Maybe it shouldn’t have happened
Israel vs. Gaza: A State of War for the Palestine-Hamas Dialogue of the United States and the Israeli-Israeli Dialogue
In the days after Oct. 7, Mr. Biden had the opportunity to shape Israel’s response by publicly defining what kind of actions the United States would, and would not, support. While expressing solidarity with Israel and revulsion at Hamas, he might have withheld assistance for a military campaign until Israel formulated a plan that the White House deemed effective and just and that treated Palestinian civilians acceptably. Instead, Mr. Biden announced, “We’re with Israel,” pledging to provide for its defense “today, tomorrow and always.” He requested $14.3 billion in military aid, without strings attached, even as he pressed Israeli leaders to think twice about a ground invasion.
For more than a month, the suburbs of Detroit have played host to vigils where victims of the war between Israel and Hamas are commemorated with prayers, candles and tearful speeches.
Interviews in Ms. Tlaib’s district revealed a split-screen view of the war in Gaza and laid bare the grievances that have shaped it. It is a kind of national debate about the conflict, based upon the personal experience of lost lives and land since the introduction of Israeli statehood.
At a gathering in solidarity with Israeli hostages last week at Adat Shalom synagogue, Jeremy Moss, a Democratic state senator from Southfield, a suburb with a large Jewish population in Ms. Tlaib’s district, spoke with concerned constituents. “I had so many people coming up to me saying that they don’t feel seen, heard, represented,” he said.
The Palestinian-American activist compared Ms. Tlaib to a congressman who was censured by his House colleagues for opposing the slave trade, Joshua Reed Giddings.
She started representing parts of the largest Jewish and Arab American communities in the country this year due to the changes to the congressional map. She is now representing both constituencies who have vastly different views of the conflict, which makes it extremely difficult to reconcile.
The divide would pose a challenge to any politician. Ms Tlaib has staked out an unbridgeable position that could hurt a lot of her supporters.
The resolution censured Ms. Tlaib because she called for the destruction of the state of Israel. The Democratic Majority for Israel is running TV ads in the Detroit area that criticize Ms. Tlaib.
On Nov. 3, she posted a video on social media accusing President Biden of supporting the “genocide of the Palestinian people” and including footage of demonstrators chanting “from the river to the sea,” a pro-Palestinian slogan that many see as calling for not only the restoration of Palestinian land claims but also the eradication of Israel.
Ms. Tlaib has said she saw it as “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction or hate.” In a statement released after the censure vote, she vowed to “continue to work for a just and lasting peace that upholds the human rights and dignity of all people, centers peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, and ensures that no person, no child has to suffer or live in fear of violence.”
Ms. Tlaib’s defense of the slogan drew condemnation from the Biden administration, as well as criticism from Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, and disavowal from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, both Democrats.
Mr. Mellman said that Tlaib is out of step with the Democratic Party and her own party in Michigan. “We hope she will change her views, and if not, perhaps somebody might be interested in running against her.”
Towards a Shared Future in the West Bank: The Post-Oct.7 Era after the Gaza Intifadas
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It’s not likely that a shared future will be much longer than it was a month ago. But Palestinians already knew that. Was the day before Hamas’s attacks considered “peace”? Maybe for Israelis it was, but for Palestinians it wasn’t.
As the number of Palestinians who lose their lives goes up, so goes the sense of helplessness in the West Bank cities and villages. Israeli officials have proposed pushing Gaza’s population into Egypt’s Sinai Desert, which would render them refugees twice or three times over, and perhaps edge the Israeli settler project into a new, more expansive phase. In the West Bank, we look around, and wonder: Could it happen here? Is it happening now?
The Oct. 7 attacks broke that state of play. It was not possible to govern both peoples but to privatize one of them, as was the nature of the occupation.
There have been periods of increased cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians over the past 75 years. The first and second intifadas were preceded by times of increased conflict. When Palestinians participate in large-scale resistance, sometimes civil and sometimes violent, they’re often presented by Western media as random or indiscriminate killings. But that violence did not happen in a vacuum.
Many Gazans have parents and grandparents who are forbidden to enter certain areas due to the fact that they grew up there. They still invoke rich memories from their childhood or adolescence, when they walked through citrus groves in Yaffa or olive fields in Qumya — the latter of which, like many villages whose people were expelled into Gaza during the 1948 war, was later transformed into a kibbutz.
Meanwhile, a settlement council has been distributing hundreds of assault rifles to civilian squads in settlements in the northern West Bank part of a larger effort by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is a settler himself, to arm civilian groups in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks. So far, the ministry has purchased 10,000 assault rifles for such teams around the country. More than 130 people have been killed in the West Bank since October 7 and there is still no end to the violence.
Ramallah has fallen into a phantasy. The past month has been a crazy month for Ramallah, the West Bank
For the past month, normal life in Ramallah — a city in the West Bank usually known for its young population and its vibrant nightlife — has been brought to a standstill.
