After 11 disastrous days of violence, an uneasy cease-fire took hold between Hamas and Israel on May 21. The rockets have stopped flying, but in the war’s immediate aftermath the only thing that’s clear is that there are no winners in this latest outbreak of mayhem. There is an urgent need to make sense of this moment, because the momentum of same old same old is moving Israelis and Palestinians alike in a deadly direction.
The violence emerged from massive street protests in early May, over Israeli incursions into the Al-Aksa Mosque (third holiest site in Islam), and the Netanyahu administration’s encroachments into the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarra — part of an ongoing maneuver to replace Palestinians with right wing Jewish inhabitants. The context is far broader, however — the tortuous history of Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. It’s the world’s longest running story, one of overwhelming complexity. Unless one makes a deep dive into the history, the impulse is to seek clarity in a simplified narrative of victims and oppressors, good guys and bad guys. Us and them.
In the latest outbreak of violence, the disparity in casualties between the two sides is staggering. The numbers tell a very partial story, however. The American press barely touched on the pain and trauma civilian Israelis suffered during those eleven days, but it was brutal. Israelis old enough to remember the Six Day War say they never experienced anything as terrifying.