Cornell Perspectives: Hopelessness as luxury in Jerusalem

Leuenberger, senior lecturer in the Department of Science and Technology Studies, conducted research in Israel and the West Bank as a National Science Foundation Scholar this summer. She previously wrote about being in Jerusalem during the 2012 war in Gaza.

At Café Aroma on Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus, Arabs and Jews work together serving ethnically diverse consumers. Palestinian Israelis and Israeli Jews bring their families there for breakfast.

In mid-June 2014 I was to meet Esmail,* a Palestinian Israeli from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina, for coffee. He pointed to a corner table, out of earshot of other consumers. He spoke in a hushed voice, his eyes fixed on the Arab waiter’s blood-shot eye, a heavily swollen lip and cheek. He told me he had sent his wife and children to Akko, as it was no longer safe in Beit Hanina.

There had been two attempted kidnappings of Palestinian children by mobs of right-wing Jews before the death of kidnapped teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was doused in gasoline and set on fire in the outskirts of Jerusalem. Everyone is afraid, Esmail whispered. Mothers keep their children indoors. They only go out in groups. Safety and survival are on everyone’s mind.

What started this latest round of violence?

rabbi and a sheikh
Christine Leuenberger
A rabbi and a sheikh visit the site where three Israeli teens disappeared.

It depends which events are deemed relevant, whose history is recounted and how far back in history one goes. Was it the June 16 kidnapping of three Jewish teenagers inside the West Bank? Was it the Israeli government’s move to destroy Hamas’ infrastructure and the recently formed unity government between Fatah and Hamas? Was it Hamas sending rockets into Israel? Israel’s siege on Gaza? Hamas-built tunnels into Israel?

With ever-intensifying escalations underway, causes for what some called “the operation” and others “a war” shifted. What allegedly started off as an effort to rescue three teens in the West Bank ended up as an attempt to destroy Gaza’s tunnels into Israel. In the public relations war between two warring sides, truth and consequences soon blurred.

For many Israelis the most proximate cause for the flare-up in the latest cycle of violence was the kidnapping and murder of the three Israeli teens, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyad Yifrah. Palestinians point to the killing of two Palestinian teenagers on May 15.

In the days and weeks of the Israeli government’s “Operation Brother’s Keeper” (the search for the three Israeli teens and their kidnappers in the West Bank), a sheikh met with a rabbi at the site where the three disappeared to call for their safe return. By June 30, an event was to be held at Kikar Zahal near the border of West and East Jerusalem to sing for peace.

But news broke that the three teens were dead. Joyful dancing turned somber; shadows crossed faces. It became an event to remember the three teens, killed by gunpoint shortly after having been kidnapped. Candlelight vigils were held all over the country. They had become “our boys,” and Israel fell into collective mourning.

The next day Israeli leaders lamented the “broad moral gulf that separates us from our enemies.” “They sanctify death, we sanctify life,” Israeli Prime Minister Natanyahu said. He called the kidnappers “animals” and assured the grieving public “Hamas will pay, and they will pay a high price.”

Candlelight vigils suddenly turned – nurtured by sentiments of victimhood and resentment – into calls for revenge. While left-wing Israeli Jews kept gathering on Zion Square, lighting candles and singing songs for peace, mobs of white-shirted young settlers and right-wing activists surrounded them, pushing and shoving, running down Jaffo street chanting “death to leftists” and “death to Arabs.” Arabs were harassed and attacked in cafés and on buses. A writer in Haaretz compared those days to racist thugs on the prowl in Berlin in 1933.

At the same time, many Arab neighborhoods around Jerusalem exploded. Stone-throwing Palestinians faced off against security forces; roads were littered with stones. Israeli Arabs threw stones at Jews’ cars, hurled pipe bombs at the light rail and wished death upon the Jews. Standing at an intersection in French Hill became a test of nerves.

Nothing felt quite safe anymore. For us internationals, looking as foreign as possible became our preferred option. Armed with sun hat, water bottle and a backpack was one way to stay light on our feet in a city that seemed to be in the throes of ethnic-religious warfare.

soldiers
Christine Leuenberger
Street fighting between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians cause the area to resemble a war zone.

West Bank cities were raided. Clashes occurred in Hebron, Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah. Suddenly, what locals call the ‘Ramallah bubble’ – a place where Palestinians and internationals frequent coffee bars and restaurants – started to resemble a war zone. Remnants of street fighting between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians littered its streets. The notorious Kalandia checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah became a site of daily demonstration, fighting and death.

The escalation was as remarkable as it was shocking. The low-level warfare that usually simmers between the Israeli military, Jewish settlers and Palestinians inside the West Bank; the cold war between Israeli Arabs and the Jewish state; and the frequent eruptions of violence between Hamas-controlled Gaza and Israel, suddenly boiled over.

On July 6, an Arab friend wrote to me, “it is not a good time to visit Nazareth this week.” By July 8 Israel launched “Operation Protective Edge.” After initial airstrikes on Gaza, Israel massed tanks at its borders, ready for a ground invasion. Abbud, another friend, would tell me, “this will not last much longer – one or two days.” Jewish Israeli Ilan also assured everyone every day “there will be a ceasefire by Friday, I am sure.” Yet, Friday turned into another Friday and yet another Friday.

In Jerusalem, streets were empty and riots subsided in favor of heavy police and military presence. The light rail still ran, intermittently. There were no more Israeli Palestinians on it, just a few Jews. Amidst fears of a third intifada, soldiers and security officials with heavy machine guns frequently outnumbered passengers. At night on Mount Scopus, there were sirens in the distance, fighter jets overhead, and the sound of explosions nearby. While people stayed home in Jerusalem, waiting out the war increasingly wearingly in their living rooms and seeking shelter upon the sound of the red code alarm, in Gaza exhausted mothers, with no respite from bombing and no shelter, reportedly told their children that when there is a bombing raid they should all go to the same room so they may die together.

In the midst of the ever-escalating cycle of violence and hate, peace activists called for a Sulcha (a reconciliation ceremony) meeting. They cited the Palestinian president Abu Mazen: “We live so close yet we don’t know each other.” That evening only a few Israelis came and even fewer West Bank Palestinians. Most refused to join so as not to normalize Israeli occupation policies; others were refused permits to enter Jerusalem by Israeli authorities.

There was but one Palestinian family. As people gathered in the garden, the father, Hakim, lectured his daughters about the impossibility of peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Yet after five hours of togetherness people soften. When all sat around a campfire, staring at the flames shooting into the heavy summer air, Orit acknowledged how bad the situation had become. Hakim sat across from her, hanging on her every word. A smile flickered across his lips whenever she looked up. At the end of the evening a student from Tel Aviv hugged what could have been her Palestinian twin from Ramallah. “I will see you again soon,” she smiled.

Such attempts to achieve peace through friendship, they say, often wear off once adversaries return to their normal life, but the positive effects of having known “the other” can reverberate across social divides for a long time.

I was to meet my friend Liora at Café Aroma. She was a progressive, liberal, committed Israeli Jew who would risk her own safety, comfort and career for peace. There had been right-wing rallies, ethnically motivated attacks, clashes all over the West Bank, bombing raids in Gaza and missiles in Israel. Right-wing ministers promised to build more Jewish settlements on the West Bank, and Hamas leaders promised to unleash hell on Israel.

“It has never been so bad,” Liora declared. “During the second intifada it was Palestinians against the military, but now it is Jew against Arab and Arab against Jew.” I looked at her despairingly: “There is no hope, is there?” She turned to me reproachfully: “I live here. I cannot afford to give up hope.”

*All names, other than those of public figures, have been changed. 

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