The heroic struggle waged by the Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank is not new to them, and it is not the first time that the Palestinian people have presented thousands of martyrs, nor is it the first time that the infrastructure of the occupied territories has been attacked and destroyed by the Zionist regime.
This article is in response to the statements that some parties are trying in vain to market in the Arab and international media, such as that the Palestinians bears responsibility for the destruction that occurred, that it is the cause of the Israeli raids on the Gaza Strip, and that it is the one that provoked the Zionist enemy and pushed it to attack Gaza in response to the flood that caused confusion.
Therefore, as a way to refresh memory, I would like to recall some of the events that took place during the past few years, which are in core fundamental reasons behind this unprecedented situation in the land of Palestine, all of which occurred before the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” and without there being security or military reasons.
These are crimes no less bad and brutal than what is currently taking place in the Gaza Strip, and the common factor between them is that they all began as an assault without a justifiable reason, other than Israel’s effort to bulldoze the Palestinian land of its inhabitants, forcibly displace them, and restrict their means of safe living, to enable the Zionists to gain access to it.
I refer here to four aspects of the overall Israeli policies:
1- Destruction of the environment and drying up of water: The report issued by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in 2009 indicated that the establishment of settlements left devastating effects that affected all elements of the Palestinian environment. In addition to the acts of confiscating lands and preventing Palestinian citizens from entering them and practicing their various activities, there are many manifestations of destruction. For the Palestinian environment, the most prominent of which are the depletion of Palestinian water, wastewater, solid waste, air and noise pollution, the destruction of cultural heritage, and the destruction of the agricultural sector.
The report indicated that the sector most affected by the results of destruction policies is the Gaza Strip, which is characterized by an increase in population. The increase in population at the expense of available resources has caused the deterioration of the Gazan environment and its severe suffering from scarcity of water resources, which are being consumed unfairly by Israeli settlements.
2- Demolishing homes: Demolishing citizens’ homes and displacing them is considered one of the most brutal crimes regularly practiced by the Israeli occupation, regardless of international laws and regulations. The evidence of this is too numerous to count, and the Zionists carry it out as a collective punishment of the population.
Human rights information and reports indicate that the occupier completely demolished more than 500 Palestinian villages and towns, including approximately 200,000 homes. This included the incident of demolishing citizens’ homes in the West Bank without any security or military reason.
According to the OCHA report, the Israeli authorities demolished 568 Palestinian homes and other buildings in the West Bank and East Jerusalem during the year 2003, which led to the displacement of 759 people.
The United Nations Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process indicated that, on May 7, the Israeli authorities demolished a primary school, funded by the European Union, for the children of the village of Jubbet al-Dhib, east of Bethlehem, in Area C in the occupied West Bank.
3- Organized killing: It is certain that talking about killing practices against the Palestinian people does not require any evidence or numbers, as Palestinian blood has been spilled unlawfully by the usurping Israeli forces since the first day the Palestinian territories were occupied, and what has been monitored by the reports of international humanitarian and human rights organizations is sufficient.
However, if we return to the report issued by Human Rights Watch in the year 2022/2023, a full year before the events of the Al-Aqsa Flood, we find that it indicated the killing of 34 Palestinian children in the West Bank. The organization indicates that the incidents of killing children are not linked to any criminal acts, but rather arbitrary measures by before the occupation forces.
The report referred, for example, to the killing of Mahmoud Al-Saadi (17 years old), who was killed by Israeli forces while he was walking to school near the Jenin refugee camp, when he was shot from an Israeli military vehicle for no reason.
4- Al-Aqsa Mosque: Since its occupation in 1967, Al-Aqsa Mosque and its worshipers have been subjected to blatant violations by the Israeli occupation forces, which did not stop provoking the Palestinian people and deliberately harming them.
These violations include settler incursions, excavations under Al-Aqsa Mosque, which cause cracks and fissures in the construction of the mosque, Judaization operations by converting Palestinian educational curricula to Israeli educational curricula, and preventing the call to prayer. Then, Friday prayers were prohibited since 2017.
At all stages, the Israeli side escalates without security or military reasons necessitating it. We still remember, for example, the storming of Ariel Sharon in 2000 AD into the courtyards of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, which was the spark for the start of the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
At the end of the same year, the occupation forces committed a massacre against hundreds of worshipers in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque. This was repeated in the year 2021, when the occupying forces committed brutal aggression against the worshipers secluded in Al-Aqsa Mosque, attacking hundreds of Palestinian worshipers, showering them with a barrage of bullets and tear gas, and causing a major stampede at the gates of the mosque.
At the beginning of this year, large forces of the occupation police stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa and forcefully forced the worshipers and retreatants to leave after firing rubber-coated metal bullets and poison gas bombs at them, arresting 400 of them, and brutalizing women and children. This attack was one of the sparks of the Al-Aqsa flood.
What has been listed above are a few of the war crimes against humanity that were committed against the Palestinian people without fault. In all of the above-mentioned attacks, the attacks began on the Israeli side and were the victims of the defenseless people in the various Palestinian towns. The Israeli military machine did not differentiate in its crimes between an old man and a young man, or a man and a woman. Or old men and young children, just as there is no distinction today between resistance men and those targeting safe villages.
It has not become clear in all the circumstances that have passed that the tranquility of the Palestinian people is matched by peace, respect, and the granting of rights. Rather, on the contrary, it has been proven that “Israel” only understands the language of force and smells nothing but the smell of gunpowder, and the negotiating table will not be generous with offers to the Palestinian people unless stability is destabilized. In Tel Aviv and its environs, the Israeli army’s bases were destroyed. Right is taken and not given. This is the strategic and most prominent title of the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation.
