"Abu Shujaa" .. The son of the police officer who became the commander of the "Tulkarm Battalion"

After four assassination attempts by the Israeli occupation and an attempt by the Palestinian Authority security, the commander of the Tulkarm Battalion, affiliated with the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, Muhammad Jaber, known as "Abu Shuja", was martyred, in addition to four of his comrades, at dawn today, Thursday, and the occupation detained their bodies, in a complex operation carried out by the occupation, as part of the largest military operation it has launched on the camps in the northern West Bank in more than 22 years.

No one believed the occupation's claim of assassinating "Abu Shujaa" until it published his picture covered in blood, and the occupation's media devoted its various media outlets, which came out with the title "We killed the commander of the Tulkarm Battalion", to praising its army's achievement in assassinating a resistance fighter born in 1998, who did not receive any military training, like all the resistance fighters of his generation in the camps of the occupied West Bank.

However, with their own capabilities, they were able to exhaust the occupation and “destabilize it in the West Bank,” as the occupation army put it. His father, Samer Jaber, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed: “We confirmed the assassination of my son (Abu Shuja’) from the Hebrew media, which published his picture to confirm his achievement after his previous failed attempts.”

Battalion Engineer

Abu Shuja did not study engineering, because the occupation arrested him at the age of 17, but he became the “explosive device engineer” in the Tulkarm Battalion, and he had a strategy based on “inflicting the greatest losses on the enemy with the least human losses from the resistance fighters,” as one of his comrades explained to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed in a previous interview.

Abu Shujaa, a martyr. May God have mercy on you, O leader. You were truthful, so God believed you. To God we belong and to Him we shall return. 🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/5ZA1tBNAdv

— Gaza Now (@nowgnna) August 29, 2024

Targeting the Abu Shuja family

The Abu Shuja family paid a large price because of their sons’ involvement in the resistance, and the father, who spent 29 years of his life working as an officer in the Palestinian police, since the establishment of the Authority, did not get any help, as the Authority stopped his salary more than four months ago as punishment for being Abu Shuja’s father.

His father says: “The security services of the Authority tried to arrest (Abu Shuja) four months ago, and he miraculously survived, while his friend Moatasem Al-Aref was martyred. At the time, I criticized the Authority for doing this, and they did nothing but cut my salary.”

He continues: "Criticism is not the reason for cutting my salary, but the main reason is that my son is a resistance fighter. The authority does not want anyone to resist the occupation because that is against its project, and my son is more valuable than my salary, and he is worth the whole world to me."

His father confirms that “what increased the anger of the authorities was when I wrote on my Facebook account that I have been working as a police officer for 29 years, and that I have no problems in my work, and that my salary was cut because I have a martyred son, a second who is a prisoner, and a third who is a wanted resistance fighter,” adding: “The strange thing is that I am one of the founders of this authority.”

The occupation terrified and brought back the resistance to the West Bank.
Learn about the journey of the Palestinian leader Muhammad Jaber Abu Shuja pic.twitter.com/vukfKadFOU

— Rassd Network (@RassdNewsN) August 29, 2024

The gap between the authority and the battalion deepens

Last April, the Authority assassinated Moatasem Al-Aref, a member of the Tulkarm Battalion, when it tried to arrest him and Abu Shujaa. However, the latter miraculously survived and managed to escape after an armed clash with them. He was injured by shrapnel, while Al-Aref was critically injured and died a short time later.

The Tulkarm Battalion - Al-Quds Brigades, mourned Al-Aref in a statement at the time, which read: “We mourn the martyr, the fighter and field commander in the Tulkarm Battalion, the son of Nour Shams Camp, Moatasem Khaled Al-Aref, who was killed by the security services.”

The gap between the authority and the "Tulkarm Battalion" deepened further when it declared "civil disobedience" in response to the assassination of Al-Aref, and according to its statement: "Closed all entrances to Tulkarm, and especially the entrances to the Nour Shams camp, with earthen barriers and explosive devices until the war ends."

This was a critical moment, as all communication and conversation between any of the representatives of the authority in Tulkarm and the battalion was cut off. The term “civil disobedience” was mentioned and applied for the first time, which the authority took seriously.

The resistance in Tulkarm camp consists of three battalions that work together in the field: “Al-Aqsa Martyrs, the military wing of the Fatah movement, which was banned by President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007; the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad movement; and the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement. All of them are being pursued by the occupation and the Palestinian Authority.”

The authorities are chasing him inside the hospital.

On the 26th of last month, large forces from the PA security forces surrounded the government hospital of the martyr "Thabet Thabet" in the city of Tulkarm, after they received news that "Abu Shujaa" had come to the hospital to receive treatment after being injured by shrapnel from an explosive device that he was manufacturing.

Armed clashes erupted between the resistance fighters and the security forces, which withdrew after the resistance factions in Tulkarm, "Saraya al-Quds, al-Qassam, and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades," issued statements calling on citizens to mobilize and head to the hospital to lift the siege on "Abu Shuja." This is what happened, as the security forces withdrew and "Abu Shuja" was carried on shoulders.

What hurt Abu Shuja’s father the most, according to him, was “the organized smear campaigns against his son, in which he was accused of all sorts of bad things, from working with the occupation to drug trafficking.” It is worth mentioning that these accusations and organized smear campaigns led by electronic flies and well-known figures close to the Palestinian Authority have become commonplace in the past few years, and have targeted all resistance fighters without exception.

Abu Shuja’s last post on Facebook on August 15th read: “As for me, I don’t think my heart will ever recover, and I will continue to feel inadequate for the rest of my life, even though I have nothing to do and have not done anything. But I also cannot shake off the bad feeling that comes over me whenever I see the sacrifices of others and what has happened to them. I see my arrest, my persecution, my loss of my home, my separation from my family, the loss of my brother Mahmoud and a number of those close to me as passing matters compared to a child who has lost his mother, or a father who has lost his child, or a prisoner who will spend decades in his cell and whose children will be deprived of him.”

(New Arab)