Crisis in Israel-Palestine: Two editorials
JVL Introduction
Two strong editorials on the current crisis in Israel-Palestine, in Haaretz and the Guardian.
Both emphasise the series of bad decisions made by the Israeli government and the police commissioner in Jerusalem.
Both recognise that these are symptoms of a much deeper malaise, caused by interminable occupation, while Haaretz stresses the significance of the spread of unrest among Palestinian citizens of Israel as well.
The attempt to Judaise the mixed cities of Israel and Netanyahu’s incitement against Palestinian citizens has legitimised the Jewish Israeli fascist marches we have seen in Jerusalem.
Palestinians are rising against the intensifying ethnic cleansing they are experiencing.
In that battle we are, as ever, squarely on their side.
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For background see Al Jazeera’s What is happening in occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah?
October 2000, May 2021
Haaretz Editorial, May. 11, 2021
Israel is once again on the brink of a broad military confrontation in the Gaza Strip. The rocket barrages fired by Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Israeli cities, causing deaths and injuries, as well as the Israel Air Force strikes on Gaza, are moving both sides toward a war whose duration and cost, in human lives and in property, is unknown.
But even as the situation vis-a-vis the Gaza Strip deteriorates, violent protest is spreading in Arab towns and in mixed cities throughout Israel. The spirit of the events of October 2000 hovers over the confrontations between civilians and police, and threatens to once again undermine the delicate and fragile fabric of coexistence, and certainly the faint hope that a government could be formed based on Jewish-Arab cooperation.
The violence was at its worst in Lod and Ramle, but it did not pass over Jaffa, Haifa and many other locations. Arab residents threw stones at Jewish homes, part of the new cemetery in Ramle was torched, and several synagogues were pelted with stones. During the night between Monday and Tuesday, Lod became a war zone: Young men vandalized everything they came upon and major roads in the city were blocked. The protest spread to Shamir Medical Center – Assaf Harofeh, where dozens of people rioted, threw stones and damaged equipment.
The reasons for the eruption of this violent protest are connected to a series of bad decisions made in Jerusalem during the month of Ramadan, which always is potentially calamitous: Setting up checkpoints at the Old City’s Damascus Gate, the clashes in Sheikh Jarrah, the stubborn insistence on holding the Flags March. Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai played a decisive role in all this, and his claim that the police had been “too soft,” points to a worrisome problem with perceiving reality.
But the police are being forced to deal with the symptoms of a much deeper problem that’s erupting these days – the reality of 54 years of occupation. In his desire to battle Palestinian nationalism, weaken it, and even make it disappear, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked and incited against Israeli Arabs in a criminal fashion. Instead of dealing with the problem, he preferred to exclude, discriminate against, Judaize and bring declared racists into the Knesset. This disastrous strategy is now blowing up in Israel’s face.
What is required, first of all, is to stop the escalation and calm things down. President Reuven Rivlin did the right thing by calling on Arab leaders to issue a decisive call against the unbridled violence. But this is not enough.
A responsible prime minister would have reined in the police, conducted a real dialogue with the Arab leadership, observed the status quo on the Temple Mount, not viewed mixed cities as places that need to be Judaized, announced a plan to invest in Arab society but most of all, would have stopped inciting. Netanyahu isn’t capable of this, which is why replacing him is more urgent than ever.
The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.
Ten children were among 28 killed in Gaza in the Holy month of Ramadan, while two Israeli women were killed as Israeli air strikes pounded the territory and Palestinian militants fired rockets. In Jerusalem, Israeli police fired stun grenades, teargas and rubber bullets at one of Islam’s holiest sites, leaving 300 Palestinians injured. Could this get worse? Yes. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has vowed to increase the intensity of attacks. Israel and Hamas have fought three wars as well as periodic battles. Though they often prepare their exits, events can have a momentum of their own.
The tinder was the decision of Israeli authorities to prevent Palestinians from gathering at the Damascus Gate following night-time prayers during Ramadan, as they normally do; a spate of intercommunal violence; and plans to evict hundreds of Palestinians from the homes they have lived in for decades in Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem, giving them to Jewish settlers. Under Israeli law, Jews who can prove a title from before the 1948 war can claim back properties in the city. This cannot be justified when no similar law exists for the Palestinians who lost their homes. The evictions have been described by a UN rights body as a possible war crime. Aggressive tactics used by police there and at al-Aqsa mosque reflect a culture of impunity. And only at the 11th hour, when the damage had already been done, was Monday’s provocative ultra-right march rerouted away from the Muslim quarter of the Old City.
All this has happened within the context of dual political crises. Mr Netanyahu is attempting to cling to power while coalition talks between his rivals and his corruption trial progress. Meanwhile, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has indefinitely postponed elections that everyone expected Fatah to lose to Hamas again. Denied the ballot, the militant group has fallen back on deadly tactics to restate its claim to leadership.
But the fuel is decades old. Anger at the occupation inevitably deepens. “Generation blockade” has grown up in Gaza, a tiny strip of land crammed with residents but short on work, power or clean drinking water. Covid, and the desperate inequity of the vaccination campaigns in Israel and the occupied territories, has sharpened the resentment at living under a government that controls without offering protection. The unrest seen in Arab towns in Israel on Monday demonstrates the breadth as well as depth of the rage at the kind of accumulated injustice that recently led Human Rights Watch to accuse Israeli officials of committing apartheid, to the angry denial of the government.
The priority must be de-escalation to protect the lives of civilians, treated with such ruthless and fatal disregard by both the Israeli government and Palestinian militants. The international community must bring its weight to bear. Donald Trump egged Mr Netanyahu on at every turn. There is now an administration in Washington that can address these issues seriously. It has rightly condemned militant attacks. But it must be similarly clear with the Israeli authorities, not only over their military response, but over the actions that predictably led to this latest outburst of violence.
The immediate cause of the conflict concerns the Sheikh Jarrah families who had been expelled from Haifa and West Jerusalem in 1948. They were re-housed by UNWRA (the UN refugee organisation) in East Jerusalem, then under Jordanian control. The agreement between UNWRA and Jordan was endorsed by the Knesset in 1968, and it is the breach of this agreement, in pursuit of the Judiasation of East Jerusalem which sparked the current conflict. Another brick in the aparthied wall.
see https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/1/what-is-happening-in-occupied-east-jerusalems-sheikh-jarrah
‘Israel posts fake videos to justify Gaza slaughter’
The Israeli government posted a two-and-a-half-year-old video from Syria, claiming it was from Gaza, in order to justify its ongoing bombing campaign that has killed dozens of Palestinians since Monday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Arabic spokesperson Ofir Gendelman tweeted a 28-second video on Tuesday.
The video shows the rapid firing of rockets from next to what looks like an apartment building.
“Another video showing how Hamas is firing rockets at Israel from populated areas in the Gaza Strip,” Gendelman wrote.
He then accused Hamas, the Palestinian resistance faction that governs Gaza’s internal affairs, of “targeting civilians while using them as human shields.”
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-posts-fake-videos-justify-gaza-slaughter
In other words one immoral criminals fight for survival has unleashed horror, destruction and anguish on thousands. The Jerusalem District Court must do its job, but surely the ICC must be a future destination for Netanyahu. It really breaks my heart to see Jewish & Palestinian friends so affected. Oh God, It has just gone on for too long!
Can’t share your enthusiasm for either of these pieces, which are firmly within the Zionist frame, despite being a fan of Haaretz and a former reader of the Grauni for over 50 years.
How is “de-escalation” a cure for apartheid?
How does “calming things down” cope with ethnic cleansing?
I have not heard a peep from the Labour leader. The Party has abandoned the Palestinians.
Paul Wimpeney: neither of these pieces suggest de-escalation as the solution. Both suggest de-escalation as a starting point. Haaretz then says ‘this is not enough’. Both point to Netanyahu as the instigator in chief. Both look to what needs to happen next. And both correctly analyse the background to this current escalation (unlike the BBC and the U.K. government, who only seem capable of blaming Hamas rockets).
I was, in fact, encouraged to read The Guardian’s piece. If only it had been as near to the truth in its analysis of Labour under Corbyn.