The Palestinian confession welcomed on the west coast, despite fears of Israeli’s annexation

Countries are there to protect. But so are the fathers.

Abdel Aziz Mazharmech stood until his 13-year-old son Islam, as he was shot dead by Israeli forces at the entrance of the refugee camp Jenin, at the occupied West Coast.

“My son fell to the ground and then I heard the sound of a shot,” he said. “An army jeep appeared and five or six soldiers directed their weapons to me and told me to leave. I didn’t even know my son was a martyr. I started dragging him.”

Abdel Aziz said he had gone to the camp – occupied by Israel’s army since January – to retrieve family documents from his home there.

“There is no one to complain,” he told me. “They control everything. Palestinian power can’t even defend itself – it only implements the decisions of the Jews.”

As a Palestinian, Abdel Aziz is reconciled with his powerlessness. As a father, he is tormented.

“In my mind, I continue to ask this soldier: Why choose a 13-year-old boy? I stand right next to him. Shoot me. Why are you shooting with children? I’m here, shoot me.”

The Israeli army said it was fired to neutralize the threat represented by suspects who were approaching them in a closed military area and examined the incident.

He declined to clarify the threat the teenager was.

Cities like Jenin were placed under the full control of the Palestinian power three decades ago, under the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements in Oslo.

They had to be the seeds from which statehood would grow.

But Israel says that it is terrorism that thrives there. In January, he sent tanks to Jenin and the neighboring city of Tulkarem to crush the armed Palestinian groups, saying he would apply lessons in Gaza.

Since then, the forces have remained, destroying large areas of camps in both cities and destroying buildings in other areas.

Britain, France and other countries are now ready to recognize the Palestinian state, as Israeli control is spreading to the West Coast and the Gaza war is grinded.

The mayor of Jenin, Mohammed Jarar, took me to the entrance to the camp near where Islam was shot. The army vehicles located here on my previous visits are not visible, but a large earth berm is already blocking the road, and locals say that Israeli sniperists are still scanning the area from the buildings above the head.

Jarrh told me that about 40% of Jenin is already a war zone for Israeli forces, with about a quarter of the inhabitants – including the entire camp – being displaced by their homes.

“From the very beginning, it is clear that it was a major political plan, not a security operation,” he told me. “This Israeli government wants to annex the west coast and in preparation for it, it wants to prevent any (armed) opposition to its plan.”

Israel also put Palestinian power in a long -term economic siege, withholding the tax revenue that the BCP has to pay to teachers and police.

Israel accuses him of financing terrorism by offsetting the families of Palestinian fighters who have been killed. Pa says she has now defective this payment scheme.

Jarrh said it is now very challenging to provide even major services to the local population and to convince young people not to leave.

Against this background, he said, the recognition of the Palestinian state from the United Kingdom, France and others is important, even after more than 140 other nations have already done so.

“This confirms the fact that the Palestinian people own a state, even if it is under occupation,” he told me. “I know that this recognition will lead to (more) occupation on the west coast. But even so I believe that the recognition is more important because it will form the future of the Palestinian people and the international community will be called to defend its rights.”

The recognition of the Palestinian state from the United Kingdom and France is also a recognition of the political gap between Israel and its European allies on this issue.

“There will be no Palestinian state,” Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, said, told settlers on the west coast last week. “This place is ours. We will see each other for our heritage, our land and our security.”

Netanyahu has built his career to prevent a Palestinian state and his government has focused strongly towards the expansion of the settlements on the west coast.

Its extreme right allies have been pushing for official annexation, with Finance Minister Besalel Smotrich recently outlining a plan to apply 82% of the west coast, with other Palestinian enclaves cut off each other.

US President Donald Trump opposed the recognition of the Palestinian state, but does not publicly criticize Israeli transitions to annexation.

Israel seized the west coast of Jordan during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and never left.

The creation of civil settlements on occupied land is illegal according to the Geneva Conventions, but Israel claims it has a historical Jewish right on the West coast.

About half a million settlers now live there, and the Israeli Organization Peace Now, which traces the settlement enlargement, says more than 100 new advanceds in the west coast have emerged over the last two years.

The advanceds are illegal in both international and Israeli law, but they receive tacit approval from the government of Netanyahu, as well as from state support in the form of roads, security and utilities.

Earlier this summer, Ayman Sufan saw new neighbors arrive on the hill by his house, in the hills south of Nablus.

From his window, he and his grandchildren have a clear view of the ordinary wooden shelter and corrugated iron shed, placed by Israeli settlers, which Ayman says are from the nearby settlement of Izhar.

“This advance they created here is to push us out of our house. Every day comes a settler, they hit the house, shouting” Leave, leave! “He told me.” They throw their garbage on our threshold. I call the authorities and they say, “We will send the army.” But the army never comes. The settlers are the army, they are the police, they are everything. “

Ayman’s family built this house near the village of Burin, a few years after Israel occupied the West coast in 1967.

Israel has temporarily received control over rural areas such as the one under the Oslo Peace Agreements, with the intention of being transferred to a future Palestinian state, after negotiations on agreements there.

But Israeli control remains, settlements are mushrooms, and human rights groups claim that Israeli forces are increasingly supporting the attacks of settlers.

Ayman said his father died of a heart attack as settlers set fire to the house in 2003 and since then his home had been expelled several more times.

“Who should protect me,” Ayman asked. “The Palestinian Police? They can’t even prevent it from happening in cities, how will they come here? Here is my security in the hands of the people who borrow me.”

The international recognition of the Palestinian state is a good thing, he says, even if it will change a little on the ground.

“What is coming is worse,” he said. “But if I ever left this house, it will be when I was driven dead. This house I was born in, where I grew up and lived my childhood; every corner has a memory for me. How can I leave it?”

Over the decades, after agreements in Oslo, Israeli stories have solidified, the armed Palestinian groups have intensified and the control over the Palestinian government has been eaten.

“Palestine has never been theirs and it will never be theirs,” said Father of the injured Abdel Aziz Mayarmech. “Sooner or later, today, tomorrow, in a year or two, they will leave this country. And Palestine will be released.”

The United Kingdom and France have clung to the idea that two separate countries – Israeli and Palestinian – are the decision of the conflict here, even when the Palestinian territory was taken, and the Palestinian institutions are undermined.

Now the war in Gaza and the questions who will rule Gaza afterwards have forced this political lattice to open a confrontation, as the far right allies of Netanyahu are pushing hard for annexation.

Some Israelis say that the West Coast is like the Wild West: a place where statehood and sovereignty are resolved not by laws and declarations, but by facts on the spot.

Israel has long claimed that there can be no Palestinian state without his consent.

Now, as he moves forward with the recognition, the United Kingdom, France and others signal that Israel cannot cancel statehood alone.

A political fact from Israel’s allies to oppose his facts on the spot.