West Bank resistance confronts military raids, with Jon Elmer

You are watching and listening to the electronic inifat. I am John Elmer. This is the resistance report for day 797. It's also day 63 of the ceasefire. Such as it is. And I'm reporting this on the 11th of December 2025. Um, of course it's not a ceasefire. Um, that's why we say such as it is. Um there's in more than 700 military actions since October the 11th, the Israeli military has killed at least 379 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded over a thousand in stark violation of the Charmeal Shake agreement. Um that the United States is the principal, if not sole guarantor of. Um, we will be back next week with focus on Gaza, but this week we're going to take a look at the West Bank where the Israeli military um has been carrying out one of its largest uh military operations in the last in the last year. Of course, we're now almost a year on from uh more than 30,000 Palestinians being uh evacuated uh ethnically cleansed, displaced from the refugee camps in the north of the West Bank, particularly Janine, Tulcaram, uh and Nor Shams, um during what Israel called uh Operation Iron Wall. And of course, it's important to note that Iron Wall had the full participation of Palestinian Authority uh security forces. So the PA obviously longtime collaborator force, but now the PA involved in an operation that has led to the displacement from the refugee camps of the Palestinian population um that the PA purports to uh represent. Though of course um their mandate has long expired and they have no legal authority um they're still willing to work uh with the Israelis on the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. Um let's take a look at maps. We'll start with maps. Maps on the West Bank are deeply political maps. Um and you could show a whole bunch of them that are marked up like this map we're showing here that shows uh areas A, B, and C. These are Oslo peace process. um relics. Uh area A is Palestinian control. You can see it on that map in the green. Uh area B is um uh is a intermediate control um joint control which is um of course not very joint because the PA is uh fighting the Palestinians themselves. And then area C is area under Israeli control. And that's the area that continues to expand and the settler attacks, which we won't get into on this uh program on the resistance, but you could do another segment um on its own about settler attacks because the settlers use that area C area to carry out their attacks and to continue to shrink uh Palestinian uh areas. um this military occup operation that Israel launched, they launched it on November 26th in the West Bank, raiding over 220 sites. Um that's up from the normal daily average of uh about 40 uh invasions a day, raids into the West Bank. Um so it's a higher tempo, but it there is no in between raids. The West Bank is subjected to 24/7, 365 days a year of essentially policing operations that are executed by military units and death squads. And that is the main difference between the resistance in the West Bank and the resistance in Gaza. In Gaza, the warehousing, the ghettoization of Gaza um allowed a modicum of uh uh sovereignty and autonomy inside Gaza. It allowed the resistance to build up um its capabilities. It allowed them to root out collaborators uh over the course of the 20 years that the Cassam brigades built the um effectively the national army that we have seen fight for the past 2 years. Um the West Bank doesn't have the ability to um stockpile and to build up because they're constantly subjected to raids um of all ages. children are um arrested outside of their schools um uh all the way up to anyone seen to be participating in any kind of political activity um is arrested. We'll go over some of those numbers as we go on in this program. Um the Israeli military called the operation five stones um and they said in a statement before ground forces entered the air force struck sites um to seal off the area. After air strike, security forces began searching dozens of structures and questioning suspects. Um, and according to the uh United Nations Office of um the or OCHA, the Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs that monitors this kind of activity. um their office reported that since uh the 7th of October 2023 to the beginning of this operation five stones um that the Israeli security forces had killed over 1,030 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem among those 223 children. Um they also wounded 10,000 more than 10,000 and detained 20,000 500 people in the last uh 2 plus years in the West Bank. So when we look at this map that's on the screen right now, you can see it's essentially um all of the Palestinian areas in green are isolated. And this next slide will show you I've showed you this one before, but it's a good allegory for the West Bank. Um this is a map done by Julianne Busousak from uh Fambbleist magazine. Um and it shows uh the West Bank uh Palestinian areas um as an island archipelago. It's a sort of an allegory uh to describe uh the way the situation is. Um it's an archipelago, but the Palestinians don't have boats um because they can't move from one area to another. Of course, there's multiple permit schemes in the West Bank that prevent that. There's apartheid roads that split the territory up and make travel very difficult. All of these things are realities for the Palestinian civilian population, but they also have significant implications for the resistance. Um the ability to transport weaponry um to share weaponry among uh the different um regional battalions is um deeply restricted by this. And of course there's also an 800 km uh concrete wall, 8 m high concrete wall that runs around these territories. It doesn't separate the wall does not separate um so-called Israel from the West Bank. Uh it separates Palestinian communities from other Palestinian communities. The wall wraps around Palestinian communities. It doesn't go along the border um of 1948. Um, so important to note and this map I think is a useful one. But um, let's take a look at another one because you could overlay many of these different types of maps. This is another OCA map. This is about settler attacks. And you can see on this map very clearly um that the whole eastern edge of the um West Bank, the whole Jordan Valley um is a complete military closed military zone uh except for those little islands again archipelago islands inside the closed military zone. So the entire eastern side is cut off and then there's the wall on the western side and the wall runs through it. So, we're looking here um at a map that's so detailed um it's very difficult to even point out uh what we're looking at. But on this next map, I've shown it uh a little bit more clearly with a zoom in. This is a zoom in on the Nablus area. Um and we're looking at here um the way that that map looks when you uh look at it close up. We're looking at apartheid roads that only Israelis can travel on. Um the red area or pink area that you're looking at, that's Israeli settlements. The blue areas that surround those settlements are the buffer zones that surround um the settlement. So you see basically Gaza uh you know 100 Gazas inside the West Bank. Um you can see the way that that blue um the closed military zone around the settlements. You can see how the roads travel through that area. Um and that's the way the apartheid roads function. There's of course checkpoints, permanent checkpoints, flying checkpoints that show up at any given moment. There's partial checkpoints that are occasionally staffed. Um there's partial checkpoints with open gates with locked gates. There's closed roads. There's observation towers that you can see on this map. Um earth mounds, road blocks, earthn walls, uh road barriers, trenches. All of these um are used to separate Palestinian areas um and to reinforce uh Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Again, we could do an entire segment just on this map that you're looking at right now. It's such a deeply political map. Um the way that Israel uh has carved up the West Bank and this is what makes um the discussion in the Western media about two-state solutions. Um that ship has sailed um on this land. This land has already been carved up with the goal of preventing Palestinian contiguity, um continuity of the communities, continuity of social life, um as well as all other aspects of life. It's difficult to get to hospitals through these checkpoints. Um and all of this is the context in which the resistance um is forced to operate along with the 247 365day raids that happen in the dozens each and every single day. U that being said, if we look at this next slide, you can see the West Bank resistance is still operating. This is a video by Saral Kuds in the West Bank from the other day and you can see them loading um IEDs here. The two principal IEDs that are used in the West Bank are the Tufon, the flood, and that is the large explosive that is a groundbased penetration. We're watching them be detonated against uh army vehicles over the past two years. I've shown you all of those clips uh on this show before. Um but they make uh Sajil, which is a a directed IED. The Tufon is the buried in the road IED, much heavier, the one you're seeing right now being filled. But they also make grenades and anti-personnel explosives that are used in the context of the battle in the West Bank where unlike in Gaza, the Israelis never leave their tank. At this point in Gaza there in the West Bank, they're walking on foot, which makes hand grenades and um self-propelled uh explosives meaningful. Sud's field commander um spoke about this uh the other day at the launch of the operation. just after the launch of the operation. He said, "For several weeks, the leaders of the Zionist enemy have been trying to create weak and pathetic field achievements in an attempt to break the fighting spirit of our resistance and the heroes of our people by assassinating the fighters of Saral Kuds in the cities and towns in the occupied West Bank. We implemented appropriate plans suited to the field data and conditions after studying and analyzing the behavior of the enemy army and sensitive information which we obtained from drones that our fighters dealt with using appropriate firepower shooting down a number of them in the Tubas government governor and the Alfara refugee camp area in w in recent weeks. Our fighters in the Bate Umar company in Al-Halil in Hebron. Um the heroes of the Nablus brigade were able to preempt uh expected Zionist action and surprise it with ambushes and explosive devices which caused a shock among the enemy soldiers and officers. And the enemy admitted a number of them were injured. The moment the enemy announced the launch of the failed operation, which he called five stones, our fighters were laying in wait for them, and in the first hours managed to disable a D9 military bulldozer, targeting it with a Tufon ground explosive device and disabling a military jeep by detonating a sigil type directed explosive device in the town of Tamoon. The enemy um the enemy thought he would break the will of the fighters by assassinating our brothers Yusf Assassa um and al-mun Tasier Abdullah in Janine. But our mujahedin rubbed their noses in the dust of the Janine countryside and smashed their stones with explosive devices that were prepared and planted in advance on the roots where the enemy was expected to pass. We assure our pe we we reassure our people. The sur alud's commander says um that our capabilities are fine and our fighters are highly prepared and vigilant and we will not allow the enemy to create a new reality in the cities and towns of the West Bank. We knew we renew our call to the Palestinian Authority Security Services to stop pursuing our fighters and immediately release those detained fighters that are tortured in your prisons to allow them to carry out their sacred duty to defend our people and their property against a war of annihilation targeting Palestinian existence in all of Palestine. That's the statement from Sural Kud's commander uh in the West Bank. Um you can see here there on the video that we've been looping that that's the grenades that they're making. So they're making all three of those devices that you saw used in this battle. Um and on the final screen here um it says you'll never know calm um in the sense of uh peace of mind. There'll be never be safety in the West Bank. The resistance will remain. Um if we look on the next slide number six here um this is from the inside of the cockpit of Israeli armored vehicles. You can see the detonation uh of explosives here um during the operation um dozens of field reports u more than 50 field reports uh detailed operations in Janine Nablas Tubus uh and Halil Hebrron. in Janine in the northwest bank. There was 10 sigil operations, 13 Tufon operations, nine firefights, and five defensive ambushes targeting a Nom troop carrier or a D9 armored bulldozer, as well as the West Bank only armored vehicle, the Panther, which they do not use in Gaza because it's not uh heavily armed enough to deal with the Shawad um that the Palestinian fighters in Gaza have. In Tubos, two grenades and two firefights and downing of IDF quadcopters. In Nablas, two IEDs, two grenade operations and multiple anti-personnel ops uh along with two firefights. And in Halil and Hebrron, five grenades and five explosive and five um grenades and explosive devices as well as five firefights. Four soldiers at least were wounded uh in those 50 operations. But like we know in Gaza, the Israelis are uh uh obfuscate the uh casualty rate. So it's difficult to know if that's the true number. Um this next side number seven, you can see the construction. Um this is this is the Israeli military now um showing their successes, what the Sarah commander called uh their pathetic achievements. Um you can see there the hand grenades that were being um used. The Israelis are bragging about that. They say in this statement, IDF troops from the Commando Brigade and regional brigades and the Israeli Air Force together with Shabbach and the Israeli border police completed an operation um an operation to counter terrorism in the northern Samaria uh area over the past two weeks. During the operations, troops eliminated fighters, apprehended dozens of wanted suspects, and questioned many additional suspects. The troops also located and confiscated hundreds of thousands of shekels um dozens of weapons including pistols and carotype improvised weapons, ammunition and knives. This is the IDF statement. In addition, more than 30 targeted air strikes were conducted by the Israeli Air Force. Um and further uh they also located inciting materials and Hamasup supporting books. So, they're raiding the West Bank, stealing money, grabbing a few pipe bombs, uh, and bragging about taking books off people's bookshelves in the West Bank. So, um, this is, uh, somewhere, uh, less than impressive for the Israeli military. We look at the next one. We can see, uh, are we on number eight? Uh, the homemade grenade. Yeah, you can see the fighter here in his tactical vest holding one of those homemade grenades um that was found in a building um in Janine. Um so these are very minimal uh accomplishments. Uh but of course you can see these fighters are fighting with what they can. They're manufacturing their own weaponry the same way uh as in the Gaza Strip. And you can see the fighter there and his tactical belt has one of those grenades uh ready for use. The next slide you could see another West Bank innovation. This is called the Carlo. Uh it's a homemade uh gun that is created by uh spare parts from other guns um and metallurgy that's done in uh foundaries to create these weapons. Um and these weapons are used throughout the West Bank uh building their own guns uh to carry out the battle in the West Bank. Um, so that's the Carlo and Israel's bragging about finding one of those during this uh widespread operation that they're bragging about. Um, this next slide 9B here really shows you uh the accomplishments of the military. We're looking here at three pocket knives, uh, subpocket knives. Uh, they're smaller than pocket knives. Um, and they're bragging about it. The one on the right clearly homemade um, which is impressive. Uh but the other two are um you know 2-inch long blades. Um the one looks more like a a nail uh file than it does uh a a weapon. But these this is it. This is what the Israelis this was the culmination of their operation. So they showed us a couple of homemade guns, a couple uh a few homemade hand grenades, and here we're seeing homemade guns and pocketk knives that you'd use for opening mail. Um, so dishonorable operations didn't uh were not limited to these. Of course, the Israelis also went around and rearrested um people released in the prisoner exchanges uh over the past uh year and a half. Muhammad Alarda uh was famously infamously arrested the other day in Janine. He is one of the six um fighters that escaped from Gilboa prison in the freedom tunnel escape where a spoon uh was used to dig out uh into the tunnel system underneath the prison and they made it out free uh and were free for many days. When uh Muhammad Ala was released back to Janine, the first thing he said when he got off the bus was to the people of Gaza. Oh people of Gaza, you are the most honorable and noble people. You are the crown on our heads and the head of this nation. If there is anything to be proud of in this history of these nations, it is the Gaza Strip, he proclaimed. Um and the operation of the Jaboa prison escape was uh organized um by Muhammad Alarda's cousin uh Mahmud ala. Um the Israelis also arrested uh Muhammad Naji Sabha. Um he is a um author and military science writer who spent many years in prison. He's wrote a book on guerilla warfare. Um, again, so very dishonorable to be arresting rearresting people that were released in a prisoner exchange um and exchanged for Israeli soldiers um and to then rearrest them. It just cast doubt on all of these deals. And people who follow this show uh every week will know that that's not surprising. Um but it is dishonorable. Um, and it makes it uh very difficult to have any serious negotiation uh with the enemy u of the Palestinians. Um, let's take a look at this next one cuz really what the Israelis have been doing over the last year. This is a map from the Israeli military. Um, this map was came from the 877th Judea and Samaria Division. Um, this is courtesy of Adala who's filing a complaint for war crimes and crimes against humanity against uh the Israeli generals who are in charge of this operation. Um, but you can see this is the original document. So, it's difficult to see, but you can see that there's hundreds of dots on this map of the Janine refugee camp that you're looking at. This map was handed out to people in Janine. They were given 24 hours to leave the camp entirely with what they could carry on their backs. We reported on this at the time in January of last year. Um they left uh and and they left the camp so that the Israeli military could destroy the camp. And along with this map came this order um from the Israeli military that says, "By virtue of my powers as a military commander and my other powers under any law and since I believe that the order is necessary for purely military purposes, I hereby order the following. I hereby order the demolition of the buildings. in the process of demolition of demolishing the buildings. The process of demolishing the buildings shall begin within 24 hours from the time of the signing of this notice. That is the that is what people got in Janine and were forced out to carry out um only what they had on their backs. And at the time, Major General Abby Bluth, who's the chief of the central command, which is the regional command for the West Bank, he said in April, quote, "We are operating in the refugee camps and carrying out significant operations that change the character of the entire area." Smokrich followed up that by saying, "The perception of security must change. Tarum must be reduced to ruin." So, we're looking at Janine here. Um, if we look at the next uh uh satellite maps, we can see here the Janine refugee camp. And then we're going to see um it it's going to fade into show you the number of uh buildings that were targeted in the Janine camp, hundreds. Um it's unknown because the number that they said uh was dwarfed. And there you can see the reason why. The reason why is to cut those corridors through the map. So there's the houses that you're seeing and there's the corridors and cutting these corridors has been a dream for the Israeli military going back to the second inifat when their forces were defeated in the Janine refugee camp in 2002 in the battle of Janine. They were killed in the alleys. More than 24 soldiers were killed, 13 in one day. That was the most Israeli soldiers that had died in a single day um going back to the 1982 Lebanon war. Um and they were killed in the alleys of Janine, particularly one ambush in the bathtub that is called area of Janine. Um where soldiers were lured into the alleys and attacked from all directions, killing 13 in seconds. Um and it's since that day they have wanted to well their response to it at the time was of course to demolish the Gene refugee camp. And then for years there was battles between Israel and the UN about trying to rebuild the Janine camp to have these routes to have routes through the camp that tanks can drive on so that soldiers can be driven right up in their armored troop carriers open the door and they can go right into a house. they don't have to walk on foot through the alleys of Janine, through the alleys of resistance, decades uh of resistance from these alleys of Janine that haunt the Israelis. And so they have taken um something they couldn't pull it off after 2002 um to widen the roads in the Janine camp and before the genocide in Gaza, it was considered a red line to ethnically cleanse refugee camps. Um have people out of their homes indefinitely and then to completely just redraw uh the roots through the camp. But of course, the genocide had no red lines and Israel saw that. Um they adapted to the fact there was no red lines. You can see that happening all throughout the Gaza war as they escalated the destruction um want and destruction and war crimes. Um so they saw that and they saw we have a chance to do something historic in the West Bank. this is the moment to strike. And they did. And they did it right after the ceasefire in Gaza. They moved in and evacuated people out of these camps. 32,000 people have been driven out of the camps. And a lot of people ask when we report on this. Where did they go in in Janine um and Tulkaram and Nur Shams? People went to community centers. They went to mosques. They rented uh they rented flats in nearby villages. They moved in with families. But we're almost a year on from that. they have been displaced for that year. If we look at the next map, you can see the same thing happening in the Nur Shams camp. Um you see the the the outline of the Nur Shams camp that we're looking at. Densely populated um because there was no room for these refugee camps to grow as the Palestinian population grew from the late 1940s and early 1950s when these camps were established. And now you can see in Nur Shams there, those roots have been cut through Nur Shams. That allows the Israeli military to cut the camp into sections and it allows their troops to um to move through the camp. So um policing operations carried out by ethnic cleansing. [snorts] Um there's one more example of it um in the Tulcaram camp that you can see here coming up. Uh and again we've dissolved uh these three images satellite images together so you can see again densely populated. You can see how tight those alleyways are and those are the alleyways of Palestine. Those are the alleyways of resistance that haunt the Israelis. And there you can see them cutting it up again to make uh roads um both directions cutting up the camp uh with strips. Um you can see also on this last shot um of Tulcarum a better satellite image um number 14. Yeah, this is a high quality satellite image where you can clearly see where they have bulldozed people's homes, family homes that have three generations living in them, refugee homes, and those people have been displaced again to make those roads and where they'll come back to live with th that many houses destroyed is unclear at this point. Um so under the fake achievements of military um uh military operation they're carrying out this um ethnic cleansing and destruction of the refugee camps. Um last week on the show Nora reported on this segment where we saw the field execution of two fighters in Janine Ysef Ali Assasa um and uh Al-Masier Abdullah. They were executed um after they had fired their last bullets. They fought until their last bullets. There was a Reuters cameraman filming the battle. Um and then we saw on film the fighters come out. They're um they're out of bullets. They have no weapons. They're unarmed. And the Israeli soldiers execute them in the streets, which was obvious field execution. You know, the United Nations Human Rights Office called it a summary execution. In any case, we're not going to show that. uh field execution. It's easy to find if you want to see it. It's appalling and consistent with everything we know about Israeli cowardice. Um but we're going to show the video of the fighters themselves. This is uh Ysef Ali Assassa. He's addressing the fighters in Janine. He's a commander of the Janine brigades. We're looking at him addressing his fighters uh in the camp here. Um, and in this video, uh, he says that the resistance and the Palestinian people, he says of the resistance and the Palestinian people that the path of liberation is long and costly, but it, but we will be victorious. We will be freed from this occupation. And we tell them we will continue on this path no matter the cost. Our martyrs, the ones before us and the ones that came after, are the beacons of light that guide the path to liberation. We will continue on this path no matter the cost. So that's Ysef Ali Assasa. He was field executed in Janine um and caught on camera. And of course, there will be no repercussions for Israel uh at the current moment, but that'll just add that case to the file uh for the HEG trials um that necessarily have to come out of these two plus years uh of Israeli crimes. Um so that's the fighter uh addressing his fighters in the camp. And that is the resistance report for day 797 of Israel's genocidal war.