By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

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

As the new academic year gets underway, senior Hamas official Khaled Meshaal has urged university students across the world to resume their protests against Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

“In a few days, the academic year will start again at universities worldwide,” Meshaal said in a video speech at a conference in Istanbul on Wednesday.

“I call upon the student leaders in our Arab and Islamic countries, as well as in the East and the West, to renew the student movement in the broadest scope, in order to stop this criminal aggression,” Meshaal urged.

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

US Campus Protests Escalate: Columbia Students Take over Columbia University Building

In April, pro-Palestine students at Colombia University in the US began an encampment demanding the cessation of the university’s investments linked to Israel as well as the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

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

‘All-Out Conflict’

Meshaal also drew attention to the escalation in Israel’s military operations in the occupied West Bank in recent days saying the situation “necessitates an all-out conflict. They are fighting us in an all-out conflict, and we should face them with an all-out conflict.”

He said, “Today, in the West Bank, within the 1948 borders, and in the diaspora, the escalation of this conflict is required … We want to go back to the martyrdom operations.”

“We should have an all-out confrontation. We should reignite this spirit in the West Bank and the 1948 borders. Otherwise, Israel will fight us piece by piece,” Meshaal stressed.

A Strategic Shift – Will Palestinian Groups Return to ‘Martyrdom Attacks’ inside Israel?

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

Ongoing Resistance

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

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

Palestinian Commander Abu Shujaa Killed in Tulkarm – Israeli Operation in West Bank Intensifies

On August 19, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movements warned Israel that they plan to return to ‘martyrdom attacks’ inside Israel.

Palestinian groups have refrained from using martyrdom attacks, or suicide bombings, as it is often called by mainstream media, as a central piece of their ongoing resistance against Israel.

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

Initially, Israeli media conveyed a degree of confusion regarding what had transpired in the Israeli capital, before an Israeli police commander announced that there was a 99 per cent chance that the operation was “an attempted terror attack”.

Later, Israel said that the attacker may have originated from the Nablus area in the southern West Bank.

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

(The Palestine Chronicle)