Chemi Shalev :Dear God, Not Again
It’s like sleep paralysis. You think you’re
wide-awake but can’t move a muscle to stop the nightmare that’s
unfolding in front of your eyes. You shout out but no one hears you. You
know the tragedy can be avoided, but no one seems to care. Your mouth
goes dry, you start to feel nauseous, there’s a pit in your stomach,
fear in your heart and desperation on your mind. Even if you’re not a
believer you pray: Dear God, not again.
You’ve seen this movie before, and it always has a bad ending. Don’t tell me, you protest, that Israelis and Palestinians are at each others throats once again;
that more innocent people will have to die before this is over; that
the victims will be paraded as proof of the other side’s cruelty; that
both sides will feel virtuous and noble and completely in the right
while portraying the enemy as evil incarnate; that moderates will fade
and extremists will reign; that, like always, some people will say
there’s a silver lining of opportunity in the dark clouds of hatred and
violence but, as usual, they’ll be proven wrong. People will grow
bitterer, the conflict more toxic and hope, already on life support,
might finally wither and die.
It’s easy to defend Israel’s decision to place metal detectors at the entrances to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount in response to last Friday’s terror attack in which three Israeli Arabs killed two Border Policemen.
In real time, it sounded reasonable to all concerned. Israel’s
automatic defenders are already busy comparing the so-called
“magnometers” to metal detectors at airports and baseball stadiums and
the Palestinian refusal to go through them as proof of their malicious
designs.
But there’s a reason why
the army and Israel’s security services urged the cabinet to reconsider,
which is summed up in the Israeli cliché that it’s better to be smart
than right. What difference does it make if the metal detectors
theoretically make sense in a sterile environment, if they are bound to
wreak more havoc and to cause more death and destruction in their
presence than their absence in the hellhole that is the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Israelis may view the
metal detectors as careful safety measures meant to prevent terrorism,
but for Palestinians the narrow silver-colored gates that are manned by
hostile Border Policemen are yet another bloody Israeli checkpoint on
their way to their holiest site. It is a last-minute reminder of the
occupation which they hate before they enter the one place in Palestine
in which they rule. Their resentment, justified or not, is high-octane
fuel for the inciters and the terrorists and the religious fanatics with
which to inflame their followers and to start another fire that won’t
liberate Palestine but could definitely burn it down.
If
reason doesn’t prevail now, in the next few hours or days, it will be
weeks or months before it returns, but reason is never the sole or even
the main actor on the Israeli-Palestinian stage. There is national pride
and perceived prestige that dictates that you never back down from
previous actions, no matter how mistaken they may have been, because to
do so means losing face. So you up the ante, increase the volume, apply
more force, assuming that the other side will relent. It may, but only
after many more tragedies occur.
And
then there’s the politics, which, in this primitive neighborhood,
automatically translate into disdain for compromisers, admiration for
bullies and the universal fear of those in power of being outflanked and
outshined by the militants on their right. Benjamin Netanyahu is always desperate to keep the support of Jewish settlers,
who agitate for a “proper Zionist response”. He lives in constant fear
that Habayit Hayehudi’s Naftali Bennett will outdo him in chest-thumping
and depict him as a weakling. Mahmoud Abbas, for his part, realizes
that a fanatic crusade to oust the Zionist infidels from Al-Aqsa and Al
Haram esh-Sharif could sweep him out of power so he rides the tiger and deludes himself he’ll be able to get off in time.
In other, more normal
times, one could at least count on Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or
either one of the George Bushes to talk to the sides and to rush a John
Kerry or a George Mitchell to the scene to try and put out the flames.
But the U.S. president is Donald Trump, so give me a break, and we
already know from his blistering harangue in Budapest this week how much
Netanyahu trusts the Europeans. Perhaps Israel’s new allies in the
Middle East from Egypt, Jordan or Saudi Arabia could step in to fill the
void, though they are just as fearful as Abbas of being perceived by
their increasingly agitated masses of collaboration with the Zionist
entity.
It’s a pre-ordained
series of cascading measures, outrages, reactions and
counter-escalations. Israel might have considered removing the metal
detectors, but not in the face of violent demonstrations and definitely
not after three Israelis in the settlement of Halamish were so brutally
hacked to death on Friday night. So it will hang tough and increase
pressure to placate the public and its populists. But the efforts to
project strength and deter demonstrators will inevitably claim more
victims, like the three teenagers who were also killed on Friday, who
will be portrayed by the Palestinians as Shahids and role models for
other foolhardy teens. And so on and so forth.
In the end, Israelis
will grow more isolated and resentful and Palestinians more desperate
and oppressed and both sides will feel like victims that the world has
ignored or abandoned. And you are left to wonder how people who are so
supposed to be so smart can also be so stupid, or at least wonder why
their leaders are too obstinate and closed-minded to break out of these
infernal cycles of violence and frustration. “We are your chosen people.
But, once in a while, can't you choose someone else?” asked Tevye in
Fiddler in the Roof. If this is God’s Holy Land, you might wonder, why
can’t He (or She) move somewhere else for a change, or at least go on
vacation?
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