3 Articles to Make Sense of Present Escalation in Israel/Palestine
Who has been sowing the seeds of this violence? And why?
When Israel/Palestine flashes onto the headlines, I often think about how confusing these stories must sound. It occurs to me that the most basic descriptions of events, even place-names and personal identity markers, are the sites of intense discursive struggle.
Take, for example, yesterday’s New York Times explainer (which overall wasn’t bad): the piece refers to the location of the recent mass murder of seven Israeli Jews simply as “Jerusalem,” while saying that the following day’s attack—in which a 13-year-old boy shot and wounded two Jewish settlers a few miles south—as “East Jerusalem,” even though both attacks occurred in what’s technically occupied East Jerusalem. It’s the type of mistake, which, if pointed out, the Times would probably correct. But, pending any correction, casual readers can’t see what’s to me, as someone who studies these issues very closely, a clear through line between these two armed attacks: Both happened in or around Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. Knowing this fact allows you to then analyze the situation in a clearer light and see, I hope, how the policy of successive Israeli governments to colonize more Palestinian territory by force provokes anger and resistance.
Here are three articles that will help bring to the surface some of the larger political-social currents coming to head right now in Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, and across Israel/Palestine.
You may already know that the last major escalation in the Land back in May 2021 featured wide-spread intercommunal violence in Israel’s so-called mixed cities—those places in the pre-1967 borders with a substantial population of Palestinian citizens of Israel living alongside an often larger, more powerful Jewish population. But did you realize that West Bank-based settler groups have been moving en masse into many of these cities, like Lod and Jaffa, quickly inserting themselves in municipal politics, and successfully sowing tensions between local Jews and Palestinians?
Read Josh Leifer’s excellent reporting in Jewish Currents, “The Rise of the New Settler State”
Next, and very much connected, we must appreciate just how long the fascist, Jewish nationalist right wing has been building to this present moment, which is the zenith of their power in recent decades. The two standout national religious politicians have been Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, both long-time activists in the settler movement.
Read this revelatory 2016 Haaretz interview with Smotrich to hear how serious he and his movement are about pursuing ethnic cleansing. It should shock you that this man is a top government post. (Paywalled, sorry).
If you won’t climb the paywall, I recommend this Democracy Now! interview with Natasha Roth-Rowland, editor at +972 Magazine and doctoral candidate at the University of Virigina. Natasha exposes the right-wing authoritarian roots of so many of the new ministers, demonstrating how deep the rot in the Israeli body politic permeates.
Lastly, for weeks now, hundreds of thoughts of Israelis from across the political spectrum have been protesting against this new far right government in Israel. Mostly, they have been focused on how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition threaten democracy for Israelis. The occupation and human rights issues don’t figure majorly in the demonstrations.
And yet, the “radical” anti-occupation bloc has been present at each of the major marches in Tel Aviv. As journalist Ben Reiff tells us in +972 Magazine, the anti-occupation/anti-apartheid activists are “challeng[ing] Israeli protesters to look beyond the far-right coalition and see the conditions that enabled its rise.”
Indeed, a good idea.
Now, after reading some of the articles, I’d be curious to hear what you think. How did we get here? Did you find these pieces helpful? Were they somehow lacking? What might I have missed?