Palestinian resistance group: Friday marks first day of escalation and anger

The Nablus-based group said in a statement on Wednesday that the demolition of Palestinian homes in the city of al-Quds will be met with a response that will shatter the security of the occupying regime and its settlers in all West Bank streets.

It also invited the Palestinian people to start civil disobedience and counter the Zionists.

“Friday should mark the first day of intensification of anger and tensions as well as a decisive, sensitive and historic stage that will be recorded in the history of the Palestinian people’s struggle,” it added.

The resistance group had earlier called on Palestinians to put aside party and nomadic discords and stand against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremist cabinet, which has initiated a new wave of forced evictions and home demolitions targeting Palestinians in a bid to expand illegal Israeli settlements across the occupied territories.

In its statement, addressed to Israel’s so-called national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Lions’ Den had warned that its members are thirsty for beheading Israeli officials and the regime’s cowardly soldiers.

“We will come to you inside your houses… We work in silence and our soldiers are unknown,” it said.

Ben-Gvir has vowed to take a more aggressive stance against Palestinian homes that Israel deems illegal in the occupied lands. He has described the building of new settlements as “Israel’s mission and doctrine.”

Earlier this week, UN experts urged the international community to take action against Israel’s systematic and deliberate demolition of homes, arbitrary displacement, and forced expulsion of Palestinians in the West Bank.

“The systematic demolition of Palestinian homes, erection of illegal Israeli settlements and systematic denial of building permits for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank amounts to ‘domicide,’” they said.

In January 2023, Israeli authorities reportedly demolished 132 Palestinian structures across 38 West Bank communities, the experts said, adding that the figure represents a 135 percent increase compared to the same period in 2022.

Israel routinely demolishes Palestinian houses in the occupied West Bank and East al-Quds. The pretense is that the homes were built without a permit. However, the Israeli regime rarely, if ever, approves such permits for Palestinians. The Israeli forces also sometimes order Palestinian owners to demolish their own houses or pay the costs of the demolition.