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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| New Palestinian terror factions emerge amid deadly West Bank unrest |
| 2023-03-05 |
| [IsraelTimes] Bands of young Paleostinians are increasingly taking up guns against Israel and defying PA, with Nablus-based Lion’s Den providing inspiration. The stuttering blasts of M-16s shattered the quiet in a West Bank village, surrounded by barley fields and olive groves. Young Paleostinian men in Jaba once wanted to farm, residents say, but now, more and more want to fight. Last week, dozens of them, wearing balaclavas and brandishing rifles with photos of their dead comrades plastered on the clips, burst into a school playground — showcasing Jaba’s new terror group and paying tribute to its founder and another gunman who were killed in an Israeli military raid last month. "I’d hate to make my parents cry," said 28-year-old Yusef Hosni Hammour, a close friend of Izz a-Din Basem Hamamra, the group’s late founder. "But I’m ready to die a martyr." Similar scenes are playing out across the West Bank. From the northern Jenin refugee camp to the southern city of Hebron, small groups of disillusioned young Paleostinians are taking up guns against Israel’s open-ended military control, defying Paleostinian politicians whom they scorn as collaborators with Israel. With fluid and overlapping affiliations, these groups have no clear ideology and operate independently of traditional chains of command — even if they receive support from established terror groups. Fighters from Paleostinian Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... and other organizations attended last week’s ceremony in Jaba. In near-daily arrest raids over the past year, Israel has sought to crush the fledgling militias, leading to a surge of deaths and unrest unseen in nearly two decades. While Israel maintains the escalated raids are vital to prevent attacks, Paleostinians say the intensified violence has helped radicalize men too young to remember the massive Israeli crackdown in response to the deadly onslaught of suicide kabooms and other terror attacks of the second Paleostinian Intifada two decades ago, which has served as a deterrent to older Paleostinians. This new generation has grown up uniquely stymied, in a territory riven by infighting and fragmented by barriers and checkpoints. At least 64 Paleostinians have been killed since the beginning of the year, most of them while carrying out attacks or during festivities with security forces, but some were uninvolved civilians and others were killed under circumstances that are being investigated. At least 15 Israelis have been killed in Paleostinian terror attacks in that time, including two brothers shot Sunday in the town of Hawara, just south of Jaba. In response, Israeli settlers torched dozens of buildings and cars. "It’s like the new government released the hands of soldiers and settlers, and said now they can do whatever they want," said Jamal Khalili, a member of Jaba’s local council. At the recent memorial service, children with black Death Eater bands on their foreheads gathered around the button men, eager for a glimpse of their heroes. "The outcome is what you see here," Khalili added. Last week, an Israeli military raid in the northern West Bank city of Nablus sparked a shootout with Paleostinian button men that killed 10 people. The raid targeted the most prominent of the emerging gangs, the Lion’s Den. Israeli security officials claim the military has crippled the Nablus-based Lion’s Den over the past few months, killing or arresting most of its key members. But they acknowledge its button men, who roam the Old City of Nablus and pump out slick Telegram videos with a carefully honed message of heroic resistance, now inspire new attacks across the territory. "The Lion’s Den is beginning to become an idea that we see all around," said an Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an intelligence assessment. Instead of hurling stones or Molotov cocktails, turbans now mainly open fire, he said, using M-16s often smuggled from Jordan or stolen from Israeli military bases. The official said the army was monitoring the Jaba group and others in the northern cities of Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarem. But he acknowledged the army has difficulty gathering intelligence on the small, loosely organized terror groups. The Paleostinian Authority, a self-rule government that administers parts of the West Bank, works closely with the Israeli military against its domestic rivals, particularly the terror group Hamas, one of the armed feet of the Moslem Brüderbund millipede,, which runs the Gazoo ...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppressionand disproportionate response... Strip and openly seeks Israel’s destruction. With young Paleostinians increasingly viewing the Paleostinian Authority as an arm of the Israeli security forces rather than the foundation for a future state, Paleostinian security forces are loath to intervene against the budding terror groups. Paleostinian forces now rarely venture into their strongholds like the Old City of Nablus and the Jenin refugee camp, according to residents and the Israeli military. Jaba button men said the Paleostinian security forces have not cracked down on them. Residents said the group, founded last September, has rapidly grown to some 40-to-50 members. Hammour described Paleostinian leaders as corrupt and out of touch with regular Paleostinians. But, he said, "Our goals are much bigger than creating problems with the Paleostinian Authority." With the popularity of the PA plummeting, experts say it cannot risk inflaming tensions by arresting widely admired button men. The PA "is experiencing a crisis of legitimacy," said Tahani Mustafa, Paleostinian analyst at the International Crisis Group. "There’s a huge disconnect between elites at the top and the groups on the ground." Paleostinian officials acknowledge their grip is slipping. "We fear any of our actions against [these group] will create a reaction in the street," said a Paleostinian intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity ... for fear of being murdered... because he was not authorized to talk to news hounds. With the Israeli military stepping up raids, the West Bank’s power structure faltering and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government expanding settlements, frustrated Paleostinians say they are not in pursuit of any Islamist or political agenda — they want to defend their towns and resist Israel’s 55-year-old control of the West Bank, which it captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War. For 28-year-old Mohammed Alawneh, whose two brothers were killed in confrontations with Israeli forces, two decades apart, the Jaba group is a "reaction." He said he could support peace if it meant the end of the occupation and the formation of a single state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. For now, he said, it’s clear Israel doesn’t want peace. Hamamra, the Jaba group’s late commander, threw stones at the Israeli army as a teen and later joined an armed offshoot of Fatah, the party of Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase.... , according to his mother, Lamia. After 10 agonizing months in an Israeli prison, he became religious and withdrawn. He spoke of taking Dire Revenge. After his death, Lamia discovered he had helped form the Jaba group and that Islamic Jihad had supplied them with weapons, including the gun Hamamra fired at Israeli troops on January 14. The army chased him into Jaba, killing Hamamra along with another gunman, Amjad Adnan Khaliliya, both of whom were identified by Islamic Jihad as members of the terror group. Their crushed and bloodstained car now sits in the center of Jaba like a macabre monument. At his funeral, Lamia said Hamamrah’s friends urged her to show pride in a son who became a fighter and inspired the whole village. But Lamia wept and wept. Her 14-year-old daughter, Malak, now wants to die a martyr, too. "I’m just a mother who lost her son," Lamia said. "I want this all to stop." |
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