Unity of the battlefields will once be established again in West Bank

• Qassam Al-Barghouti 

• Source: Al Mayadeen

It is of utmost importance to support the resistance in the occupied West Bank with all the means available, from equipment to financing and media, in a bid to bolster its military capabilities and manpower.

The Israeli occupation did not withdraw from Southern Lebanon in 2000 as part of a peace initiative or an act of goodwill, as the operations carried out by the valiant Lebanese Resistance and their frequency and intensity rendered targets all of the "army's" sites all over the South. All the roads in the South, all the military barracks, became but pathways toward death owing to the ambushes and the anti-armor, anti-infantry IEDs, among the many creative means of resistance employed by the Lebanese Resistance. One must also not forget the many hits suffered by the Israeli occupation forces' morale in Lebanon, especially in light of the material and human casualties they incurred. At the same time, there was a growing domestic campaign pressuring the enemy to withdraw, mainly led by the bereaved mothers who had their sons killed in Lebanon; the enemy was forced to withdraw, and it could not find any clear targets to hit, because the Resistance was not comprised of any specific establishments and it did not have any specified military camps and barracks.

A few months after the liberation of South Lebanon, the enemy found itself before a new batch of security challenges in the occupied territories in light of domestic political disputes. The enemy scrambled to get out of the crises it was engulfed in by depressing the second Palestinian Intifada that was escalating by the day, and it started planning the execution of numerous plans and policies within its security doctrines.

In the beginning, the plans in question were part of the new security doctrine that was established as a result of the Israeli combat experience. At first, the enemy worked on carrying out swift operations against armed groups and confronting the Palestinian Resistance through all possible means. However, the situation kept on escalating, and the Resistance continued to target the "Army" and settlers on an almost daily basis.

Though the enemy did succeed in neutralizing some groups, the methods it was using did not provide adequate security, as the Resistance's unforeseen operations forced it to acknowledge that its tactics did not yield the desired results, which led to increased pressure from the right-wing parties and the settler groups, forcing it to use a new tactic developed by Israeli occupation forces Chief of Staff and Security Minister Moshe Ya'alon. What the top security official did consisted of merging old tactics with new ones, which saw stifling sieges imposed on cities and assassinations being carried out against Resistance commanders as freedom fighters were being swiftly eliminated.

This strategy did not yield the desired results. After a short while of using this strategy, the Israeli occupation's leaders saw that their actions only riled up the Palestinians against them, as they preferred martyrdom over life under blockade and a lack of security and a future, which in turn led to Istishhadi operations as a reaction to the Israeli occupation's measures.

The operations put the occupation under immense pressure from its settlers, who were calling for more violence against the Palestinians and uprooting the Resistance in occupied Palestine. The paramount pressure established a pretext for Operation Defensive Wall following a period of rehabilitation and mobilization in order to unite the Israeli settlers behind the Israeli occupation forces. 

The Israeli occupation required nearly 40,000 soldiers for its operation, which equates to the number of soldiers that participated in the 1973 war. The operation started off with the deployment of excess violence to force Palestinians to believe that they are dealing with a maniacal "state" that will stop at nothing to protect itself and that no matter what actions they took, they would not achieve their desired results. The enemy carried out Operation Defensive Wall and demobilized in cities, stormed camps, participated in long-lasting battles, and the operation as a whole ended with thousands of those who gave impetus to the Intifada wound up behind bars, and the Palestinian people were left shocked.

Today, incidents might be similar but the circumstances are not. Operations are being carried out en masse and the Palestinian Resistance is mobilized all over the North of the occupied West Bank, with the enemy using a strategy known as "mowing the grass" since 2018, which is a tactic aimed at putting an end to the resistance stockpiling arms. However, the large number of armed freedom fighters forced it to work on assessing the levels of danger based on the information it receives from spies, the Palestinian Authority, and social media.

Based on the information it receives, the enemy targets the groups that pose a dire threat to it. These attacks limit its losses, but they do not ensure security, for the real danger for the enemy is not the groups that are publicly stationed in the West Bank. For the enemy, the true enemy is the groups confined to known and limited areas, most of whose members use phones and could be traced and struck preemptively.

The real danger to the Israeli occupation is the secret groups that utilize public groups as cover and who operate professionally in a covert manner, benefiting from the public acts of resistance and the enemy's security forces focusing on the areas where freedom fighters are publicly present, allowing the groups to carry out their operations in unforeseen areas. The Israelis who have been killed since the start of the year amount to 20 Israelis. Their death was not the doing of the Lions' Den or the Jenin Battalion - they were killed by cells and individuals operating covertly.

One of the former leaders of the Zionist security service underlined that the existence of privately-owned weapons threatens the existence of a regional state if the weak party had it covertly. If the security status quo continues without the trend of Resistance getting quashed through a swift and decisive operation similar to Operation Defensive Wall, the covert groups might attempt to garner tools that would turn the table in the West Bank, such as resorting to making anti-armor IEDs or manufacturing snipers, rendering the situation dangerous for the Israeli occupation as it was in Lebanon before the withdrawal and as it was in Gaza before the 2005 withdrawal, forcing the enemy to pay a high price through manpower and equipment.

Today, the enemy, despite its behemoth military supremacy, is unable to carry out a swift, decisive operation or a long one. It is also incapable of using excessive violence because the situational circumstances are not as they were during the Intifada; the sharp political divide that its society is currently undergoing is putting it in a real predicament, let alone the Resistance that is now part of an evergrowing Axis of Resistance as part of several fronts that could ignite in the face of the enemy if it were to carry out any action similar to the ones it did during the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

What is needed today is to support the Resistance with all means possible: by providing it with equipment, financing, and media, and the Resistance, through all of its factions, could use its military, financial, and human capabilities to bolster the actions of resistance. The most important factor of all is to convince the enemy that another Operation Defensive Wall and the invasion of cities would inevitably lead to an open, multi-front war.

When the enemy is finally convinced, it will be before two equally depressing alternatives: a multi-front war or another Gaza in the West Bank.