The Israeli military actions in the occupied Palestinian territories point to a deeply troubling pattern in which military power, demolition, displacement and collective punishment continue to shape Palestinian life under occupation.
The destruction of Palestinian memorials in the occupied West Bank was yet another manifestation of this relentless campaign. While Israel label those commemorated as “terrorists”, Palestinians remember them as martyrs who gave their lives resisting occupation and the continuing dispossession of their people.
Destroying their memorials cannot erase their memory; rather, it underscores the extraordinary lengths to which the occupation authorities go to suppress Palestinian history, identity and resistance.
The tearing down of the memorial to Yasser Hamdouni in Yaabad and the removal of photographs of other martyrs in Jenin are therefore not simply acts against pieces of stone or posters. They are assaults on collective memory. In a land where Palestinians have endured decades of occupation, raids, arrests, killings and displacement, such memorials embody the grief, sacrifice and resistance of entire communities. To erase these symbols is to attempt to erase the history of a people who have refused to surrender their identity and their claim to their homeland.
Yasser Bangash, Peshawar
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
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