On 22 May 2023 the Israeli army killed three Palestinians in a large-scale raid on the Balata refugee camp in Nablus on the occupied West Bank; using bulldozers and grenades, they blocked the camp entrances and demolished at least seven homes. The brutal attack, targeting the Palestinian resistance, came just weeks after Israel launched an unprovoked bombing campaign against Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip on 9 May. During just five days of bombing, 33 Palestinians were killed, at least 12 of whom were civilians including six children. 190 Palestinians, including 64 children, were injured. Israel destroyed at least 100 residential units in Gaza and damaged over 2,700, and 20 schools were damaged. Over 1,200 Palestinians were internally displaced by the bombing, adding to the already catastrophic humanitarian situation that has persisted in Gaza. Two people were killed and 40 injured in the Israeli state by Palestinian rockets fired in response to the attacks.
A ceasefire was agreed on 13 May, but Gaza remains under a permanent siege by the Israeli state, which limits the flow of goods and people in and out of the territory, maintaining it as what Human Rights Watch accurately describes as an ‘open-air prison’. Gaza also remains vulnerable to future attacks by the Israeli army; it has been subjected to three major Israeli bombing campaigns in the last 15 years, in which over 3,500 Palestinians have been killed. Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces killed 95 Palestinians in the first quarter of 2023 alone, including 17 children.
The bombing was preceded by a series of assaults by the Israeli forces on the Al Aqsa Mosque in illegally-occupied East Jerusalem in April, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Israeli police raided the mosque compound at dawn on 6 April, firing stun grenades, tear gas, and sponge-tipped bullets, and violently assaulting worshippers with batons and rifle butts. According to the United Nations Human Rights Office, over 30 Palestinians were injured in the assault while Israeli forces allegedly prevented paramedics from entering the compound. Approximately 450 Palestinians were arrested, many of whom were beaten as they were being taken away. Such assaults on the mosque have become an annual tradition for Israel, which conducted similar raids during Ramadan in both 2021 and 2022. The assault on Al Aqsa also sparked attacks from forces in Lebanon, opposed to the Israeli state’s aggression, who fired rockets into Israel in response. This was the largest attack from Lebanese forces against Israel since the latter’s military invasion of Lebanon in 2006. Israel responded by bombing both southern Lebanon and Gaza.
The timing of these assaults has been fortuitous for the ruling Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which has been embroiled in a domestic crisis over proposed judicial reforms that have been opposed by liberal sections of the Israeli population. Protests by these sections against the Netanyahu government have been ongoing, ostensibly under the banner of defending Israeli democracy (a ‘democracy’ which has always excluded Palestinians). Triggering armed conflict with Palestinians has been a useful method of sidelining such domestic crises, a fact which Netanyahu, who has been facing such crises for many years, knows well. This is reflected in a statement Netanyahu made at a Security Cabinet meeting on 6 April in the midst of the assaults on Al-Aqsa: ‘Our enemies will learn again that during times that we are tested, Israeli citizens stand together united.’ A similar sentiment was echoed by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who was quoted saying, ‘At these moments, we leave all disputes, accusations and political considerations and unite against our enemies.’ Such cynical use of anti-Palestinian violence for domestic political purposes is yet another reflection of the complete disregard for Palestinian life held by all Zionist political forces in Israel.
Two notable anniversaries
Two days after the ceasefire, Palestinians commemorated the 75th anniversary of Nakba Day on 15 May 2023. The Nakba (the Arabic word for ‘catastrophe’) was the period of violent ethnic cleansing carried out by Zionist militias between 1947 and 1949 to make room for the settler-colonial state of Israel. Palestinians were systematically and violently expelled from the land of historic Palestine; over 500 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed, and approximately 850,000 Palestinians were forced to flee, forbidden by Israeli law from returning. 15 May is celebrated by Israel as its Independence Day, as it was on this day in 1948 that the Israeli state declared its independence on the ruins of the Palestinian nation, but for Palestinians this date marks the destruction of their nation and their catastrophic expulsion from their homeland.
A few days before the 75th Nakba Day, Palestinians also marked another notable date: the one-year anniversary of the killing of the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh on 11 May 2022. Abu-Akleh was shot and killed by Israeli forces while reporting on an Israeli raid on the Jenin Refugee Camp in the West Bank. A joint investigation by the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq and the London-based research group Forensic Architecture found that she had been deliberately targeted by Israeli forces, despite the fact that she had been wearing a press vest clearly identifying her as a journalist. On the anniversary of her murder, members of her family spoke out against the lack of justice for her murder, as well as the refusal of the US government to hold Israel accountable for the murder of one of its own citizens. In December 2022 Al Jazeera, for whom Abu-Akleh worked, filed a request with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for those responsible to be investigated and prosecuted. Intentionally killing a journalist is a war crime under international law, but as of the one-year anniversary of her death no further steps in her case had been taken by the ICC.
As we commemorate these two anniversaries, it is important to remember that Israel’s continuous assaults on the Palestinian people show that the Nakba was not just a historical event, but is an ongoing process aimed at ethnically cleansing as many Palestinians from as much of the land of historic Palestine as possible. Israel’s settler-colonial project, built on racist violence from its inception, continues unabated in the form of bombings, raids, killings of civilians and journalists, and other forms of violence continuously inflicted against the Palestinian people.
Wesam Khaled
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 294, June/July 2023
