New generation of resistance does not fear Israel - Electronic Intifada podcast

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmYklEAFfN8

The Electronic Intifada

Feb 10, 2023  #TheElectronicIntifada #TheElectronicIntifadaPodcast

On episode 72, we speak about the current situation in the occupied West Bank with Abdaljawad Omar from Palestine's Birzeit University.

In January alone, Israeli police, soldiers and settlers killed at least 35 Palestinians, including seven children, in the West Bank, as the violent repression in the territory that escalated throughout 2022 carried into the new year.

Those deaths include 10 Palestinians who were fatally injured during a raid in Jenin refugee camp – the single deadliest operation in the West Bank since at least 2005, according to a UN official.

Israel's escalation of violence and collective punishment is targeted against a new generation of Palestinian fighters who, Omar explains, are rising to challenge Israel's power in the West Bank.

"There's a rise of new spaces of resistance, if you want to call them – they have made life harder for the Israeli military to enter and arrest and exercise the power of arrest, which has been going on for the past decade or so without much resistance," he says.

He explains that in addition to Israel's usual raids and arrest campaigns, the army is using its full force to quell this new generation of Palestinians.

"We're seeing self-defense zones defending themselves against an Israeli military that is attempting to kill them," he says.

We also talk about the role of the Palestinian Authority, and its role as subcontractor to Israel's occupation in the context of its diminishing economic and political power amongst Palestinians.

There is a "form of ideological power that maintains the PA," he says, "but still, there's a process of unbinding happening, a process where people are rejecting that."