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Amidst the maze of covered markets and ancient cobblestone streets of Nablus’ Old City, music blasts from a barber shop.
The song takes the melody of an old Palestinian folk song and adapts it for a darker time. The lyrics glorify the deaths of those who resist the Israeli occupation, including “Wadee the Lion,” who, as the phrase goes, lives with “hands on the trigger.”
“Wadee” is Wadee al-Houh, one of the former leaders of the emerging young Palestinian militant group called “Dang Lion.”
Al-Houh was 31 years old when he and four other members of the Lions Den militia were killed during an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) attack on his home in October 2022. The apartment where the attack took place is located along a narrow alley of West Bank barbers.
Thirty-year-old Mohammed, who is trimming his beard, said al-Houh’s death had made him a respected figure in Nablus and beyond. He also said that the Lion’s Den, founded by al-Houh, was rapidly growing in power and popularity.
“Here, people support the Lion’s Den, not the Palestinian Authority,” Mohammed told CBC News. “And his popularity became so great that whole generations supported him.”
In less than a year, the Lions Den has become one of the most prominent new militant groups that have changed the nature and intensity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel blames the group’s violent methods – which the IDF says include numerous assassinations, ambushes and improvised explosive attacks against its forces – for a rise in civilian and military casualties on both sides over the past year.
While Israeli soldiers are the group’s primary target, militias like the Lion’s Den also pose a serious political challenge to the legitimacy of the Palestinian leadership.
A history of many factions
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is now 87 years old, and his decades-old plea for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has little resonance with a frustrated new generation.
The Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have traditionally been dominated by a few large Palestinian factions – groups such as Fatah, which dominates the West Bank, and Hamas, which controls Gaza.
What distinguishes the Lions Den and other new independent militias is that they eschew traditional sectarian labels.
“They were with us at our funerals. They were with us during our weddings. They were there for us all the time,” said Mohammed, a barber shop customer, emphasizing the group’s ability to appeal to a divided population.
Around the corner from the barbershop, the Lion’s Den flag – featuring Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque flanked by two machine guns – hangs high from ancient wooden rafters. Photos and posters of now-deceased gun-toting members, including al-Houh, were posted on the doors and walls.
Outside the door of al-Houh’s former apartment, which is now locked, CBC News met three teenagers who said they were drawn to the site because of what they call the Lions Den.
CBC News is not identifying him because of his age, and for his own safety.
“Look at what the Israeli occupation has done. It’s killing us,” said one 16-year-old boy, trying to explain why the Lion’s Den has such an appeal to his generation.
“I’m sitting here and I feel it [al-Houh]. I want to talk to him. He loves and loves Palestine, for his homeland.”
The young man said the Palestinian leader’s advocacy of non-violence and negotiations with Israel had nothing to show for it.
“If in [Palestinian Authority] collaboration with the Lion’s Den, Palestine would have been freed “by now, he said.
The teenager said he wanted to join the group and that his parents had given him permission.
“For the sake of my country, this is what I will do.”
WATCH | Why independent militia groups are gaining support in the West Bank:
Frustrated with the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, youth in the occupied West Bank broke away from older factions such as Hamas and formed independent militias that quickly gained support from Palestinians.
‘A state of despair’
In an interview with CBC News, the spokesperson of the Palestinian Authority, Sabri Saidam, rejected the blame for the emergence of new militias to the Israeli occupation policy.
“It is associated with a state of despair, constant aggression and an impossible path to find a solution or hope in the midst of the ruins,” said Saidam.
He agreed, however, with the assessment that the dynamic has become extremely combustible.
“The conflict, I think, is going through one of the worst waves so far,” said Saidam.
Two days after our visit, Nablus erupted in new violence, with 57 people injured in clashes with the IDF.
In a social media post, Lions Den claimed to have attacked the Israeli army. In its own statement, the IDF said its forces defended themselves from the improvised explosive devices with fire.
This week’s attack follows a larger and deadly attack in Nablus in late February that left 11 Palestinians dead and injured more than 100.
The IDF claimed seven militants – among them Lions’ Den members – were killed, including one involved in the killing of an Israeli military staff sergeant in October. Four Palestinian civilians were also among the dead.
In an interview at the IDF communications headquarters in Tel Aviv, Lt.-Col. Richard Hecht said the group is loosely organized and not tied to traditional factions making it harder to fight.
“There is no ecosystem that you have with Islamic Jihad or Hamas, and that is very challenging,” Hecht said. Groups like the Lion’s Den will “just go out and try to create havoc and destruction and kill as many soldiers as they can.”
Hecht said membership in the group tends to be fluid, with people joining and leaving often, so the IDF instead uses raids, such as the recent one in Nablus, to go after identifiable leaders.
He said his own estimates show that for the Lions Den, the membership is between 20 and 60 members at any given time. However, he emphasized that it is only one of several groups that the IDF is concerned about.
“About six months ago, we had it [the Lions’ Den] beheaded. Now, we see it rise again, because coming to Ramadan, this situation looks like a perfect storm [for more violence]”, said Hecht.
There are fights almost every day
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins on March 23, and this year, it coincides with the eight-day Jewish Passover, which begins on the evening of April 5.
It has been a particularly rough year. The Palestinian Health Authority says at least 88 Palestinians have been killed so far this year, while the IDF says attacks by militants have killed 14 people, with confrontations now occurring almost daily.
Palestinian leaders have blamed the violence not on militants but on the actions of Israel’s new ultraconservative government, which has taken an aggressive approach to expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
On Thursday, an Israeli army attack killed at least four Palestinians, including a teenager, in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
Clashes between Israeli and Palestinian settlers are fierce. On February 26, after Palestinians shot and killed two Israeli brothers in a car on the main road in Huwara, angry mobs stormed the town, burning Palestinian homes and businesses.
As a result, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich suggested that Israel should “destroy” the city, a statement he later retracted.
A few days later, a 21-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by an Israeli settler after the settler claimed the man had come to his house and tried to plant a bomb. The young man’s family denied this, saying that the settler had assaulted them.
This past weekend, three young Palestinians – aged 18, 22, and 24, and claimed by Lions’ Den – were shot dead after the Israeli military said they had automatic weapons and planned an ambush at a checkpoint near the city of Sarra, outside. Nablus.
Dried blood where he was killed was still visible when CBC News visited the scene a day later.
People in Sarra who stopped by the site to pay their respects expressed mixed emotions about the death.
Victory for the Palestinians
The father of one family said he supports Singa Den, but he won’t talk about the strategy because he has a job in Israel and he said anything that would put it in jeopardy.
Indeed, the Palestinian Authority says many people fear that the escalation of violence will lead to restrictions on movement and a ban on crossing into Israel, which could spell economic disaster for West Bank communities.
The mayor of Sarra, Mohammed Turabi, told the CBC that he is “independent” and has no ties to Fatah, the largest faction that makes up the Palestinian Authority. But he also said he was thrown out by groups like the Lions.
“We are very proud of the young people and we are very proud of what they have done, even if sometimes I don’t agree with the way they do things,” he said. “These young men have earned the respect, trust and pride of the people because they have come out of the factional conflict … through power, prestige. That is why they respect them.”
Twice, in the 1980s and again in the early 2000s, Palestinians rose up in a public effort known as the intifada to oppose the Israeli occupation.
The question on the minds of many in Israel and the occupied West Bank is whether the rise in violence fueled by young militants could signal the start of a third uprising.
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