An opinion about ethical resistance as the answer to grief and rage
The Israeli War on Gaza: The Case for Human Rights and the Survival of a Minority of Palestinians, the Israelis and the Palestinians
“Palestinians are reminded to what extent Israeli society is militarized,” he said. “Those you were eating with yesterday are now at the front, and what are they doing now?”
I am now going to defend my country against enemies who want to kill my people. Our enemies are the deadly terrorist organizations that are being controlled by Islamic extremists.
Palestinians are not the enemy. The millions of Palestinians who live in the vicinity of the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan are not our enemies. Just like the majority of Israelis want to live a calm, peaceful and dignified life, so do Palestinians. Palestinians and Israelis have been in a minority of religious people for decades. On both sides, the intractable positions of a small group has dragged us into violence. It does not matter what type of person you are, it doesn’t matter. The conflict is caused by the ideology of both and has led to the death of innocent civilians.
This war, like others before it, will end sooner or later. I am unsure if I’ll come back from it alive, but I do know that both Israelis and Palestinians will have to reckon with their leaders after the war is over. We need to wake up and not allow the extremists to rule. Palestinians and Israelis must denounce the extremists who are driven by religious fanaticism. The Israelis will have to oust National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and their far-right circle from power, and the Palestinians will have to oust the leadership of Hamas.
Most of Gaza’s people aren’t from there. They’re the descendants of refugees who were expelled, or fled in fear, during Israel’s war of independence in 1948. Human Rights Watch has labeled the Israeli state that penned them an “open-air prison,” where they live and where they ration everything from food to travel documents, to make sure children get the medical care they need. From this overcrowded cage, which the United Nations in 2017 declared “unlivable” for many residents in part because it lacks electricity and clean water, many Palestinians in Gaza can see the land that their parents and grandparents called home, though most may never step foot in it.
He feels that there is a high amount of tension, anxiety, anger, confusion and fear among Palestinians, and he feels it himself.
Even in more normal times, Lod has deep-seated problems of poverty and crime, with Arab criminal organizations operating with little interference from the Israeli police, people here say. There are separate sections for Arabs and Jews within the local government.
The Arab citizens of Israel make up 18 percent of the population. They have been caught for years between their loyalty to the state and their desire for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, the creation of an independent Palestine and a better life for themselves.
When an angry Israeli Jewish population starts calling for revenge, normal tensions have been raised to almost unbearable levels.
The politicians from the Arab community in Israel, like Mansour Abbas and Ayman Odeh, have condemned Hamas and called for calm.
But people are torn in their feelings, Ms. Shehada said, and so they tend to hide them. She said that young Arabs were first impressed with the resistance of Hamas. “In the first moment when the people of Gaza invaded Israel, people were happy, they felt that someone was doing something about the situation.”
But that surge of pride faded quickly, she said. “This was before we saw all the images of slaughter, kidnap and rape,” Ms. Shehada said. This is not a legitimate form of struggle.
The Israeli-Jewish Connection during the Aqsa riots: “Hundreds of thousands’s Gazans Displaced Over 12 Hours, U.N. Says”
The police are the responsibility of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister and leader of the ultranationalist Jewish Power party, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government. Mr. Ben-Gvir supports attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, and has also increased tensions with Israel’s Arab population.
He has talked of “storming” the Aqsa Mosque compound, one of the Muslim world’s holiest sites, and in late July, he led more than 1,000 ultranationalist settlers to the site, infuriating Muslims and prompting Hamas to say that it is fighting to defend Al Aqsa.
Mr. Ben-Gvir ordered the police to prepare for riots and Ms. Shehada felt that it was a dangerous provocation.
Mohammad Magadli, one of Israel’s most prominent Arab journalists, is more optimistic. The shock of the past week has brought a sort of calm. In mixed cities, the Arab and Jewish societies are more aware of each other’s pain and can understand how damaging it can be if they ignore each other’s feelings.
“There is greater responsibility between the two societies,” Mr. Magadli said, “even among the leaders who, from the outset, called for calming the situation.”
Mousa Mousa, 23, an Israeli Arab who works for a juice stall in the ramla market, said that the market was almost empty because of the wariness in the air. He said that he was not sleeping. “I’m afraid of the reaction of the villagers on the road to what Hamas did.”
He said he had contempt for the politicians who stoked hatred inside each community. “They thrive on division,” Mr. Mousa said bitterly. That is the basis of politics.
Israeli and Israeli-Agypt Agreement on Safe Passage for Americans from Gaza-As-US Official-States
In normal times, they tend to stop and check young Arab men every so often. But Adham, 19, says that now he is being stopped three times as he makes the short walk from his father’s shop near the Damascus Gate to their home in the Old City. Each time, he is asked to show his ID card, lift his shirt and drop his trousers. His father asked for their last name not to be released because of security concerns.
Like many young men here, he has little respect for Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. He is a traitor because he cooperated with Israel on security in the West Bank, Adham said.
One of Jerusalem’s finest bookstores is run by Mahmoud Muna. He identifies as a Palestinian from Jerusalem and favors a unitary state based on democracy and equal rights. He sees people like himself as possibilities for a new kind of integrated state.
The police presence has been increased in and around East Jerusalem, and Mr. Muna himself has been stopped twice for checks in the past five days, always moments that can produce friction. “Being past 40 helps you keep your cool,” he said.
Friends who go to work in West Jerusalem tell him that “everyone is stressed and angry, but everyone is pretending or putting on a face.” People say banalities like “it’s crazy” or “it’s difficult” or “I can’t understand it,” Mr. Muna said, adding, “This is so you don’t have to say your opinion, but to say nothing is also not acceptable.”
Source: ‘Hundreds of Thousands’ of Gazans Displaced Over 12 Hours, U.N. Says
The World is Not Here, When Democracy Meets Zerubbaugh: A Palestinian Primer on the War Between Israel and the U.S.
Moments like this one are clarifying, too, he said: “It is a good time to see things we don’t normally see,” like the absence of acquaintances who have been called up as reservists to the army.
This week has encapsulated the entire conflict, Mr. Muna said. He said the high level of nationalism is not higher than it is now. “Resistance becomes terrorism and vice versa, and us and them, and civilians and army — all these terms are in sudden contrast.” One side speaks of a new Holocaust and the other of a new Nakba, or catastrophe, which is what Palestinians call their mass displacement and dispossession during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
