The War of Independence between Israel and Israel: The Palestinians and the Israelis is Not the Enemy of Israel, nor Is Israel the enemy of Israel
“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. Islamic extremists are controlling the deadly terrorist organizations.
Palestinians aren’t the enemy. The millions of Palestinians who live right here next to us, between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan, are not our enemy. Just like the majority of Israelis want to live a calm, peaceful and dignified life, so do Palestinians. Palestinians and Israelis have both been in the grips of a religious minority for decades. On both sides, the intractable positions of a small group has dragged us into violence. It doesn’t matter who is more cruel, or more ruthless. The ideology of both has led to the deaths of innocent civilians.
This war, like others before it, will end sooner or later. I am not sure I will come back from it alive, but I do know that a minute after the war is over, both Israelis and Palestinians will have to reckon with the leaders who led them to this moment. We must wake up and not let the extremists 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.
The majority of Gaza’s residents are not from Gaza. They’re the descendants of refugees who were expelled, or fled in fear, during Israel’s war of independence in 1948. Their home is said to be an open-air prison with Israel and Egypt controlling everything that goes in and out, from tomatoes to travel documents, for children who need life-saving medical care. 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.
Ms. Shehada, an Israeli citizen of Palestinian descent, is afraid of what may happen now after the massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas. She said everyone was in distress. “There is a great fear that there will be a mighty revenge.”
In Lod, which lies just south of Tel Aviv, Jews and Arabs often live in the same building, she said, but now Arabs are reluctant to go into the air-raid shelters. “They say they see hate in the eyes of the Jews,” Ms. Shehada said. I think what they really see is distress and fear.
Most Palestinians in East Jerusalem feel less divided between their loyalties than they do in Israeli society, because they are not Israeli citizens. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, but the Palestinians were not citizens.
After this killing of Israelis inside Israel, normal tensions have been raised to almost unbearable levels and theJewish population is calling for revenge.
The leading Arab politicians in Israel, like Mansour Abbas and Ayman Odeh, both members of the Knesset, have clearly condemned the actions of Hamas, the Palestinian faction that carried out the attack on Israel, and called for calm.
But people are torn in their feelings, Ms. Shehada said, and so they tend to hide them. Young Arabs at first felt pride in the resistance of Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, she said. People in Gaza were happy when they saw someone taking care of the situation.
But that surge of pride faded quickly, she said. We saw images of slaughter, kidnapping and rape before this. “This is not a legitimate form of struggle.”
Israel and Israel’s Arabs: A Muslim city in the midst of a violent conflict: Israeli-Israeli mediators and a U.N. official-say
Benjamin Netanyahu is the prime minister of the right-wing coalition government and it is the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is responsible for the police. Mr. Ben-Gviva has supported violent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank and he is increasing the tension there 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-Ghorri ordered the police to prepare for riots in a city like lod because he thought they were a dangerous provocation.
One of Israel’s most prominent Arab journalists is more positive. He sees the shock of the past week bringing a sort of stunned calm. Unlike in 2021, he said, in mixed cities, “the Arab and Jewish societies are more aware of each other’s pain and can understand how destructive the consequences can be if they don’t consider each other’s feelings.”
Mr Magadli said that there was greater responsibility between the two societies.
Mousa Mousa, a young Israeli Arab in a Hebrew-language T-shirt, was advertising his juice stall at the market in Ramla, which was almost empty, because it was a mixed town. “I am not sleeping at the moment,” he said. “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 what political decisions are based on.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is a “Taik for Cooperating with Israel”, says Young Arab Man Mohammed Adham
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. When he is asked to do something, he has to bring his ID card, lift his shirt and drop his trousers. His father requested that their last name be hidden for fear of their security.
Like many young men here, he has little respect for Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. He is a traitor for cooperating with Israel, Adham said, especially regarding security in the occupied West Bank.
One of Jerusalem’s best bookshops is owned by Mahmoud Muna. He favors a unitary state based on democracy and equal rights. He sees people like himself as potential models for a different 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. He said that being past 40 helps keep your cool.
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.” Mr. Muna said it was not acceptable for people to say things like “it’s crazy” or “I can’t understand it”.
Source: ‘Hundreds of Thousands’ of Gazans Displaced Over 12 Hours, U.N. Says
The War Between Israel and Palestine in the Prevalence of a New Holocaust and a Resurrection of the War. The Era of the Exclusion and Disintegration
He said there is a good time to view things we don’t normally see like the absence of acquaintances who have been called up as reserve soldiers.
This week has encapsulated the entire conflict, Mr. Muna said. “The high level of nationalism, of we and them, cannot be higher than now,” he said. Resistance, terrorism, civilians, army and all of these terms are in a different state of being. 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.