UN-Truth

From a new blog called South Jerusalem: “Of course there has not even been a lull in the killing in Gaza or in Sderot. The dead of one’s own city are more noticeable, and the dead of one’s own side: No Israeli paper prints a long line of pictures of those who died on a given day in Gaza. The one-sided mourning is inevitable, and is a dangerous illusion. The tragedies are indivisible.

“Friday, the morning after the attack [on students at the Jerusalem yeshiva], Ha’aretz reported that Prime Minister Olmert said: ‘It shows the extent to which the Palestinian Authority is insufficiently fighting terror. We will not make our peace with such events’. A reflexive and foolish response. The terrorist was an East Jerusalem Palestinian. To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Olmert has not turned responsibility for fighting terror in East Jerusalem over to the Palestinian security services. Despite all the efforts of our police and Shin Bet, they could not prevent the attack. Even in Area A of the West Bank, supposedly under Palestinian security control, Israel continues to conduct its own raids and arrests. Perhaps that’s necessary. But if attackers get through, it’s not because the PA doesn’t really care, any more than it is because the Shin Bet does’t really try to stop them.

“In fact, the attack showed that an Israeli policy of divisions and fragmentation has failed. The gunman was from Jabel Mukaber, a Palestinian neighborhood of annexed East Jerusalem, on the Israeli side of the security fence. The fence was supposed to put Israelis on one side, Palestinians on the other. Rather than dividing Israel from occupied territory, it divides parts of occupied territory from each other. I could have supported, sadly, a fence along the Green Line, marking the border between Israel and the West Bank, with all the damage to the countryside, all the symbolism of mistrust. But in reality, Jerusalem would have foiled even that plan. No Israeli government would have built a fence along the Green Line in Jerusalem, leaving the post-1967 Jewish neighborhoods (or settlements, if you prefer) on the far side, along with the Old City. A fence with a giant hole at Jerusalem would have been like a sign saying ‘Terrorists, enter here’. A fence around annexed East Jerusalem - more or less what has been built - puts over 200,000 Palestinians on the Israeli side. They live in the first circle of occupation, with more privileges than those in the West Bank. Neither annexation nor the fence, or wall, has succeeded in dividing them politically from other Palestinians. It has not cut the ‘imagined community’ of the Palestinian nation in two. In Jabel Makaber, there are people willing to murder and die for their cause. This is just one example of how the fence has failed”… This posting can be read in full here.

But, I would say, the fact that a young man from Jebal Mukaber attacked the Marcaz HaRav yeshiva is not any kind of proof that Palestinians (those in East Jerusalem and those in the West Bank) are not divided …

Filed under: Israel, Middle East Peace Process, Palestine & Palestinians