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Chaos in Jerusalem is a warning of things to come

Among Palestinians and Israelis, the recent upsurge in violence has been variously described as the children’s, lone-wolf, Jerusalem and smartphone intifadas. Each describes a distinguishing feature of this round of clashes.

The steady erosion of Fatah and Hamas’ authority during the post-Oslo years, as the Palestinian factions proved incapable of protecting their people from the structural violence of the occupation, has driven Palestine’s politically orphaned children to the streets, armed with stones.

The growing hopelessness and sense of abandonment have led a few so-called “lone wolves” to vent their fury on Israelis with improvised weapons such as knives, screwdrivers and cars. These attacks have attracted the most publicity, becoming the equivalent of the second intifada’s suicide bomber. But they serve chiefly as a barometer of Palestinian despair.

Jerusalem is the centre of events, with the Palestinians’ only unifying symbol, al-Aqsa mosque, at its heart. For Palestinians, the incremental takeover of the compound – and the West’s indifference – is like watching the mass dispossession of 1948 play out again in slow motion.

In addition, Jerusalem is the main fault line. Israel’s illegal annexation of the city has left Palestinians there in an extreme form of isolation – indefinitely stateless and supremely vulnerable.

And finally, the smartphone camera has allowed Palestinians to document their suffering and witness unmediated their compatriots’ personal acts of resistance and self-sacrifice.

Futile knife attacks may appal outsiders, but for many Palestinians they are the moment when an individual briefly reclaims his or her agency and fights back on behalf of a collectively subjugated and humiliated people.

The need for so many different labels for these events reveals another important facet of the current Palestinian struggle: its disorganised nature.

Israel has almost completed the division and enclosure of Palestinians into disconnected enclaves. As they hear the sound of the prison doors closing, Palestinian youths are lashing out at the guards closest to hand.

Because the divisions between Palestinian populations have become so entrenched geographically, and their leaders politically, it is hard for Palestinians to find any unifying vision or organising principle. Do they fight first against their occupiers or their spent leadership?

But the lack of planning and discipline has exposed Israel’s own limitations too.

Israel has little but stopgap measures to defend against the protests. Its intelligence agencies cannot predict the lone wolf, its guns cannot deter the knife, its military might cannot subdue the craving for justice and dignity.

Strangely, in the face of all this, there are signs of a parallel breakdown of order and leadership on the Israeli side.

Mobs of Jews patrol Jerusalem and Israeli cities, calling out “Death to the Arabs!” A jittery soldier causes pandemonium by firing his rifle in a train carriage after a bogus terror alert. An innocent Eritrean asylum seeker is shot by a security guard during an attack because he looks “Arab”, then beaten to a pulp by a lynch mob that includes soldiers.

Meanwhile, politicians and police commanders stoke the fear. They call for citizens to take the law into their own hands. Palestinian workers are banned from Jewish towns. Israeli supermarkets remove knives from shelves, while 8,000 Israelis queue up for guns in the first 24 hours after permit rules are eased.

Some of this reflects a hysteria, a heightened sense of victimhood among Israelis, fuelled by the knife attack videos. But the mood dates to before the current upheavals.

It is also a sign of the gradual leaching of the settler’s lawlessness into the mainstream. A popular slogan from the past weeks is: “The army’s hands are tied.” Israeli civilians presumably believe they must take up arms instead.

After six uninterrupted years of the extreme right in power, Israelis don’t blame their government’s policy of relentless force for the backlash. They demand yet more force against the Palestinians.

Polls show Avigdor Lieberman, the former Moldovan bouncer who became the hard man of the Israeli right, is most favoured to lead the nation out of the crisis.

Solutions are being applied most savagely in East Jerusalem, where Palestinians are being locked even more tightly into neighbourhood ghettoes. Israel’s “eternal, unified capital” is being carved up by roadblocks. Palestinian residents are made to endure daily searches and insults that will sow the seeds of yet more fury and resistance.

As Israel tries to slam shut the door of one prison cell in Jerusalem, the inmates threaten to break open the door of another, in Gaza. Israel’s leadership has watched uneasily the repeated breaches of Gaza’s fence over the past days by youths enraged by their own misery and what they see happening in the other prison wings.

The current unrest may recede, but more waves of protest of ever greater intensity are surely not far behind.

Jafar Farah, a Palestinian leader in Israel, has warned of it heading slowly from a national conflict into a civil war, one defined by the kind of debased one-state solution Israel is imposing.

The chaotic violence of the past weeks looks like a warning from the future – a future Israel is hurtling towards.

A version of this article first appeared in the National (Abu Dhabi).

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To the self-proclaimed king of the Jews –

Jeremiah 5:21-31

21 Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not:

22 Fear ye not me? saith the Lord: will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it?

23 But this people hath a revolting and a rebellious heart; they are revolted and gone.

24 Neither say they in their heart, Let us now fear the Lord our God, that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season: he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest.

25 Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you.

26 For among my people are found wicked men: they lay wait, as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men.

27 As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich.

28 They are waxen fat, they shine: yea, they overpass the deeds of the wicked: they judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet they prosper; and the right of the needy do they not judge.

29 Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?

30 A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land;

31 The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?

Israel cannot blame this on any group. These are individuals fed up of the occupation, no hopes for a bright future, no jobs available, no proper education, years of blockades, their property stolen, homes demolished, their family members killed, and guns constantly aimed at them.

It is only a desperate person who will throw stone, or use a knife, against a well trained military force with the big guns. It shows they do not care for their lives anymore. Sad situation.

The US (at the urging of Israeli lobbies) meanwhile is getting ready to send the occupier MORE aid. Perhaps zionists in American clothing, like Adelson, should help them out here.

Ready to shell out taxpayers? It is for a bad cause.

“Israeli and American teams are putting together a plan to increase annual U.S. military aid to Israel by as much as $1 billion, on top of the current $3.1 billion, a source close to the military aid process said Wednesday.
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.681683

Conditions may be ripe for a civil war but the reality is that one side has the power. My worry is that conditions are ripe for major massacres and bloodbaths and that zionists have demonstrated that they are capable of doing it with glee. The vast majority of the incitement comes from Israeli leaders and they have, and supply, the guns.

with russia now entering the mix all the ingredirents for WWlll are now in place. buckle up and sit back everybody and just wait till jan 21,2017
when bibi’s very own personal puppet will take over then. whichever puppet it is i’m quite sure he/she/it will do whatever their israeli master commands!

Wishful thinking Jonathan (not your first!) – there is no chaos in Israel at all. I don`t know if you still live here but I do. All major events in the historical conflict here have begun the same way – bravado about finding “the way to do it”, with dire predictions for the future of Israel, coming to a naught. My own prediction is that this will only lead to making some better sense of the in-limbo conditions in Jerusalem.
One main thing to notice in Israel is that unlike Europe where the local and immigrant populations co-habit the very same areas here it is practically a separation. It is due to historical reasons: the Arabs are not immigrants but indigenous population and so continue to live in the same places where they have been all along while the major Israeli cities are all new and almost 100% Jewish (Haifa is an exception but relations there between Jews and Arabs are traditionally good and there is marginally also Jaffa). This is a huge factor in making a civil war in Israel, or even just major disruptions, unlikely. You can have troubles but that`s it. Don`t forget also that the regional conditions make Arabs much more hesitant in rocking a boat that is far calmer than all the ones around – they can much better grasp what a deterioration really means and what`s the fate of those who are forced to run from chaos to faraway countries.
Jerusalem was the real mixed and problematic city and now the time has arrived for some more stable arrangements there. As in all major junctures in the past this one will not be without some violence – and it will take time – but Israel now is immensely more advanced than it was even just a decade or two ago and also developed a lot capabilities as a result of what was learned.
So all in all, this country will continue to be the most stable and normal in the region, which is not a small thing if you remember how things looked even half a century ago – a small and vulnerable country facing a solid Arab-world monolith around it.