The grievances that sparked the violence still exist
Achieving peace is still far away despite the ceasefire between Israel and "Hamas"
Great damage to the infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.
Reuters
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The marginalization of Palestinians in mixed cities sparked an unprecedented intifada.
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A fragile calm settled in Gaza on Friday, ending the cease-fire 11 days of violence, and the rocket fire and air strikes have stopped, for the time being, but not the grievances that sparked the Palestinian uprising from Ramallah to Jerusalem, through Haifa, to Beirut and Amman, The ceasefire will not bring the Palestinians and the Israelis closer to reconciliation. They are far from that, and although many chanted for an end to the hostilities, the Israeli security forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and clashed with the Palestinians, the same measure that prompted Hamas. To the bombing of Israel with rockets, 11 days ago.
The root of the problem still exists, and the evacuation of many Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, the Israeli move that sparked the original unrest, is still an ongoing procedure. As the court’s decision was postponed until next month only, and hours before the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect, thousands of people walked through the streets of Umm al-Fahm inside Israel, to attend the funeral of Muhammad Kiwan, 17, who died after being injured. He was shot in the head while sitting in a car with his friends during a protest last week, by the Israeli secret police, according to local residents.
Thousands of mourners raised Palestinian flags, and before the funeral, Israeli security forces deployed around Umm al-Fahm, making the city, not far from Haifa, look like an occupied area in the West Bank, and for the nearly two million Arab citizens of Israel, like the citizens of Umm al-Fahm, it remains Second-class citizenship grievances persist, and they are more evident than ever before, and in the past 11 days, mixed Israeli cities have witnessed unprecedented clashes between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, including riots, burning of shops, and the killing of Kiwan and other Palestinians and Israeli Jews.
Failed efforts
Nimr Sultani, a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, said, "The same issues that led to the protests and clashes in East Jerusalem, and inside Israel and Gaza, will continue to worsen." That the oppressed remain silent, ”he said, adding that what is required now is international pressure to force Israel to comply with international laws and grant the Palestinians equality.
But other Palestinians have abandoned decades of failed efforts and the international institutions behind them, and the Palestinian refugee, Mohi Shehadeh (30 years old), said at a rally in the Lebanese capital: “When I was a child, I believed in the international community,” continuing: “I gave up on these international organizations. And the United Nations; For 73 years they have given us nothing. ”His despair and disappointment are not new, but they are expressed in a louder and stronger voice by young people in Palestinian refugee camps, in mixed city streets inside Israel, and in the West Bank, where the president of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, originally in 2005 for a period of four years, is still in office, and he canceled the elections scheduled for this year, ostensibly due to Israel's refusal to allow voting in East Jerusalem, meaning that Palestinians in their twenties never had the opportunity to vote to choose their leadership.Shehadeh was a little child, in 1993, when the Palestinian leader at the time, Yasser Arafat, signed the Oslo Accords, which led to the delusional promise of peace and the Palestinian state. Shehadeh said: “Oslo did not give us anything as Palestinians.” Continuing: “30 years of peace negotiations Where are we now? It killed more than 250 people in Gaza last week. ”
Upon the founding of Israel, the country's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, warned of the Palestinian refugees, and said, "We must do our utmost to ensure that they never return." Almost since the beginning of the conflict, crowds of Palestinian youths gathered on the borders of Israel with Lebanon. Some even climbed a 30-foot-high border wall, waving the Palestinian flag, and provoked the Israeli soldiers on the other side with chants of "Shoot, shoot." They want to return to "their country".
A dream of return
It is not the first time. In 2011, on the anniversary of the Nakba, which commemorates the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with the establishment of Israel, thousands of Palestinians stormed the borders of Israel from Lebanon and Syria, some of them even managed to cross, and Hassan Hegazy, a young Palestinian refugee in Syria, traveled 100 A mile south of Jaffa, where his grandfather's home.
During the border protests, last week, Ali Saleh, a Palestinian refugee in his forties, said: "Imagine that my land is there, and I cannot go to it."
From the top of the nearby hill, he can see the trees that now cover the village of Al-Khalisa, which his ancestors inhabited, just 1.5 miles away on the other side of the border wall.
More than seven decades after their expulsion, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon still live without citizenship, most of them are in overcrowded camps with few job opportunities, and Saleh said his plan was to cross the border, but the Lebanese army stopped him, said Samah Salameh, a Palestinian activist, in Israel. "The old people may die, but the young people remember and want to fix that."
The most striking difference in the recent escalation has been violence within mixed areas in Israel, even in cities like Haifa, which is often seen as an example of Jewish-Arab coexistence.
About a fifth of the citizens of Israel are Palestinians who remained within the new borders of Israel in 1948. With the announcement of the ceasefire with Gaza, Israeli politicians speculated that the violence in mixed Israeli cities was as big a threat as the Gaza rockets, and the Israeli Police Commissioner blamed the sudden explosion of violence on the groups. Right-wing Judaism being transported in buses to mixed areas to inflame tensions.
Netanyahu is responsible
Senior Israeli politicians, including from within the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's party, accuse the Likud of stirring up this escalation to save his political future. An Israeli opinion writer described what happened as a victory for Hamas: “It succeeded in transforming the battlefield from The areas within the range of its missiles to the entire country, with riots rocking all parts of Israel ».
Salameh said that the Palestinians have always faced discrimination, and second-class citizenship, in a state that defines itself as Jewish, and in 2018 Israel approved the nation-state law, which further diminished the status of Palestinians in the country.
Salameh added that there was no trust before this week, but there was some kind of contract, "You are safe .. I am safe." She said that her children's generation, in their twenties, want more than that, and they say: "We want justice .. We do not want anything else ».
For many Palestinians, the outbreak of violence and frustration was seen as a victory for unity, not for Gaza militants, and with the escalation of the conflict, last week, a statement was circulated on the Internet for the "unity intifada" calling for a united intifada for Palestinians from Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and inside Israel. Millions of Palestinians are in refugee camps, and diaspora communities, worldwide.
• For the nearly two million Arab citizens of Israel, such as the citizens of Umm al-Fahm, second-class citizenship grievances remain, and they are more evident than ever.
• The evacuation of many Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, the Israeli move that sparked the original unrest, remains an established procedure. The court's decision was postponed until next month only.
Rebecca Collard - writer and journalist covering the Middle East
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