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On May 21, Israel bombed Gaza for 11 days, killing 253 Palestinians, including 66 children, and Israel declared a ceasefire. The entire family of the victims was torn to pieces while sleeping on an Israeli fighter jet. On May 14, Abu Hatab’s family was killed at their home in the Shati refugee camp. One day later, 17 members of the al-Kulak family were killed in a large-scale Israeli air strike on al-Wehda Street in Gaza City.
Israel has targeted residential areas and houses, leaving approximately 74,000 people homeless. Other civilian buildings were also damaged or destroyed, including schools, government departments, police stations, banks, and clinics. In addition, Israeli jet fighters bombed important infrastructure, damaged roads, and disabled electricity and water supply installations.
Faced with the massive destruction of civilian buildings and infrastructure, Israel’s claims against Hamas are untenable. The Israeli army has always boasted the use of “precision” military technology. If it is so precise, how can it cause so many civilian deaths and so much destruction? The answer is clear: it intends to kill civilians, including children, and destroy the houses and livelihoods of Palestinians in Gaza in another collective punishment operation.
Another fallacy that the Israeli government has been spreading-Western media has been blindly imitating-this is the “conflict” between Israel and Hamas. The reality is that this is a confrontation between the occupier Israel and the occupied Palestinian people. It is Jerusalem in Israel, the Palestinian people in the West Bank, the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel when it was founded in 1948, Jordan, Lebanon, and the diaspora who disseminated oppression against Israel. Hamas only entered this round of hostilities in response to public pressure at a later stage.
It all started in April when Israeli forces repeatedly attacked the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, harassing Muslims and Christian Palestinians trying to reach the Holy Land, and threatening to expel another group of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. And protect Israeli extremists from marching in the city and chanting “Death to the Arabs!”
The demonstrations were a response to Jerusalem’s ongoing provocations, which were quickly dealt with by the Israeli police with brutal force. The public call for Hamas to respond to Israeli crimes began in the streets of Jerusalem and also from Gaza.
Earlier on May 10, Israeli occupying forces once again attacked the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, wounding about 300 Palestinians, clearing the way for Israel’s annual extremist “flag march” through the old city of Jerusalem. Around that time, members of the far-right Knesset went to Sheikh Jarrah to assure Jewish settlers that Israel would continue its efforts to “judaize” the Jewish quarter.
The Palestinian anger at these provocations reached a climax. Under the pressure of the people, the military resistance faction in Gaza finally decided to intervene and issued an ultimatum to the occupying forces later that day to leave the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Sheikh Jala. Israel did not comply, and they fired rockets at Jerusalem.
Videos circulating on social media depict Palestinians cheering and cheering in Jerusalem when missiles are launched from Gaza.
This general sentiment shows that this round of confrontation is a true and sincere expression of the Palestinian people’s willingness to fight for freedom.
For a long time, Israel has tried to divide the Palestinians, kill their unity, eliminate their national identity and destroy their cohesion. Even in the media, Palestinians in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the 1948 territories, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria are regarded as different ethnic groups that seem to be different issues. But their problem is one: Israel’s occupation and colonization of their land, which led to their expulsion, deprivation and oppression.
On May 15, during the bombing of Gaza, the repression in Jerusalem, and the lynching of Palestinians by Jewish settlers on the territory of 1948, we commemorated the 73rd anniversary of Nakba. The violence and oppression we saw on the streets of Palestine remind us once again that the violent colonization of Palestinian land by Zionism has not stopped. As Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians continues, Nakba continues.
What happened in Jerusalem in the past few weeks clearly illustrates this point. As in 1948, the Israeli army continued to raid Palestinian houses, throwing away their legal owners, and handing them over to Jewish settlers. They continue to raid Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, harassing, beating and arresting Palestinian Muslims and Christians to remind them that this is their ultimate goal since 1948-Jerusalem and Palestine have racially cleansed the Palestinians.
But Israel’s efforts to dissolve and divide the Palestinians have failed, as this collective response to colonial violence proves this point.
When Israel attacked Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the territories in 1948, refugees and diaspora reacted. Gaza fired rockets. The West Bank stood up to protest and staged a general strike. Refugees from Jordan and Lebanon appeared on the border fence, again showing that they did not give up their right to return. In Europe, people living in the United States and elsewhere mobilized a large number of supporters of the Palestinian cause.
The “Israeli Palestinians” who are called “Arab Israelis” by the Israeli and Western media in an attempt to eliminate their identities prove that they are Palestinians just like us. Despite decades of forced erasure, they also took to the streets of Lydd, Acre, Haifa, Umm al-Fahm, etc., and raised the Palestinian flag. They also chanted for Jerusalem and Gaza.
These are not “riots” because Israeli and Western media quickly identified them as riots. These are not dissatisfied “citizens of Israel”, they have their own points to settle with the State of Israel, which regards them as second-class citizens. These people are Palestinians, living with their brothers and sisters in Jerusalem, Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and the Jewish diaspora to resist Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian land.
These confrontations represented the resurrection of the Palestinian spirit and declared the failure of the Zionist plan to destroy the Palestinian identity. This movement represents the cry of a nation. In the face of the repeated efforts of Israel and the West to unify, destroy and erase it, they remain unified. This is a big question, “We are here, we will not go, we will come back.”
The ceasefire announced by Israel on May 20 may have taken Palestine off the international news agenda, but it did not stop Israel’s colonial violence against the Palestinians.
Only three days later, Israeli police and Jewish settlers attacked Al-Aqsa again. The Israeli government launched a large-scale campaign to arrest Palestinian citizens in Israel in support of Sheikh Jala and the Gaza Strip, arresting more than 1,500 people. It also raided dozens of Palestinian houses in the occupied West Bank and arrested more Palestinians. On May 25, Israeli agents executed Palestinian Ahmad Fahd (Ahmad Fahd) in Ramallah in broad daylight for no apparent reason.
As for the Gaza Strip, which has fallen into ruin again, the Minister of the Occupation Forces, Benny Gantz, announced that Israel will be able to provide much-needed assistance to rebuild it into a belt after the return of Israeli citizens captured by Hamas.
The Israeli government showed no sign of stopping colonial violence against the Palestinians. And doing so is repeating the past mistakes of other colonial countries. As the repression of the Palestinians became more severe and the Palestinian people’s unity, their determination to unite and resist also increased.
As long as the occupation continues, the Palestinians will continue to pay a huge price for pain and suffering. However, the events of the past few weeks have rejuvenated the Palestinian national movement and brought new hopes for victory in the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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