The killing of Israeli civilians and the young age of the Palestinian attackers, along with their almost inevitable deaths at the hands of police, are raising tough questions for Palestinians.
Speaking at an event in Ramallah last month on the current confrontations with Israel, activist Mariam Barghouti said of the attacks, “we may not agree with the tactics, but that doesn’t mean we should bring anyone down.” Barghouti shared the stage with former PLO official turned analyst Diana Buttu and the Palestinian Ambassador at large Husam Zomlot. The roundtable was billed to discuss whether an “Intifada”—or uprising—has began (they all agreed that yes it has), but the conversation careened to their personal feelings about knife attacks on Israelis.
It was an impassioned talk. The subject is touchy, which explains why this panel has been the only public event so far to showcase leading Palestinian thinkers sharing a frank discussion on the matter in front of members of the press.
What became clear from the discussion that is Palestinians are keenly aware that they are collectively demonized anytime a member of their national group assaults an Israeli and they have no interest in contributing to that discourse. At the same time they are seriously concerned about what is happening to children in their community where an undeniable trend has sprung. And it can’t be ignored that there are voices in the West Bank who do celebrate the deaths of Israelis, or justify the killing of American Taylor Force last week.
Fifty-four per cent of Palestinians in the West Bank said they are opposed to “the continuation of knife attacks against Israelis,” according to a poll published Sunday from the Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre.
The reasons for this are varied. Some Palestinians note international law allows in certain cases for the killing of soldiers in uniform in the context of a military occupation. Others look inward at their own society and ponder what leads minors, including children as young as 12, to stow a kitchen knife in their backpacks and head to an Israeli military post instead of going to school. In any case, what polls can’t show is that Palestinians are grappling with what it says about their society that some children have tried to kill.
Each of the speakers at the roundtable hosted by the Rosa Luxemberg Foundation —Buttu, Barghouti and Zomlot—said, and repeated, they do not advocate violence. But they understand why it is happening. In broad strokes the answer is: the occupation. Their view is while violence is not their answer they want employed, the context of what brought a person to carry out an attack should be highlighted.
Zomlot surmised, “There has never been a country that will give up their privileges willingly just because we the Palestinians have been nice.”
All of the speakers found the phenomena of young attackers especially troubling.
“It highlights the shortcomings of our society,” Barghouti said of children attackers.
“I would feel like a failure as a father,” Zomlot said, if one of his children were to think of taking on a violent action. “Of course there is a Palestinian failure, indeed there is a Palestinian failure, but the provocation came from Israel.”
“I think they reason why so many people are really, really young is that they don’t see any prospect that there lives will change,” Buttu added in a follow-up conversation with Mondoweiss.
“My generation didn’t grow up under checkpoints. You didn’t see the army in your space. This generation they only see army and they know it isn’t normal. Their eyes are open to the world and they know this is not the way a human being should be living,” said Buttu who paused for a moment before adding, “and that–this crushes me, it crushes me.”
The word “desperation” was debated by panelist as a possible motivating factor. Are Palestinians grabbing knives because they have lost all hope for a better life though any other means?
“I reject the idea of desperation. Most of them if you look at the information are from middle income families and highly educated,” Zomlot said of the attackers, adding he believed they–at least the adults–saw themselves operating in “self-defense not desperation” against “unprecedented violence and brutality.”
Buttu agreed the general mood in Jerusalem in particular has toughened recently. She recounted three incidents over the past few months when Israelis on the street circled around her while she was speaking Arabic. Once she was told “to stop speaking the language of the terrorist.”
At least 10 per cent of the attacks on Israelis during the past five months were done by minors age 16 or less, according to Israel’s security agency Shin Bet. The youngest attacker, a 12-year-old girl from the West Bank whose name is being withheld, became the youngest Palestinian prisoner in history to be sentenced in an Israeli prison. During her hearing in Israel’s military court in February the judge noted she had only reached the age of criminal liability by a few months. In the trial the lawyers and the judge all debated jailing the 12-year-old in an abandoned hotel, rather than placing her in the adult women’s prison.
Overall, more than 70 per cent of attacks took place in the West Bank. The geography is important, because it means that there is an effort on the part of the attackers to confront who they perceive as settlers, and Israeli soldiers. Indeed while the attacks may feel random to the victims, most have occurred near the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem and in Hebron, two areas with long histories of conflict between Israeli settlers, military, and Palestinians.
Speaking of an incident last month where a Palestinian police officer attacked an Israeli soldier at the Beit El checkpoint outside of Ramallah, Buttu put it bluntly, “He’s a legitimate target, you might not like it, move on”—again, Buttu was not advocating for such actions against soldiers, but stating an argument about how there could be a legal difference articulated by the Palestinian leadership when making statements about these encounters. Yet they have not done so.
“They [Palestinian leadership] don’t say this is a man that had reached his endpoint, that he had lived his entire life under military occupation and he hit his endpoint, and he was done. And then he targeted a military instillation,” said Buttu.
“A lot of these people targeted in Israel have been uniformed, not to condone it, just to say that’s what’s going on,” noted Buttu, adding at the same time, “the [militant] factions don’t have a problem claiming this is someone who is under their command.”
Are the targets always any Israeli who comes to hand? Or are at least some of them specific individuals attacked in revenge for crimes they committed against Palestinians, or perhaps residents of specific settlements in revenge for crimes committed by people from those settlements?
Private, family or clan revenge is customary in some parts of the world such as the Caucasus. It can be justified where the criminal enjoys immunity, as in Israel and especially the occupied territories for crimes committed by Jews against Palestinians. Unlike random attacks, acts of revenge for specific crimes can give Palestinians the satisfaction of knowing that sometimes justice is done and hopefully deter some Jewish criminals.
Modeling is a strong component in behavioral performance. Review of the history of Israel since 2000 would suggest that Israelis are modeling – day in and day out, exactly the behaviors they wish to inhibit in the Palestine community.
A look at the statistics: (courtesy of Alison Weir) 2,089 Palestinian children killed, 9,271 adults killed. 86,974 individuals seriously wounded (probably significantly more at this time). 28,000 home demolitions since 2000 (again probably more). More than 10,000 children (UNICEF) have been incarcerated in Israeli jails, and subject to interrogation procedures which rise to the level of abuse (UNICEF). More than 261 Jewish settlements (prohibited under international law) have been constructed all on appropriated on land owed by Palestinians, many of whom have Ottoman era documents of their legal title. Review of news reports over the period since 2000 indicates virtually daily – nighttime incursions into Palestinian homes, with gratuitous violence and destruction following these incursions.
Then there have been three catastrophic massacres in Gaza during this period to say nothing of a tightly bound siege which puts Gazans on a near starvation diet, leaves them with little electricity and virtually no palatable or safe water.
This is all children 10 to 14 have known – gratuitous, daily violence (by actuality or report); children of 15 – 18 were toddlers and preschoolers during this period. Given these horrific conditions, the paucity of adolescents taking a violent route to their demise is the surprise – these adolescents cannot expect to own land, to marry and raise families in safety, to have effective access to health care, to live safety in schools and home communities and to have the freedom of movement not only throughout Palestine but also through the world. They cannot even have a secure prediction of longevity given that Israel can kill civilians with impunity. That these brave children and adolescents still have hope and not despair, that they still have one of the highest rates of literacy in the Middle East, that they follow the religious tenets of their community is a testament to their personal strength and that of their families.
No one – either Israeli or Palestinian condones violence but if Israel wishes to reduce the incidence of lone wolf attackers, they would do well rethink the manner of their treatment of Palestinians -, respect Palestinian life with all that implies, give these children the opportunity to live safely, with neither the fear nor the actuality of daily violence to themselves, their families, their friends and those who seek to live peacefully within
this “much too promised” country.
My faith dictates to me that violence can ever be condoned, no matter what. No loopholes, no exceptions. That being said, it is completely understandable the mentality of a Palestinian teenager who chooses to engage in a violent act against the perceived atrocities of the Zionists. So I am at a loss to come up with an opinion of judgement. I suppose in the end, it is God’s job to judge. And it’s our job to follow God’s rules.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
I don’t like knife attacks.
But apartheid, occupation, home demolitions, underfunding of infrastructure, detention of minors, land theft, water theft, planted evidence, antimiscegenation, criminalizing dissent, state encouragement of prisoner abuse, state encouragement of abuse period, deportation, travel restrictions, education restrictions, white phosphorous, hellfire missiles, hellfire missiles as a spectator sport, and soccer team rallies that advocate genocide, murder of child soccer players on the beach, fishing boat confiscations, torture, torture of minors, indefinite detention without charge, vandalism, and firebombing will do that.
Spontaneous knife attacks are obviously counterproductive violent attacks. But the way to stop Palestinian violence is to stop all violence. And the greatest amount of violent attacks are not being conducted by disillusioned Palestinian teens, as listed above.
The subject was touchy. The warsaw and other camps uprising were a desperate and vain but worthy attempt to deal the Nazis a blow. Just like in chicken run, you do what u need to do, when your a chicken in a chicken farm. I’d suggest we give them their freedom instead.