Ibrahim Al-Nabulsi, one of the faces of this generation of young fighters, in Nablus, West Bank April 2, 2022. He was killed by the Israeli army on August 9, 2022. – / AFP
The last attack took place during the night from Saturday 13th to Sunday 14th August. A 26-year-old Palestinian shot a bus returning from the Western Wall in Jerusalem, injuring eight people including a pregnant woman. The attacker, a resident of the eastern part of the city, turned himself in to the police a few hours later; he doesn’t seem to belong to any movement.
Since the beginning of the spring, a series of attacks has claimed eighteen lives in Israel and near an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. The authors, young men, have the profile of a loner for many. But the increase in these attacks has been linked to the rise of a new armed resistance in the West Bank in recent months. In response, the Israeli army stepped up violent arrests there and conducted an operation in the Gaza Strip.
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On August 5, Israel bombed the Palestinian enclave, starting a deadly three-day standoff with Islamic Jihad that killed 49 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians, according to Palestinian sources. On August 9, the Israeli army killed three more Palestinians in an incursion into Nablus in the northern West Bank. Among them was Ibrahim Al-Nabulsi, 19, one of the symbols of this new generation.
At his funeral, tens of thousands of people, mostly young men, swore to avenge his death while the sharp cracking of automatic rifle fire was heard. Before his death, the one nicknamed “the lion of Nablus” recorded a message: “Protect our homeland. Don’t drop your guns. »
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Ibrahim Al-Nabulsi escaped Israeli forces twice, in February and July. We had assumed he was dead, he had reappeared armed during the funeral of his slain comrades and became a hero with a large audience on TikTok. The Israeli army accuses him of having carried out “several armed attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers” in the Nablus area. “Ibrahim is gone, but there are a thousand Ibrahims,” assures his cousin and fellow campaigner Ameed Al-Nabulsi, who greets the visitors who have come to offer their condolences.
“Lost Generation”
The 19-year-old fighter represents part of this West Bank youth without political horizons, raised on the ashes of the peace process, spectators and victims of an Israeli occupation in the service of a colonization that is eating up more and more land. “The generation between 20 and 30 is looking for itself, it is lost, no faction can contain it,” notes Jamal Tirawi, a Fatah MP, one of the critical voices against the Palestinian Authority. After the second intifada [2000-2005], there was a pacification and we moved away from armed struggle. For a year or a half, the new generation has been reconnecting with this culture. And the Israelis want to liquidate it in a pathetic way. In the middle of the election campaign, Israel is stepping up its murderous incursions into the West Bank: According to the local Ministry of Health, more than 130 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied territories since the beginning of the year.
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