As a Gaza genocide survivor, I fear another Nakba in West Bank

For the last seven days, the occupied West Bank has been a living nightmare. From Jenin to Tulkarem and Tubas, Israeli soldiers, tanks and military vehicles have tramped over Palestinian life, killing at least 22 Palestinians and leaving scores more injured. 

Life itself has been slammed shut. Roads have been destroyed and entry routes into refugee camps have been blockaded, restricting the movement of rescue and defence crews — the injured must now fend for themselves. 

Just like us in Gaza, the people of the West Bank have been terrorised: essential living supplies such as food and medicine have been rationed and water, internet, electricity and telephone networks have been cut off. Israel claims a “counterterrorism” operation against Hamas; Palestinians have seen and heard it all before — this is the spiteful reflex of an occupier losing its grip.

Israel’s concurrent assault on Gaza and offensive in the West Bank are nonetheless revealing. They underscore a pattern of land confiscation and unrestrained violence against Palestinians, aimed at solidifying control over illegally occupied territories.

When Israel is threatened it lashes out. Like many of its precedents, it appears to lack any justification beyond a broader agenda to displace Palestinians and accelerate its expansionary settler-colonial project — emboldened by fascistic habits —integral to the Zionist project since 1948. 

Nakba 2.0 in the West Bank?

It’s clear that Israel’s much-derided narrative of “targeting Hamas” is just a pretext for cracking down on Palestinian existence, be it in Jenin, Rafah, Tulkarem or Deir al Balah, and the invocation of ‘security’ is codeword for collective punishment. 

For over seven decades, Israel has failed to acknowledge the Palestinian people’s legitimate right to self-defence. Any form of resistance is deemed punishable — vocal, virtual, or physical. Everything, and anything, is met with deadly ends. 

But starving and slaughtering a refugee camp in the West Bank isn’t the strategic victory Israel thinks it is. Israel’s policy of uprooting Palestinians will only stir their resolve and expose their criminality on the world stage. Forcibly expelling people from their homes and silencing those who speak against discrimination and apartheid in the West Bank will not bring peace. 

For us Palestinians — in Gaza, the West Bank, and in exile — Palestine is not just a piece of land; it is our ancestral identity, our home, and our dream of living free from occupation and the chains of colonisation. The expulsion of my grandfathers from Yaffa in 1948, my family from Gaza in 2023, and the ongoing displacement from the refugee camps in 2024 is not merely history repeating itself. It is an ongoing tragedy. 

We know that Israel’s latest onslaught in the West Bank is just another manifestation of Israel’s ideology in action, to dismantle resistance struggles and further displace an already refugee population. Remember, Israel wants to eliminate the idea of the Palestinian by undermining national aspirations and perpetuating the cycle of dispossession and exile. 

Year after year, every Palestinian household has become a battlefield. All we’ve ever known in Palestine is the threat of expulsion, whether bulldozers in Jenin or F-16s in Gaza. 

We do not know when this attack will end, but this won’t be the last. Sooner or later, the Israeli army will withdraw from Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas, only to return under the guise of maintaining ‘order and security’, when in fact, the target is the Palestinian right to exist. No matter Israel’s strategy, the goal is the same: to increase Palestinian suffering for the sake of Israel’s political gains. 

But as long as the Israeli occupation continues, the Palestinian people will carry the weight of history and the legitimate right to defend themselves. Dying in dignity is the preferred option while the other is life under discrimination, injustice, and erasure. Jenin stood firm during the “Battle of Jenin” in 2002, it will remain firm today, just as the flickering embers of Gaza refuse to be extinguished. 

Mohammed R. Mhawish, a Palestinian award-winning multimedia journalist from Gaza City, is a freelance writer and researcher, and a guest author of the book A Land With A People

Follow him on Twitter: @MohammRafik

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.