With West Bank in turmoil, new Palestinian militants emerge

JABA: The stuttering blasts of M-16s shattered the quiet in a West Bank village, surrounded by barley fields and olive groves. Young Palestinian men in Jaba once wanted to farm, residents say, but now, more and more want to fight.

Last week, dozens of them, wearing balaclavas and brandishing rifles with photos of their dead comrades plastered on the clips, burst into a school playground — showcasing Jaba’s new militant group and paying tribute to its founder and another gunman who were killed in an Israeli military raid last month.

“I’d hate to make my parents cry,” said 28-year-old Yousef Hosni Hammour, a close friend of Ezzeddin Hamamrah, the group’s late founder. “But I’m ready to die a martyr.”

Similar scenes are playing out across the West Bank. From the northern Jenin refugee camp to the southern city of Hebron, small groups of disillusioned young Palestinians are taking up guns against Israel’s open-ended occupation, defying Palestinian political leaders whom they scorn as collaborators with Israel.

With fluid and overlapping affiliations, these groups have no clear ideology and operate independently of traditional chains of command — even if they receive support from established militant groups. Fighters from Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other organizations attended last week’s ceremony in Jaba.