The Beit Hanoun operation: A blow to the colony’s alleged “legitimacy”

On 7 July 2025, the Palestinian resistance carried out a series of operations against the occupying army in Beit Hanoun —in the North of the Gaza Strip, an area the colony declared to be under its control— killing 5 enemy soldiers and wounding dozens. This qualitative operation is not only a heroic act, but also a blow to the heart of the occupying colony, both as a state and as a “society.” Any authority needs to establish its legitimacy in the eyes of those it claims to represent, i.e., give them sufficient reasons to accept its existence as an authority. Imposing decisions on society while maintaining its cohesion is a delicate task for all states, but it is particularly so in cases of settler colonization, where it was not society that established the state in the first place, but the other way around. How does this contradiction manifest itself in the Beit Hanoun operation?

The Haredim, military service, and the “legitimacy” of the colony

The Haredim are a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Some of them, such as the Neturei Karta, call for the dismantling of the colony and the establishment of a single Palestinian state from the river to the sea. The majority are fierce Zionists, but regardless of their position on the occupation, they refuse to serve in the military, considering that devoting themselves to studying the Torah is no less important than military service. Accordingly, their exemption from military service was part of the “social contract” between the settlers after the Nakba, which aimed to establish the legitimacy of the modern state in their eyes. The issue was not particularly significant at the time, as they did not exceed 1 per cent of the total number of settlers.

Today, however, the situation has changed for several reasons. First, the Haredim now make up about 18 per cent of the settlers and about 39 per cent of young settlers. Second, the religious right, including the Haredi “Shas” party, now plays a prominent role in the occupation government. Third, hundreds of soldiers have been killed since the outbreak of the “Al-Aqsa Intifada.” This means that “secular” or non-religious soldiers are dying for a religious government. This raises questions among this group of settlers about the exemption of the Haredim from military service.

Netanyahu’s dilemma

This poses a dilemma for the colony in general and Netanyahu’s government in particular. On one hand, continuing to exempt the Haredim contributes to the killing of a larger proportion of “secular” and non-religious people, which contributes to their reverse emigration from Palestine and weakens the Likud party. On the other hand, revoking the exemption would put this group of settlers in conflict with the Zionist state and threaten to undermine the Shas party’s support for the government, potentially leading to its downfall. A number of rabbis have even ordered their followers not to comply with conscription into the occupation army and have threatened to leave Palestine. The argument put forward, that “the Haredim’s recruitment violates the laws of the Torah,” strikingly highlights the conflict between the “legitimacy of the state” and the “legitimacy of the Torah.”

It is noteworthy that Netanyahu recently made up his mind and the occupation army announced that it would move forward with the recruitment of more than 50,000 Haredim this month.

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What does the Beit Hanoun operation have to do with all this?

The battalion targeted by the resistance fighters in Beit Hanoun is the “Netsah Yehuda” battalion, which is officially part of the army structure but is in fact a religious battalion distinct from the others. Its soldiers are not conscripts but volunteers from a special category of Haredim who follow specific “spiritual” authorities and do not care much about the laws of the occupying state. Its slogan is taken from the Torah, women other than the soldiers’ wives are not allowed to enter its camps, and its soldiers’ food is in accordance with the Torah and the Jewish halakha.

This Haredi battalion had entered Gaza only a few days earlier. By targeting this particular battalion at this particular time, the Palestinian resistance has highlighted a fundamental contradiction in the structure and alleged legitimacy of the colony. Now, all 50,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews called up for military service know that their conscription does not only mean the end of their full-time devotion to the Torah, but also that they will be exposed to the fire of the resistance and may be wounded or killed by it.

What happened was a lesson for the colony, whose existence is based on the weaponization of identities to mobilize Jews on the one hand and fragment our societies on the other. While identities may seem to be an easy tool for mobilization, the process does not end with rallying the “Jewish people” against the other. Identity being what sets us apart from “others”, when a certain identitarian group achieves dominance over others, it fragments itself into sub-identities that now view each other as the “other”. Thus, abandoning Zionism, either by joining the Palestinian liberation struggle and/or leaving Palestine, is in the interest even of those who “benefit” from it.

What happened also holds lessons for us. We do not know whether the resistance intended to target this battalion or not. But what happened is an example of how to place armed resistance in the context of a broader political liberation program that studies the contradictions of the colony and exploits them through armed and unarmed confrontation in order to dismantle it. We cannot simply contemplate these contradictions and wait for the colony to disintegrate on its own. The enemy is studying our societies and targeting them militarily, culturally, and through the mass media in a calculated and systematic manner. We must do the same, in support of the heroes of Gaza.

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