Sumera B Reshi
An eye for an eye will only make the world blind, goes the saying. However, this adage has made Gaza heartless and lifeless. Now the truce has been declared on both sides but if an eye for an eye is repeated it could lead to the next inevitable conflict.
On Friday (21st May) the truce between Israel and Hamas brought some relief to Gazans. During 11 days of conflict, some 250 people were killed mostly from Gaza. May 10th calamity befell Gazans & Palestinians, leading to the loss of life, the loss of human dignity and fear of an uncertain future. This Eid Palestine received bloodshed and a blitz of rockets from Israel to exterminate them from their very homeland. The fresh nightly clashes broke out at the beginning of Ramadan in mid-April when Israeli police placed barricades outside the old city’s Damascus Gate, a popular gathering place after the evening prayers during the holy month of Ramadan.
However, there is much more behind what seems obvious. The tensions have been rising in the Palestinian – majority Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem, as the Israeli government ordered many Palestinians to leave their homes, after a court ruling that Jewish families held a historic claim to the property. The law in Israel allows Jews to regain property lost in the 1948 war but prevents Palestinians including Palestinian citizens of Israel from recovering property lost in the same war. This scandalous decision has led to days of solidarity protests by Palestinians in East Jerusalem and clashes with police and Israeli Jews in the adjacent neighbourhood.
The current violence erupted after weeks of smaller cross-communal clashes between Palestinians and Israeli Jews in and beyond Jerusalem. Palestinian youth are said to have attacked Haredi (ultra-orthodox Jewish) light rail passengers, an Israeli far-right march through Jerusalem with Jewish ultra-nationalists chanting ‘death to Arabs’ and drive-by shootings and stone-throwing attacks, among other incidents.
Besides, May 10 marked Jerusalem Day, commemorating the day Israel took control of the Old City and East Jerusalem during the 1967 war. Each year, Israeli ultra-nationalist hold a ‘Flag March’ through the city and this march is often marked by harassment & provocation of Palestinian residents. Owing to the ongoing violence, this year’s marches were re-routed and cancelled. Nevertheless, Israeli ultra-nationalists and pro-settlement-expansion politicians led by Religious Zionist Party chief Bezalel Smotrich provocatively visited Sheikh Jarrah.
Closer to Eid, Israeli police raided the Al-Aqsa compound, claiming to have fired rubber bullets and stun grenades at Palestinians throwing rocks, injuring hundreds of people. The intrusion of the mosque – the third holiest site in Islam enraged many and was mnemonic of the 2000 visit by Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount which set off the second intifada the same year.
The situations paved a way for Hamas to wrest control of the events. It launched a massive blitz of rockets towards Israel. According to Natan Sachs, Director of Middle East Policy Hamas, this time surprised Israel with its improved military capabilities.
Israel, however, retorted with an enormous bombardment of Gaza. Meanwhile, Palestinian citizens of Israel have poured into the streets in an uncommon mass show of civil unrest.
Although the world knows what is at the heart of the present Israel – Palestine crisis, however, the Israeli government has tried to frame the issue as a ‘real-estate dispute’ working its way through the courts. Primarily, however, Israel applies its system of laws in East Jerusalem in violation of international law, which considers East Jerusalem occupied territory. Still, the legal pretense and gradual pace have been key components of the state’s approach to evading significant international scorn for its actions.
In 1967, when Israel occupied the eastern part of the city, Israeli authorities carried out urban planning through an ethnic-nationalist plan to remake the city to justify the occupation over the whole of Jerusalem. As per Omar H. Rahman, visiting fellow, Brookings Doha Centre, “Israel has been working systematically to drive Palestinians out of Jerusalem by utilizing policies that include taking over private property, limiting building permits, demolishing homes and forcible displacements”. As reported by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, Israel has stripped almost 15,000 Palestinians of their residency status.
An expert on Jerusalem’s politics and demographics, Daniel Seidemann, said that the difference in this round of violence is the lack of a ‘responsible adult’ to keep things from spiralling. Some experts opine that Hamas is trying to balance its roles as the rightful ruler and a leading Palestinian resistance group to Israel. Hamas has been ruling Gaza since 2007 and has succeeded in preserving power despite Israeli, US and international pressure.
It also bore repeated military assault from Israel. Isolation, nonetheless, has prevented Gaza from flourishing economically. Since Gaza remains mostly under seizure, it is in dire humanitarian situations. Hamas has been able to wrestle Israeli military onslaught but it hasn’t been successful in providing economic benefits to Gazans
Hamas has maintained its grip on power and leadership but it has also suffered as the Middle East has changed its political landscape, thus minimizing its hopes for international support. Besides, the Arab Spring, the civil war in Syria and the other political upheavals in the Middle East has made the Palestinian cause politically insignificant. Trump’s decision to recognize Israel’s claim to exclusive sovereignty over Jerusalem and the signing of Abraham Accords (which normalized ties between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Bahrain and Morocco) marred the Palestinian cause badly.
Hamas is the only resistance group to fight the Israeli occupation tooth and nail but then Israel has plan A & B ready to isolate Hamas at domestic and at the international front. Israel makes sure to punish Hamas militarily and diminish its halo. This plan, to a greater extent, has worked in favour of Israel yet Hamas has maintained its presence in power corridors. Israel fears that Hamas might take control of Gaza either by force or through elections. This is the biggest nightmare for Israel. Given the inaction of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas is in a win-win situation. The leader of the Palestinian Authority aka Mahmoud Abbass is aged, uninspiring and unpopular among the masses. Thus many raise eyebrows and question Abbass’s leadership. How can such a fragile, corrupt and undistinguished party or the leader hope to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine? There certainly is a leadership vacuum that leaves space for Hamas to chip in.
Therefore the recent violence in Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza serves Hamas a great purpose. The high handedness of the Israeli police provided Hamas with a cause to act. The military strikes allow Hamas to claim that it is defending Palestine and the third holy site of Muslims. Two weeks of conflict has wreaked havoc on Gazans the most. Neither Israel nor Hamas was ready to retreat. The situation in Gaza egged the international community, especially President Joe Biden to act. Thus, Joe Biden urged B. Netanyahu to de-escalate. Taher Al-Nono, the media adviser to Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, told Reuters, “The Palestinian resistance will abide by this agreement as long as the Occupation (Israel) does the same.” As per the analysis of Tamara Coffman Wittes, Senior Fellow – Foreign Policy, Centre for Middle East Policy, “the ceasefire is shaky but without any further diplomacy it will prove just a brief respite from the violence”.
Ms Wittes, further comments that “the US urgently needs to reestablish a standing diplomatic channel to the Palestinians that does not run through the US Embassy in Israel. That channel need not have a physical platform in a new consulate — yet —but it needs to be established right away”.
In pursuit of their rightful homeland, no one knows how long the Gazans and Palestinians suffer. Since the truce has been declared there is a deadly calm in Gaza and its residents look at their city with tearful awe. While Israel shall ponder over plan B, Hamas will hone its military skills and Gazans will cry over what they have lost in the past 11 days. They will count corpses and shrouds and the international community can pray for the truce to be steady.
