The collaborators and normalisers with Israel have been unmasked in the heart of the nation

The sound of normalisation in the Arab world has grown louder, with the normalising states rushing to the Israeli enemy. Those who have surrendered in the belief that they had no safe refuge also think that an Israeli state in our midst is inevitable, so even legitimate resistance is futile. There is an oft-quoted saying that “The old [Palestinian refugees] will die and the young will forget” — representing Zionist wishes rather than actually expressed thoughts — but successive generations of Palestinians have not forgotten that their land has been stolen and colonised. The normalisers follow the same line of Zionist thinking, and are surprised when blows are dealt out to the occupiers in the territories under military control over which Israel wants to impose its sovereignty as part of its apartheid state. The besieged Gaza Strip, meanwhile, is earmarked by the Israeli hierarchy for separation from the occupied West Bank.

Over the past two weeks, the Palestinian territories have witnessed four acts of self-defence by individual Palestinians against Israeli oppression. These operations succeeded in throwing out the established theories of security and stability in the usurper Israeli state and damaging the morale of the illegal settlers in occupied Palestine.

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The four operations killed 14 Zionists and wounded at least 20 others; they were not planned by a Palestinian resistance organisation or movement, but by individuals. It is reminiscent of the first Palestinian intifada, as they all hit targets in the part of Palestine occupied since 1948. The myth of Israeli invincibility within its still undeclared but nominal borders has been shattered; the security establishment has been shaken to the core.

One of those individuals was Raad Hazem, who lived in Jenin refugee camp. Jenin has become an icon of Palestinian resistance because of its people’s steadfastness. Twenty years ago, Israeli armoured vehicles stormed into the camp to assassinate members of an Islamic Jihad cell. The attack lasted over 12 days, and 24 Israeli soldiers, including senior officers, were killed. Many more Palestinian refugees lost their lives. The Israelis made a humiliating retreat in order to cut their losses.

The latest self-defence attacks took place in major cities in occupied Palestine: Tel Aviv, Beersheba, Hadera and Bnei Brak. They were far from the eyes of the Palestinian Authority’s collaborationist security forces which try to stop any resistance against the Israeli occupation, and kills or detains activists in its prisons.

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The strategy of these attacks was apparently to abandon explosive vests and use automatic weapons against Israeli soldiers, police and border guards. The majority of adult Israeli citizens are reserve soldiers following their compulsory military service during which they were trained in the use of deadly weapons.

This second armed intifada is unlikely to stop, because it is a spontaneous uprising of ordinary people tormented to the point of no return by Israel’s brutal military occupation. There is no clear leadership that can succumb to military and financial pressure from within and beyond the occupied Palestinian territories. The uprising complements — but is, at the moment, apparently separate from — the rockets of the resistance factions in an embodiment of honourable national unity based on the legacy of liberation movements, rather than the legacy of the cursed Oslo Accord, its agents and the greatest disgrace in the history of the struggle of the Palestinian people.

The martyrs of the Tel Aviv, Hadera, Beersheba and Bnei Brak operations have exposed Palestinian collaborators and Arab normalisers with the occupation. They also exposed the myth that the Israeli army cannot be defeated. This suggests another new dawn, the signs of which appeared with the approach of this year’s holy month of Ramadan. The cannon signalling the time to end the fast has been fired from the land of Palestine, the heart of the nation.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.