity.
Abbas thanked Egypt for hosting the meeting and asked the new committee to immediately begin its work to accomplish its mission and come up with recommendations. He said that this could be a step towards ending rifts and restoring Palestinian unity.
Ahmed Awad, a political analyst, said that the outcome of the meeting was expected. He said that forming a committee to follow up on controversial issues indicated that there were obstacles that the participants did not want to broach at Al-Alamein.
“Divisions among the Palestinians have reached a point that requires everyone to make painful concessions,” he told Al-Ahram Weekly. “This requires a strong political will and the ability to make concessions. But this is not possible, especially for Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.”
Ibrahim Ahmed, a political analyst, agreed that disputes between Fatah and Hamas have reached the point of no return. He criticised the lack of widespread popular pressure on the two groups to end divisions.
“The absence of the will to end disputes between the two groups makes it difficult to talk about restoring national unity,” he told the Weekly.
Ahmed argued that the danger of the Palestinian rift is that it is a weak point that Israel will continue to exploit in order to justify its siege of the Gaza Strip under the pretence of Hamas’ non-adherence to the provisions of international legitimacy and to evade the requirements of the peace process with the PA on the pretext of the PA’s lack of control in Gaza.
Since the fracture in Palestinian ranks in 2007, Egypt and other Arab countries have hosted dozens of meetings of the Palestinian factions in a bid to end their quarrel. However, all the meetings have failed to restore Palestinian unity.
One of the most contentious issues has been Hamas’ control of the Gaza Strip and the group’s refusal to hand over government agencies and border crossings to the PA. Another is the issue of the civil servants that Hamas has appointed during its rule in Gaza over the past 17 years.
Hamas demands comprehensive Palestinian presidential and parliamentary elections, which the PA refuses to hold unless Israel allows elections to be held in Occupied Jerusalem.
Abbas wants Hamas to become a member of the PLO and to recognise the requirements of international legitimacy, including the recognition of Israel, before announcing a national unity government.
This would prevent international sanctions. However, Hamas is adamant in its refusal to take this step.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 10 August, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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