“Stop this criminal aggression” – Meshaal calls on students to resume protests on campus

From the editors of the Palestine Chronicle

Earlier this year, nearly 2,500 people were arrested at pro-Palestinian rallies on college and university campuses across the United States.

As the new academic year begins, senior Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has called on university students around the world to resume their protests against Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

“In a few days, the academic year will begin again at universities around the world,” Meshaal said in a video address at a conference in Istanbul on Wednesday.

“I call on student leaders in our Arab and Islamic countries, as well as in the East and the West, to renew the student movement in its broadest sense to stop this criminal aggression,” Meshaal demanded.

“You should be proud of yourselves, oh youth of our nation and free peoples of the world,” he added.

Protests on US campus escalate: Columbia students occupy buildings at Columbia University

In April, pro-Palestinian students at Colombia University in the United States began an encampment demanding an end to the university’s investments linked to Israel and the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

The student action spread to many other universities in the US and Europe, including France, Germany, Italy, the UK and Canada. Nearly 2,500 people were arrested at pro-Palestinian rallies on college and university campuses across the US.

“Total conflict”

Meshaal also drew attention to the escalation of Israeli military operations in the occupied West Bank in recent days, saying the situation “requires a full-scale conflict. They are fighting us in a full-scale conflict, and we should confront them with a full-scale conflict.”

He said: “Today, in the West Bank, in the 1948 borders and in the diaspora, an escalation of this conflict is needed… We want to return to the martyrdom operations.”

“We must have an open confrontation. We must revive this spirit in the West Bank and within the 1948 borders. Otherwise, Israel will fight us piece by piece,” stressed Meshaal.

A strategic shift – will Palestinian groups return to “martyr attacks” in Israel?

On Wednesday, the Israel Broadcasting Authority announced that the Israeli army had launched a large-scale operation in the northern West Bank. Security forces were simultaneously deployed in Jenin and Tulkarem. Raids were carried out in the north of the occupied territory, including in Nablus, Tulkarem, Jenin and Tubas.

Continued resistance

Since then, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank has risen to 17 dead and over 20 injured.

In the early hours of Thursday, Tulkarm Battalion commander Mohammad Jaber, known by his nom de guerre Abu Shujaa, was killed along with four other battalion members in an exchange of fire in the Nur Shams camp in the West Bank.

Palestinian commander Abu Shujaa killed in Tulkarm – Israeli operation in the West Bank intensifies

On August 19, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movements warned Israel that they were again planning “martyr attacks” inside Israel.

Palestinian groups have refrained from using martyr attacks or suicide bombings, as they are often called by the mainstream media, as a central element of their ongoing resistance to Israel.

The warning followed an explosion that rocked Tel Aviv on the evening of August 18.

Initially, there was some confusion in the Israeli media about what had happened in the Israeli capital before an Israeli police commander announced that there was a 99 percent probability that the operation was an “attempted terrorist attack.”

Israel later said the attacker could have come from the Nablus area in the southern West Bank.

The attack and the claim of responsibility by Hamas and Islamic Jihad the following day are significant and could mark the beginning of a strategic shift by the Palestinians in their ongoing war against Israeli occupation.

(The Palestine Chronicle)