Palestinians see fewer paths to safety amid violence with Israel

Community watches, neighbors as first responders, the creation of local militias: After a spike in Israeli-Palestinian violence and the deadliest month in the West Bank in years, Palestinians who feel vulnerable and abandoned say they have dwindling options to protect lives and property increasingly under threat.

Repeated deadly Israeli military raids in West Bank towns and camps and a surge in settler attacks under a new far-right Israeli government, some of whose members appear eager to fan the flames, have been met with an uptick in Palestinian so-called lone wolf attacks.

Familiar calls by the international community for restraint and calm as a response to this cycle of violence are doing little to fill a void of security for Palestinian civilians who feel exposed and leaderless. As West Bank residents turn inward to protect one another, that void is being filled by brave neighbors and would-be militants, amid calls by some for a violent response.

A raid last week against a militia group in the West Bank town of Jenin, in which the Israeli military killed 10 people – militants and civilians – raised the number of Palestinians killed in the violence in January to 30.

One day later, a Palestinian gunman killed seven Israeli civilians outside an East Jerusalem synagogue after Sabbath prayers in a lone wolf attack, the deadliest terrorist attack on Israelis in years.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on a previously scheduled trip to the region, met this week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and called for “steps to de-escalate, to stop the violence, to reduce tensions,” and “to create the foundation for more positive actions.”

In his meeting with the isolated, unpopular, and increasingly autocratic Mr. Abbas Tuesday, Secretary Blinken expressed “our condolences and sorrow for the innocent Palestinian civilians who’ve lost their lives in escalating violence over the last year.”

“Palestinians and Israelis alike are experiencing growing insecurity, growing fear in their homes, in their communities, in their places of worship,” he said.

Yet the visit to Ramallah by America’s top diplomat and his recognition of Palestinian insecurity did little to paper over the sense among Palestinians that they are under attack and have nowhere to turn.

“With this insecurity, we are losing trust in each other and the leaders who are supposed to protect us,” says Maha Buheis, a fresh university graduate in Ramallah. “It’s like our lives don’t matter at all.”

Neighbors as first responders

Amid that feeling of abandonment, everyday Palestinians are stepping up as sentries, first responders, even firefighters.

Following the synagogue attack, the Palestinian Authority recorded more than 20 settler and far-right Israeli revenge attacks on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank within 24 hours; Israel’s own monitoring counted more than 35 such attacks against Palestinians – ranging from stone-throwing to arson.

When far-right Israeli settlers set fire to a home and vehicle in the West Bank village of Turmus Aya Saturday, it was neighbors and relatives who put out the blaze.

During the raid in Jenin last week, neighbors stepped up when Kifaya Obeid’s mother, Majida, was hit by a bullet while in her room and the ambulance could not enter the camp.

Paramedics appeared at their door within minutes and gave her mother first aid, put her on a stretcher, and carried her through the alleyways amid gunfire to an ambulance on the outskirts of the camp. They were familiar faces.

“I knew those first responders!” Ms. Obeid says. “Those were my neighbors.”

Her mother died from her wounds at the Jenin hospital while her daughters were pinned down at home by Israeli gunfire.

According to a Palestinian security liaison, ambulances are no longer protected under evolving Israeli military rules of engagement. With more ambulances being hit during increasingly deadly firefights between Israel and militants, paramedic Hatem and his colleagues devised the community first-responders network to get those wounded out of the Jenin refugee camp, a maze of narrow alleyways that is home to 11,000 residents and the Jenin Battalion militia.

“Only people born in the camp can find the ways out of here,” Hatem says as he and colleagues – the volunteers had barely been trained for a week – cleaned blood from ambulances hours after the raid.

“All in this together”

Another Jenin civilian casualty, schoolteacher Jawad Bawaqneh, was shot and killed by the Israeli military while attempting to assist another man shot at his doorstep, residents say. The ambulance attempting to reach Mr. Bawaqneh’s home was shot at twice and was forced to turn back.

Then a man in a fluorescent vest appeared, recalls Mr. Bawaqneh’s daughter, Alaa Bawaqneh.

“I didn’t see where he came from, but I knew him; he was our neighbor, a lawyer,” she says. The volunteer paramedic tended to her father’s wounds and then moved him to a private car that drove him to hospital, where he died of his wounds.

“Our camp does this together because we are all in this together,” says Hatem, who did not wish to use his full name. “No one is protected when the Israeli military comes.”

Outside Nablus, in Huwara, near the Yitzhar settlement that is home to groups advocating violence against Palestinians, residents have created their own community watch to deal with increasingly frequent settler attacks.

“Hours can pass before the Israeli army intervenes to stop the attacks, and when we defend ourselves, the army only attacks our youths,” says Wajih Huwari, a Huwara municipal council member. “We decided we had to unite.”

Residents and business owners in Huwara and nearby towns formed a hotline on the communications app Telegram to verify and send alerts on the location of settlers. They created the hotline after settlers attempted to set fire to a house in Huwara last year, and fast-thinking neighbors evacuated an older couple and extinguished the fire.

“We realized we needed to make sure that someone was always awake and alert to report,” says Yaqoub Raed, a community watch member. “We only have each other to defend ourselves; media outlets, diplomats, and officials do nothing here in Huwara. It is only us with our backs to the wind.”

While the violence has inspired some young Palestinians to form militias to protect their communities and attack Israel – like the Lions’ Den in Nablus and the Jenin Battalion – it has also begun to spur other young men to carry out unpredictable lone wolf attacks targeting civilians.

“There is no in-between”

It comes amid what Palestinians describe as a void of leadership and hope.

Even the Islamist militant group Hamas that governs Gaza, which has offered no long-term peaceful vision, is currently showing no willingness to confront Israel as it tries to rebuild its weapon caches following the 2021 Gaza war.

“Our youth are either being radicalized or completely detached from reality. There is no in-between, and who can blame them,” says Ms. Buheis, the Ramallah university student. “They are all left to face this alone. We all are.”

Symbols of the lack of hope and the cycle of intercommunal violence are many.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the grandfather of the shooter outside the synagogue was killed leaving a mosque by an Israeli extremist in 1998, and the gunman’s 17-year-old cousin was killed in an Israeli military raid last week outside Jerusalem.

News of the synagogue attack prompted celebrations among some Palestinians. Yet there are also many who oppose the killing of civilians and fear radicalization’s impact on their society.

Secretary Blinken acknowledged this despair.

“What we’re seeing now from Palestinians is a shrinking horizon of hope, not an expanding one; and that, too, we believe needs to change,” he said from Ramallah Tuesday.

“They are leaving us to die”

Young Palestinians mocked American and international calls for concern.

“If we wait for a response from the international community, it means we wait for the Israelis to kill our mothers. Then what?” says Hakeem, who recently joined a watch group in his home village of Qusra outside Nablus. “The young people carrying out attacks are sending a message to the ‘gravely concerned’ international community: They are leaving us to die.”

Despite the potential to ignite wider communal violence, he says lone wolf attacks and violence are the Palestinians’ “only tool” to force Israel to rethink its policies and the occupation of Palestinian lands.

Majd Khoury, an NGO worker in Ramallah, shares the concern of many Palestinians that a U.S. policy of economic aid and attempts to suppress violence without a permanent political solution is “unsustainable.”

“We are all afraid of an outbreak of violence,” he says, “but can we suppress it if daily killings, settler attacks, and annexation continue?”