After a phase of hit-and-run attacks on the Israeli soldiers decades ago, the disillusioned Palestinian youths appear to have changed their policy. Following their 'Intifada', targeting Israeli armed forces and the militia, the Palestinian militants have lately resorted to ambushes on the camps of the Israeli troops --- leading to killings. In retaliation, the Israeli armed forced resorted to killing Palestinian combatants in raids on the latter's hideouts.
According to observers, the latest armed engagement between the two sides harks back to the days of the dreadful Fatah tactics. It witnessed the Palestinian youths and teenagers conducting clandestine attacks on the enemy forces. The protracted attacks, unique of their kind, involved Palestinians throwing sharp-edged stones using slings at the Israeli armed forces, fatally injuring many. The 'Intifada' attacks eventually underwent such an alarming metamorphosis that those were compared to the guerrilla forces' armed attacks. In fact, given the commitment to achieving their goal, they deserved to be called guerrilla fighters. Many senior guerrilla members as well as the de facto Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) authorities headed by their supreme leader Yasser Arafat, later divided into two factions, had the tacit backing to guerrilla warfare. The PLO's split into two factions and intra-party schism couldn't have come at a worse time in the struggle for a free Palestine. In 2006 PLC (Palestine Legislative Council) election, the PLO lost its majority to the radical faction of Hamas. It proved a great setback for the united struggle for the liberation of whatever is left from the earlier united Palestinian land. Although the acceptability of the hyper-active Hamas and its leaders getting stronger nowadays, especially in the Gaza Strip, in the larger occupied West Bank it is the Fatah leaders and the fighters who enjoy unalloyed support.
Many tend to forget that the PLO is no longer a 'terrorist' organisation. It was recognsied by the UN General Assembly in 1974. This recognition had prompted many powerful countries to ponder the formal acceptance of the Palestinian statehood. During the tenure of the US President Donald Trump (2017-2021), the PLO office in Washington was asked to wind up. The action was alleged to have been prompted by Israeli instigation. To aggravate its ties with the Palestinians, the former US President opened his country's embassy in Israel's new capital, Jerusalem --- an ancient city long revered and contested by the followers of three Abrahamic religions --- Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Earlier, the US President recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
The US administration knew that the move was, indisputably, a step which would infuriate the Muslims in the Israel-occupied Palestinian territory, and elsewhere in the world. But the former President's foreign relations advisors manning the White House behaved nonchalantly. Moreover, President Trump in the opening phase of his tenure was busy proving himself a tough head of state, although he also appeared to have in his mind the premonitions over a 'backlash' targeting the US. Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Israeli Prime Minister, didn't fail to read the US President's mind. Without wasting time, he congratulated Donald Trump for his step on shifting the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the new capital. A vital aspect of shifting the Israeli capital to Jerusalem was a 'vindication' of the 'Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel', in short the 'Jerusalem Law', mentioned at opening of the Israeli state's constitution.
Despite recognising in principle the Palestinian National Authority or State of Palestine, many Western governments had yet to officially declare their position. The days of repeated wars are over. The world in general has started dreaming of peace in the vast area of the de jure ancient Palestine. Hadn't the Palestinian people been driven out of their land of hundreds of years, the orphaned and star-crossed people could have averted the sufferings they are being subject to in the 20th and the 21st centuries. Palestine was also home to a number of early Jews, who had been scattered in the ancient land for long. The curse of losing one's own land and being forced to the neighbouring lands and overseas far-away countries seeking refuge had been an absurd idea until 1948. In that year the independent Israeli state's flag was raised by the nation's first head of state and representatives of the 4-nation victorious Allied forces upon defeating Gemany-Italy-Japan Axis Forces in WW-II. A common feature characterising both Jewish and Palestinians' history: losing homeland and roaming for an indefinite period.
It's true the Jews were persecuted for long in both ancient and modern history. Many might object to the placing of the Jews and the Palestinians within the same bracket. True the modern Jews passed through series of ordeals in the Third Reich, or the Nazi Germany. Apart from the Holocaust in the German-occupied Europe during WW-II, the Jews passed a long time as a stateless people. A similar fate befell the Palestinians after the questionable creation of the Israeli state in 1948. The Palestinians, the original inhabitants of Palestine, were ruthlessly driven out from their native land. Thus began the saga of the Palestinians roaming aimlessly throughout the world. The 1948 plan approved by the UN, to create two sovereign states, one for Israel and the other for Arabs, in the large territory got buried under the splinters of cannon shells fired by Israel. Palestine also took a defensive stance, with arms coming from Egypt and a few Arab states.
Thanks to Israel's pathological hatred for the Palestinians and the latter's response with similar rancour, a war of attrition and the creation of Fatah, followed by the radical Hamas and other guerilla factions define the Israel-Palestine ties. The seeds of the escalation in armed conflict between Israel and Palestine lie in the big powers' failure to create two independent states in the Palestinian-dominant vast territory. Palestinians should brace for more Israeli ferocities, with Israel watching out for fresh guerrilla activities in the occupied West Bank.
