Message from the "Department of Foreign Affairs at DFLP": Aggression on the West Bank

Written by: DFLP on 3 September 2024

(Above: The war criminal Netanyahu points to a map from which the West Bank has been erased, as per the policy of his Likud Party.)

In response to the desires and pressures of the fascist and extremist wing-right in Israel, the Israeli occupation army launched a military aggression on August 28th, targeting several cities and Palestinian camps in the West Bank. The stated goal was to eliminate the Palestinian resistance and its military arms. In line with this goal, the aim is to reshape Palestinian areas to align with Israeli plans, which involve emptying certain areas of their inhabitants to expand colonial settlement areas

This operation cannot be viewed as a reaction to any specific event, but rather as a new aggression that continues the systematic killing practiced by the occupation army against the Palestinian people in various areas of the West Bank. According to international law, United Nations resolutions, and the recognition of hundreds of countries around the world, these areas are Palestinian lands occupied by Israel. The Palestinian people have the right to resort to various forms of struggle and resistance to liberate these lands and exercise their national rights freely, far from all forms of occupation and dependency.

This aggression also occurs within the framework of two interconnected issues: the first being the genocide committed in the Gaza Strip, where Israel continues to benefit from the support provided by the Western and NATO international alliance to achieve the greatest possible ground gains. The second issue is the attempt to impose the Zionist plan known as the "Decisive Plan" through blood and fire. This plan has been openly announced by several Israeli officials, in clear defiance not only of the Palestinian people but also of the entire international system, which has failed to translate its resolutions into reality on the ground and has also failed to provide protection to a people living under occupation.

By examining the general outlines of the "Annexation and Decisive Plan," it becomes clear that Israel is working to detail this plan, which confines Palestinians to distant cantons on a very small geographical area. According to Israeli visions, this area only needs an improved living reality, which Israel will work to develop, completely ignoring all Palestinian political and national rights. Based on this, Israel presents the Palestinian people with three options:
The first option is to accept the annexation plan and "peacefully" coexist with the occupation and its future projects, with the possibility of creating job opportunities and open commercial areas, as was suggested by the Manama Workshop held in Bahrain in 2019 as part of the arrangements for the American Deal of the Century.

The second option is the opening of the door to "voluntary migration" with Israeli financial and administrative facilitation. This will be done after several steps that Israel will take, which are likely to force the majority of Palestinians to choose this option. These include laws and decisions that restrict Palestinians in their land, and harassment by heavily armed occupation soldiers and settlers.

The third option, for those who reject the first two, is persecution, killing, and imprisonment. This is what is currently happening in the cities and camps of the West Bank and on the roads and streets connecting the Palestinian cities and camps.

Therefore, the invasions of cities and camps, the displacement of residents, the destruction of infrastructure, and the perpetration of mass massacres are part of a well-thought-out process that shifts the war of displacement, annexation, and ethnic cleansing to its comprehensive bloody phase. In this phase, the occupying state resorts to all types of weapons, from warplanes to tanks, bulldozers, artillery bombardment, the imposition of blockades on hospitals, the obstruction of medical teams, and turning the northern West Bank, in particular, into a theater of gratuitous killing, extending the brutal aggression happening in the Gaza Strip.

The successive massacres and crimes against the Palestinian people throughout the years of occupation, which have escalated in recent years with the rise of the fascist right to power in Israel, accompanied by the deliberate destruction of infrastructure, will not succeed in breaking the will of the Palestinian people or in implementing the displacement and annexation plans pursued by Israel and some of its officials. Instead, they will only ignite and expand the resistance, increasing its creativity in its forms.

The occupation has previously carried out a similar operation during the "Defensive Shield" aggression in 2002, when Israel mobilized more than 30,000 soldiers, fulfilling an electoral promise made by Ariel Sharon to his voters under the slogan "Let the army win," with the aim of crushing the intifada. However, after about five weeks (from March 29th to May 10th) of killing, bombing, destruction, and using all of its immense power without any restraints, Israel failed to achieve a decisive victory despite the heavy human losses among the Palestinian people. It also failed to crush the resistance, which only increased its intensity inside Israel. The only thing Israel succeeded in was violating Palestinian Authority areas and breaking the geographic divisions imposed by the Oslo Accords in the distribution of security, military, and functional control between the Authority and Israel. This reasserted Israel’s direct occupation, ignoring the agreements signed with it, confirming the true intentions and goals behind those agreements.

Today, what the occupation army and its settlers are committing in the West Bank can only be seen as collusion and partnership by some Western powers, led by the United States of America, and a disgraceful Arab and international silence that provides the occupying enemy with all the reasons for strength and arrogance, encouraging it to continue the genocide, which is nearing the end of its first year in the Gaza Strip, aiming to liquidate the Palestinian cause in service of Western imperialist countries and the Zionist movement's dominance over the Middle East and the world.

Israel's practices and its method of dealing with the Gaza Strip, through siege, wars, destruction, and humiliation, were among the reasons, along with others, that led to the eruption of resistance and the development of its capabilities, culminating in the "Al-Aqsa Flood." What is happening today in the West Bank is a prelude that requires all components of the Palestinian national liberation movement, led by the security institutions affiliated with the Palestinian Authority, to defend the Palestinian land and its owners who face the dangers of death, displacement, imprisonment, and abuse as part of the ethnic cleansing operations committed by the Israeli occupation. Every free person in the world must understand that the volcano of revolution in Palestine may cool down a bit, but its fire will never go out. The great explosion is inevitable and will be a major revolution that will burn all those who conspired, shirked, and contributed to the crime committed by the Israeli fascist army against the Palestinian people.

We, in the "Department of Foreign Affairs at DFLP”, place this information in the hands of political parties and social frameworks of all kinds. We call for expanding their actions and deepening their engagement with what is happening to exert pressure on their governments for more balanced positions that align with the minimum humanitarian, ethical, political, and legal standards, all of which are being violated by the Israeli fascism supported by the United States and Western countries.

Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
-Department of Foreign Affairs-
02/09/2024

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