// end of the world //
December 2015
A Dying Peace: Reflections on a Split Summer
This summer I spent a month from mid-June to mid-July living and studying in Tel Aviv, a city I had otherwise never visited besides for a few disorienting and unmemorable hours during my Taglit-Birthright trip. From the moment I arrived, I could tell that Tel Aviv was an unusual city. Resting on the peaceful Mediterranean, yet only miles from the volatile West Bank, Tel Aviv was so pristine and calm that it evoked a feeling of overcompensation; that the protective bubble surrounding the city could at anytime burst, with disastrous consequences to follow.
In Tel Aviv the Israeli-Palestinian conflict did not exist. Yes, there were occasional reminders: Rabin Square, where Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, signer of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, was assassinated; the exhibition in the Tel Aviv Museum depicting settlements and Palestinian villages alike in colorful, photographic detail; and the charred remains of the Dolphinarium nightclub, blown up by a Palestinian terrorist during the Second Intifada. As a whole, Tel Aviv seemed to be a cosmopolitan haven, with its long boardwalk, foreign tourists, and unendingly delicious food options from hummus in Jaffa to Thai on Bograshov.
Jerusalem, on the other hand, felt entirely tense. With the 1967 Green Line carving the city into two and disputes continuing over its current and future administration, the conflict is quite literally centered in this city. The very makeup of Jerusalem is entirely different from Tel Aviv. While Tel Aviv is more than 90% Jewish, Jerusalem is more than a third Arab. Jerusalem, particularly the Old City, is the flashpoint of many of the disagreements over achieving a “two-state solution” and is also the breeding ground for the violence recently plaguing Israel.
I visited Jerusalem during a particularly strained time, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and prayer is an important aspect of the holiday. The month also was marked by a spate of terrorist attacks, mainly against Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem and others against Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank. A day after the stabbing of a young female soldier at the Damascus gate in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, I decided to visit the Kotel and, wearing a yarmulke, entered the Muslim Quarter of the city.
Walking through the Muslim Quarter was surprisingly calm; no one seemed to look at me twice despite the violence of the day before. However, following my prayers at the Western Wall, as I prepared to walk back the way I came, I stumbled upon a group of Israeli police officers in full riot gear. They told us that they were preparing for the daily, often violent protests in and around the al-Aqsa mosque over restrictions on prayer, and that the only safe route out was through the Jewish Quarter.
In another visit to Jerusalem I decided to walk again from the Damascus gate to the Western Wall to pray. The turnoff to the Temple Mount, right before the Muslim Quarter becomes the Jewish Quarter of the city, became so crowded that it was impossible to pass. As the impasse grew longer, the tense and overheated crowd became restless, pushing and shoving one another as well as the Muslim Temple Mount authorities. Eventually Israeli riot police had to be called in to calm the situation.
In Jerusalem, particularly in the Old City, violence and tension of this sort is nearly an everyday occurrence. This violence occurs over disagreements related not just to the Temple Mount but also the larger issue of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Palestinian aspirations for a state of their own. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that the recent spate of violence coincided with Abbas’ decision at the UN to threaten Israel with the annulment of the Oslo Accords. Abbas argued that as long as Israel violates the Oslo Accords, Palestine will no longer “continue to be bound by [the Oslo] agreements” and he would, thus, seek to force Israel to assume all responsibilities as the occupying power as a result of “the current situation [being] unsustainable.” This seemed to close the door on peace. Maen Areikat, chief Palestinian Representative to the US, echoed the brewing frustration, saying, “Israel must understand that the status quo in Palestine is not sustainable. The Palestinians are growing extremely fed up with the Israeli military occupation and its control of every aspect of their lives.”
With some leaders like Saeb Erekat, Secretary General of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, suggesting that “the Palestinian Oslo generation has reached its limit, disgusted with a peace process that did not lead to freedom, but to an apartheid reality accepted by too much of the world,” it appears that cyclical violence will replace all hope for peace.
Israel has faced a surge of terrorist attacks in recent weeks, leading to fears of a Third Intifada. The motivation for the attacks are derived from the usual flashpoints–fears over changes to the status quo on the Temple Mount and frustration over the death of a peace process. The recent trend of terrorist attacks in Israel, which has included stabbings, stoning, vehicular attacks, and a gas bomb, is particularly threatening because it moves the violence away from Jerusalem to the rest of the country, with attacks occurring in Afula in the north, Kiryat Gat in the south, and in Tel Aviv, where five citizens were wounded by a screwdriver-wielding terrorist.
So what happens when the seemingly impervious cosmopolitan bubbles burst? The fear and terror, once hidden in the back of the mind begins to seep into the forefront. In conversations with a friend who lives in Eilat, at the nation’s southern tip, the fear is constant. A wave of misguided hatred is encapsulated in wildly provocative statements by high ranking Israeli official, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement accusing the Palestinian Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini for instigating the Holocaust or Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely’s call for full Israeli Sovereignty over the Temple Mount site. Of course, provocative statements have been made by both sides; for example, Mahmoud Abbas has made unfounded claims about Israel carrying out extrajudicial executions of Palestinians and proclaimed the murder of a Palestinian boy who turned out to be alive and in care of an Israeli doctors. The consequences of this can be disastrous, extending beyond a war of words, such as the revenge stabbing attack by a Jew against Arabs in Dimona.
Violence like this seems to be cyclical in Israel, and whether one faces it often in tense Jerusalem or rarely in Tel Aviv, the end result is the same. The violence breeds hatred on both sides, and makes the prospects for peace between Israel and Palestine only more intractable. That is what is so discouraging about the recent violence: instead of helping jumpstart a peaceful solution, it alienates those who, previously unscathed by violence, might have once supported a Palestinian State. It achieves the very opposite of what Palestinians seek by further radicalizing Israeli society, which has been drifting ever rightward. The hope that marked the conclusion of the Oslo Peace Accords, a hope that was dashed during the Second Intifada but revived during the direct peace negotiations of 2008 and 2014 is now a distant memory. The recent cycle of violence suggests that peace, if achievable, is not on the horizon.
In Tel Aviv the Israeli-Palestinian conflict did not exist. Yes, there were occasional reminders: Rabin Square, where Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, signer of the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, was assassinated; the exhibition in the Tel Aviv Museum depicting settlements and Palestinian villages alike in colorful, photographic detail; and the charred remains of the Dolphinarium nightclub, blown up by a Palestinian terrorist during the Second Intifada. As a whole, Tel Aviv seemed to be a cosmopolitan haven, with its long boardwalk, foreign tourists, and unendingly delicious food options from hummus in Jaffa to Thai on Bograshov.
Jerusalem, on the other hand, felt entirely tense. With the 1967 Green Line carving the city into two and disputes continuing over its current and future administration, the conflict is quite literally centered in this city. The very makeup of Jerusalem is entirely different from Tel Aviv. While Tel Aviv is more than 90% Jewish, Jerusalem is more than a third Arab. Jerusalem, particularly the Old City, is the flashpoint of many of the disagreements over achieving a “two-state solution” and is also the breeding ground for the violence recently plaguing Israel.
I visited Jerusalem during a particularly strained time, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and prayer is an important aspect of the holiday. The month also was marked by a spate of terrorist attacks, mainly against Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem and others against Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank. A day after the stabbing of a young female soldier at the Damascus gate in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, I decided to visit the Kotel and, wearing a yarmulke, entered the Muslim Quarter of the city.
Walking through the Muslim Quarter was surprisingly calm; no one seemed to look at me twice despite the violence of the day before. However, following my prayers at the Western Wall, as I prepared to walk back the way I came, I stumbled upon a group of Israeli police officers in full riot gear. They told us that they were preparing for the daily, often violent protests in and around the al-Aqsa mosque over restrictions on prayer, and that the only safe route out was through the Jewish Quarter.
In another visit to Jerusalem I decided to walk again from the Damascus gate to the Western Wall to pray. The turnoff to the Temple Mount, right before the Muslim Quarter becomes the Jewish Quarter of the city, became so crowded that it was impossible to pass. As the impasse grew longer, the tense and overheated crowd became restless, pushing and shoving one another as well as the Muslim Temple Mount authorities. Eventually Israeli riot police had to be called in to calm the situation.
In Jerusalem, particularly in the Old City, violence and tension of this sort is nearly an everyday occurrence. This violence occurs over disagreements related not just to the Temple Mount but also the larger issue of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Palestinian aspirations for a state of their own. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that the recent spate of violence coincided with Abbas’ decision at the UN to threaten Israel with the annulment of the Oslo Accords. Abbas argued that as long as Israel violates the Oslo Accords, Palestine will no longer “continue to be bound by [the Oslo] agreements” and he would, thus, seek to force Israel to assume all responsibilities as the occupying power as a result of “the current situation [being] unsustainable.” This seemed to close the door on peace. Maen Areikat, chief Palestinian Representative to the US, echoed the brewing frustration, saying, “Israel must understand that the status quo in Palestine is not sustainable. The Palestinians are growing extremely fed up with the Israeli military occupation and its control of every aspect of their lives.”
With some leaders like Saeb Erekat, Secretary General of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, suggesting that “the Palestinian Oslo generation has reached its limit, disgusted with a peace process that did not lead to freedom, but to an apartheid reality accepted by too much of the world,” it appears that cyclical violence will replace all hope for peace.
Israel has faced a surge of terrorist attacks in recent weeks, leading to fears of a Third Intifada. The motivation for the attacks are derived from the usual flashpoints–fears over changes to the status quo on the Temple Mount and frustration over the death of a peace process. The recent trend of terrorist attacks in Israel, which has included stabbings, stoning, vehicular attacks, and a gas bomb, is particularly threatening because it moves the violence away from Jerusalem to the rest of the country, with attacks occurring in Afula in the north, Kiryat Gat in the south, and in Tel Aviv, where five citizens were wounded by a screwdriver-wielding terrorist.
So what happens when the seemingly impervious cosmopolitan bubbles burst? The fear and terror, once hidden in the back of the mind begins to seep into the forefront. In conversations with a friend who lives in Eilat, at the nation’s southern tip, the fear is constant. A wave of misguided hatred is encapsulated in wildly provocative statements by high ranking Israeli official, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement accusing the Palestinian Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini for instigating the Holocaust or Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely’s call for full Israeli Sovereignty over the Temple Mount site. Of course, provocative statements have been made by both sides; for example, Mahmoud Abbas has made unfounded claims about Israel carrying out extrajudicial executions of Palestinians and proclaimed the murder of a Palestinian boy who turned out to be alive and in care of an Israeli doctors. The consequences of this can be disastrous, extending beyond a war of words, such as the revenge stabbing attack by a Jew against Arabs in Dimona.
Violence like this seems to be cyclical in Israel, and whether one faces it often in tense Jerusalem or rarely in Tel Aviv, the end result is the same. The violence breeds hatred on both sides, and makes the prospects for peace between Israel and Palestine only more intractable. That is what is so discouraging about the recent violence: instead of helping jumpstart a peaceful solution, it alienates those who, previously unscathed by violence, might have once supported a Palestinian State. It achieves the very opposite of what Palestinians seek by further radicalizing Israeli society, which has been drifting ever rightward. The hope that marked the conclusion of the Oslo Peace Accords, a hope that was dashed during the Second Intifada but revived during the direct peace negotiations of 2008 and 2014 is now a distant memory. The recent cycle of violence suggests that peace, if achievable, is not on the horizon.
// BEN DAVIDOFF is a Junior in Columbia College and can be reached at bpd2114@columbia.edu.