#Nathan Thrall
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In June 2021, Nathan Thrall published a lengthy essay “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” in The New York Review of Books. Writing for HonestReporting, Salo Aizenburg described it as “a virulent anti-Zionist manifesto that relies on numerous errors, omissions, misrepresentation and misquotes to paint a one-sided image of Israel as a uniquely evil entity that seeks nothing more than the removal and domination of another people.”
Thrall has now turned his essay into a full-length book, a review of which appears in the New York Times.
Thrall’s book takes a fatal Palestinian school bus accident in February 2012 as the thread to critique Israel. Both Thrall and reviewer Rozina Ali, however, turn fact into fiction by using the accident as a means to bash Israel and portray Israelis as indifferent to the tragic event.
Ali writes:
The road the bus had been going down had been paved so that settlers could travel to and from Jerusalem without having to go through Ramallah, creating “the illusion of a continuous Jewish presence from the city to the settlements.” After Israel built new bypass highways for settlers, most of the drivers who used the old road were Palestinian. These Palestinian motorists were stopped at checkpoints, which meant traffic piled up, which meant that, to escape the bottleneck of cars and trucks, drivers had a habit of overtaking slow-moving vehicles by veering into the opposing lane of traffic.
Over the years, Palestinians and some media have used the catch-all excuse of “occupation” to absolve Palestinians of responsibility for their own actions. This has even included Palestinian men beating their wives or abusing animals. So Ali’s charge that Palestinians drive dangerously because of Israel is sadly all too predictable.
In the most emotive part of the review, Ali says there is “one particular detail about the accident that continues to chill me”:
The bus is ‘crackling with flames.’ There are screams and shouting. The children burn inside. The crash happened a few minutes’ drive away from a settlement and seconds from a checkpoint. An Israeli ambulance could have bypassed the checkpoints and taken a direct route to the scene of the accident. But about half an hour in, Thrall writes, ‘not a single firefighter, police officer or soldier had come.’
Children are burning to death and Israeli rescue forces are nowhere to be seen, apparently. It appears that Ali and Thrall relied on the inciteful remarks of then-Palestinian health minister Fathi Abu Mughli, who accused Israeli rescue services of failing to provide timely assistance, resulting in more casualties — a charge contradicted by eyewitness reports at the scene.
Media coverage from the day also tells a very different story.
Israel Radio reported that it took rescue forces seven minutes to reach the accident scene.
And Haaretz reported:
More than 50 ambulances and several rescue helicopters were called to the scene of the accident, near the West Bank settlement of Adam. The injured passengers, including three very seriously injured children, were admitted to several hospitals in Israel and in Ramallah. Later, however, Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service and the Palestinian Red Crescent agreed that most of the Ramallah patients should also be admitted to Israeli hospitals.
Not only were Israeli rescue services on the scene within minutes but Israel also went out of its way to treat the wounded Palestinian children.
In addition, Israel’s political leadership offered support:
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who was visiting Cyprus, offered the PA ”any aid requested.”
President Shimon Peres telephoned Abbas to convey his condolences.
Peres asked the Palestinian leader to tell the grieving families that his thoughts were with them in their time of anguish, and assured Abbas that Israel would provide the best possible medical care to those of the injured who had been taken to Israeli hospitals.
Ali concludes her damning review by calling “to examine the apartheid system that intentionally divides Israelis and Palestinians, as Thrall does so convincingly in this grim narrative.”
The BBC interviewed Israeli medical worker Shalom Galil:
Mr Galil said Israeli and Palestinian emergency services had worked closely together at the scene.
“Palestinian firefighters were involved. As far as I could see, there was full co-operation between the firefighters of Judea and Samaria [West Bank] and the Palestinian firefighters.”
Israeli and Palestinian emergency services worked together; Israeli hospitals (where Arab doctors work with their Jewish colleagues) treated Palestinian children.
Rather than an example of an “apartheid system that intentionally divides Israelis and Palestinians,” this tragic event was evidence of the contrary. What’s more, it showed the essential humanity of Israelis when it comes to saving lives.
But that’s not a narrative that Nathan Thrall, Rozina Ali or The New York Times want readers to see.
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This has to be one of the best conversations I've watched to date and it's all delivered with incredible tact, respect, and professionalism without falling into the trap of biased language.
I think that, in all the coverage I've watched, all the history lessons, and all the heated debates, this is the first person I ever see mentionning Hammam El Chott.
This goes beyond the History lesson. This is a deep dive into the psyche, the motivations, and the wins and losses.
HIGHLY recommend watch. Actually, if you have to watch ONE video on the subject, watch this one.
youtube
#free palestine#palestine#free gaza#gaza strip#gaza#palestinians#palestinian resistance#west bank#israeli apartheid#Adam Connover#nathan thrall#Youtube#tunisia
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“It is horrific to see innocent civilians killed and held hostage, and there is no justification for it. We pray for their safety, as we pray for the safety of the innocent people of Gaza who are being bombarded and besieged.”
#nathan thrall#free palestine#palestine#politics#world news#israel#news#human rights#jerusalem#west bank#gaza
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Nathan Thrall’s lengthy essay “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” (The New York Review of Books) has been hailed as an extraordinary piece that breaks new ground, informing readers about the true reality on the ground in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. In reality, the 20,000-word document is a virulent anti-Zionist manifesto that relies on numerous errors, omissions, misrepresentation and misquotes to paint a one-sided image of Israel as a uniquely evil entity that seeks nothing more than the removal and domination of another people. While the personal tragedy of Abed Salama is meaningful, Thrall does not deliver anything new about the Israel-Palestine conflict. He has written similar essays in prior years, conducted little primary research, relied heavily on previously published books such as The Bride and Dowry by Avi Raz and One Palestine Complete by Tom Segev, and parroted tired lines from long used anti-Israel propaganda.
Thrall’s core thesis is that Zionism and the Jewish state from its early origins in the nineteenth century is an immoral expression of nationalism whose main goal has been to ethnically cleanse the true indigenous people of the Holy Land, the Palestinians. As discussed in more detail below, we learn (falsely) that Theodor Herzl was not only the founder of modern Zionism, but also the father of Arab ethnic cleansing. Thrall is certain that the only just solution to cure 140 years of the horrors of Zionism is to grant all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Israeli citizenship so that Israel’s “ethno-nationalist domination” ends.
Thrall advocates for Palestinian rights and statehood while denying Jews similar rights. Thrall does not accept that the Jewish state was formed to allow Jews, indigenous to the region but exiled and subjected to conquest, to escape 2,000 years of expulsion, pogroms, discrimination and eventually genocide. Jewish sovereignty must be given up by 6.9 million Jews because the Palestinians do not have a state – and it’s only Israel’s fault and there is no other solution. He completely ignores Israel’s repeated attempts to end the conflict with offers of statehood with barely a sentence about the Clinton-era peace negotiations.
Thrall does not accept Israel’s status as a democracy within the borders of Israel, claiming that “In more the seventy-two years of statehood, there have only been six months when Israel did not place most of the native population under military rule while it confiscated their land and deprived those people of basic civil rights.” In this formulation, Jews are and were never part of the “native population” as only Arabs are granted such status, and Arab Israelis do not have “basic civil rights.” Both are grossly inaccurate.
In Thrall’s one-sided anti-Zionist narrative we never hear anything about Arab and Palestinian actions, who are only portrayed as innocent bystanders abused by the Jews. In this vision, no war was ever started by Arabs; there was no rejection of partition plans and peace proposals; the word terrorism and Hamas only appear once and only in the context of how pro-Israel lobbyists wrongly portray Palestinians. The Palestinians have never made mistakes and there is nothing they must do to gain statehood.
A key feature of Thrall’s work is the reliance on many dozens of quotes that substitute for historical analysis and supposedly evidence the nefarious intentions of Zionist and Jewish leaders from the Ottoman era through today. As will be shown below, many of the quotes are either outright falsified or taken egregiously out of context. There are no quotes provided from Arabs or Palestinians, as they do not have agency in Thrall’s distorted history of the conflict.
Delegitimization of Zionism
The key concept that Thrall weaves through the entire essay is the inherent illegitimacy of Zionism. Thrall begins by making the case that the original intention of Zionism was not, as commonly believed, to create a safe haven for Jews to escape anti-Semitism, but simply an expression of nationalism. By removing the purported justification for Zionism, which may cause the reader to sympathize with the idea and need for a Jewish state, and instead showing that it was nothing more than an expression of raw tribal ethnocentrism, then of course it follows that Israel as a Jewish state is immoral. All of Thrall’s main conclusions about Zionism are misrepresentations.
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#Israel#Palestine#free palestine#adam conover#Nathan Thrall#gaza#free gaza#free the west bank#Youtube
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Book Review: A Day in the Life of Abed Salama—Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall
Reviewed By KAY MATTHEWS
Abed Salama lives in Anata in the West Bank. Author Nathan Thrall, an American journalist, lives in Jerusalem. Thrall can travel wherever he wants in Israel. Salama, a Palestinian, has to have a permit—and he often finds himself with the wrong kind of permit—to travel outside the separation wall between the West Bank and Israel and can’t enter the city of Jerusalem. This…
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#books#end of days#mikhael manekin#a day in the life of abed salama#nonfiction#history#politics#genocide#nathan thrall
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Avishay Artsy at Vox:
The world’s eyes have been on Gaza since Hamas’s brutal attack on Israeli citizens on October 7 and Israel’s retaliatory invasion that has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians.
But another front in this long-running conflict is the West Bank, a kidney-bean shaped piece of land on the west bank of the Jordan River and to the east of Israel that is home to nearly 3 million Palestinians and would make up the heart of any future Palestinian state. Alongside those Palestinian cities and villages, however, are Jewish settlements.
Since the Six-Day War of June 1967, the state of Israel has planned and funded Jewish outposts throughout the West Bank; other settlers have moved in without the state’s explicit backing. The settlers believe they have a right to be there, even though most of the international community views the settlements as illegal.
These populations are largely separated by Israel’s complex security infrastructure, including military checkpoints, armed patrols, a separation barrier, and color-coded identification cards and license plates. This system dictates all aspects of daily life for West Bank residents.
Some settlers have for years harassed and attacked the Palestinians living there, often with impunity and occasionally with the support of Israeli soldiers. In the weeks since October 7, however, the rate of violence has significantly increased. It is already the deadliest year since the Second Intifada, and is getting bad enough for the eyes of the world to occasionally leave Gaza and look to the West Bank.
“I continue to be alarmed about extremist settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank,” President Joe Biden said in late October, comparing the attacks to “pouring gasoline on fire.”
Meanwhile, popular support for Hamas has surged among Palestinians in the West Bank as faith in the Palestinian Authority plummets.
This escalation of settler violence could, as Vox’s Zack Beauchamp explains, “lead to a deeper entrenchment of Israel’s occupation and, quite possibly, a violent Palestinian response that brings outright war to the West Bank.” That would in turn “weaken the already-slim prospects of a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the foreseeable future,” he writes.
The writer Nathan Thrall is well acquainted with the dual lives of Palestinian and Israeli residents of the West Bank. Thrall spent a decade at the International Crisis Group covering Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. In his new book A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, he tells the story of a Palestinian father from the West Bank searching for his son who’s gone missing after a school bus accident.
Thrall spoke with Today, Explained host Noel King about the history of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and why Israel faces strong criticism for its support of settlers, not just from Palestinians but also from some Israelis and the international community. Read on for an excerpt of the conversation that aired on November 20, edited and condensed for length and clarity, and listen to the full conversation wherever you find podcasts.
The Israel Apartheid State's Jewish Settlements in the occupied West Bank are fueling anti-Palestinian violence against the Palestinians living there.
From the 11.20.2023 edition of Vox's Today, Explained:
#Occupation of Palestine#Israel/Palestine Conflict#Palestine#Israel#Israel/Hamas War#Israel Apartheid State#Palestinian Authority#Vox#Today Explained#Noel King#Nathan Thrall#West Bank#Israeli Settlements
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Adam Conover and Nathan Thrall speak about the current catastrophe and the history of the occupation
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#human rights#israel#palestinian#i/p#A Day in the Life of Abed Salama#adam conover#nathan thrall#factually#free gaza#free palestine#Youtube
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A MUST-READ true story from Jerusalem that will hurt deeply!
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama (Hardcover) | A Special Offer from BookPal: Buy One and We’ll Send One to a Friend, Relative, or Colleague FREE
Orders must be placed by 12pm PDT on September 18, 2023 to arrive by publication day, October 3. Your order will be shipped the week of September 18 for delivery within 6-12 business days.
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I try not to make a lot of original posts on topics I don't actually have any expertise on, but I haven't seen a whole lot of posts going around that actually... explain what happened and why? Like, the actual order of events, the history, and so on. I want to reblog reference posts and explanations by people who actually know what they're talking about, but I haven't seen anything that hits the buttons I need to actually get a political situation... but I have seen some stuff on other platforms.
So here are some videos I've personally found useful in understanding Israel-Palestine, because that's the format I've found most useful in processing information of this nature:
Why Israel was Originally Attacked from RealLifeLore (explains the decades of political dynamics, internal demographic tensions, and power shifts leading up to the current conflict; notably the best I've seen at actually explaining what 'Israeli Occupation' actually means)
Israel-Hamas War: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (commentary on the actual current situation in terms of who's getting attacked, why, and what the international ramifications so far are)
What's Happening in Israel and Why with Nathan Thrall from Adam Conover, series Factually (a discussion with an on-the-ground journalist about what life was like on the ground for Palestinian people in the areas under Israeli control during the last few years, just up to the attacks themselves)
I'm not going to claim these are comprehensive or completely unbiased (there are a few moments where I'm not entirely sure of the bias levels myself), but for people like myself who came into all this unsure of what the actual situation even is, I think these are a solid set to build up an basic understanding from which to put together opinions on future information.
I can't tell anyone what to think about how or why any of this is happening. I can only really tell you that what's going on right now is a crime on the level of attempted genocide, and that the years leading up to that have been an absolute mess on almost all fronts.
Again, I have no expertise on this subject. I just know what kind of video essay, political commentary, and interview style makes things understandable to me, personally, and might work for others. Please be courteous and kind in the comments and tags, as I am only sharing this because I haven't seen such a resource making the rounds yet, not actually trying to sway anyone in a particular direction beyond "the mass death needs to stop."
If you know of similar, relatively unbiased* resources, feel free to share.
* By 'relatively unbaised,' I don't mean taking or not taking a side; I just mean that it doesn't try to hide some information or other in favor of pushing a narrative, doesn't try to generalize a population, or doesn't seem to be trying to use emotional gut reactions to get readers or viewers to jump past reason or compassion.
#israel#palestine#israel palestine conflict#palestine israel conflict#not fandom#politics#current events#resources#information#video essays#interviews#political commentary#I'm not even sure how to tag this#I'm not even sure I should be making this post because it's not really my place. But. IDK it feels like 'hour long video essay' etc#is a much better resource to explain things than the usual 2 minute videos I see circulating#and the 2minute videos have a purpose! But. they're not really explaining everything#I didn't know that Israeli Occupation applied to regions outside the original Sykes Picot agreement until I read an article a few weeks ago#and I didn't UNDERSTAND it until the RealLifeLore video
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So, the fundamental obstacle in all of these ceasefire negotiations has been one central issue, and that is that Hamas has demanded that the hostage exchange be accompanied by an end to the war, and Israel has refused. It says it wants to get the hostages back and to do a prisoner exchange with Hamas, and then to continue pummeling Gaza. Hamas and any other party in its place would be insane to accept such a deal. It is the only leverage they have, and they cannot afford to agree to a ceasefire, a so-called ceasefire, that has them relinquish the only asset that they have that Israel wants without a commitment that this is an end to the war.
Nathan Thrall
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Please tell me more about 'Eyy Jimmy play that one about the vampires' 👀
It was verrrry minimally written/plotted but like it was basically with Andrew as a vampire taking in a very human Neil (who is on the run fro gosh who could it be It's Nathan) and like Andrwe has had centuries and time to work through all of his trauma and issues and he's still just still like that.
So the man can't just admit that he likes Neil and that his thrall doesn't work at all on him which is very interesting. (In this fic I had the thrall being something tied to sexual urges and well Neil has none at all and Andrew just hasn't met enough people where he's run into a lot of asexuals since he mostly goes out to spots where like....people are very much looking for a hook-up). Neil thinks he's just there because Vamps are weird and old and have sensibilities he just doesn't get and he's eye candy / house maintenance (old houses man). Instead he's there because Andrew's sense of time is fucked up and he's doing the world's slowest courtship.
It's one of those fics that like kind of exist because I wanted to write one scene but there'd have to be like 40-50k of words surrounding it. (That scene being Andrew realizing that Neil has like NO idea that he's being pursued romantically and being like 'well fuck alright' and plucking a rose from the garden to put between his teeth because he's gotta speed this up.)
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On Saturday, Hamas militants stormed into Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of people and taking dozens of hostages. It was one of the most significant offensive by Palestinian militants in fifty years. In response, Israel bombed targets in Gaza, killing hundreds more, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the country was at war. President Joe Biden offered full-throated support for Israel; despite its sometimes rocky relationship with Netanyahu, the Biden Administration has recently been working to broker peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
I spoke by phone on Saturday with Nathan Thrall, the author of the book “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama.” Thrall previously worked at the International Crisis Group as the director of its Arab-Israeli project, and currently lives in Jerusalem. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the calculations behind Hamas’s attack, why the political fallout in Israel is so hard to predict, and how the Israeli response may alter the future of Palestinian politics.
How do you understand the timing of this attack?
In recent weeks, we have seen a resumption of the protests along the border fence with Gaza, a deterioration in conditions in Gaza, and withdrawal of support from Qatar, which works closely with Israel in managing Gaza. And there was the Israeli declaration that it was suspending work permits for Gazans, which the Gaza economy relies on. Those are all proximate causes of the timing.
But of course, it’s hard to imagine that Hamas could have pulled this off and surprised Israel in this way without a lot of planning. And in its messaging, Hamas is not emphasizing the conditions in Gaza. It’s emphasizing the Aqsa Mosque—the increased visitation by the Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and other Israelis to Al Aqsa and the open declarations of intent to build a temple there and so forth—which is self-serving for Hamas because it would rather be perceived as defending the greater Palestinian cause, and defending a Palestinian national symbol and a Muslim symbol, than as acting out of a more narrow interest to end the siege of Gaza.
At least one Hamas spokesman said on Saturday that this attack should be a warning for Arab states not to ally with Israel. We’ve seen increasingly close relations between Arab states and Israel recently, and now discussion about the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, brokered in part by the United States. What do you make of that?
Clearly, this act by Hamas is suicidal. It is an attack of unprecedented scope, and Israel will retaliate to a greater degree than it has before, potentially leading to outcomes we haven’t seen before: not just a simple razing of Gaza by airplanes but also a ground incursion and potential reoccupation of parts of Gaza. So the decision to wittingly, knowingly, undertake this comes from a sense that there are no other options and that there’s nothing left to lose. And part of the reason that Hamas, and Palestinians in general, feel that they’re in such a desperate situation is that they have been entirely abandoned by those who should be their allies: the Arab states. The talks about the steps toward normalization with Saudi Arabia certainly inform the Palestinian sense that they have been abandoned.
When you say that the attack by Hamas was suicidal, do you mean it’s suicidal for Hamas? Do you mean it will cause pain and suffering for the Palestinian people?
All of the above. I think that the attacks are virtually guaranteed to bring civilian deaths on a greater scale than we have seen, and Hamas has put in jeopardy its rule in Gaza and the lives of its leadership to a greater extent than ever before. It’s hard to overstate how shocking these images are to the Israeli public. Gaza is made up of refugees from towns within Israel, and more than seventy per cent of the population of Gaza comprises refugees, so it’s something out of Israeli nightmares that the refugees are going to come storming back and take over their old towns.
That degree of shock and that degree of military failure by Israel—not simply that the attack took place but that you and I are talking now, more than twelve hours after it occurred, and reports are that Hamas fighters have taken over and are still controlling military bases outside Gaza—is incomprehensible to any Israeli. Politically, it is hard to imagine that this government will not feel a need to exact an extraordinary price in order to save face.
But to go back to my question: When you first said that this was suicidal, it was in response to something about Israel making peace with its Arab neighbors. What I thought you were going to say was this is going to invite an overwhelming Israeli response, which in turn is going to put pressure on the Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, not to make deals with Israel right now because it’s just going to be so gruesome and awful, and therefore Hamas will have achieved something diplomatically even if it faces huge retaliation.
Perhaps Hamas can delay a normalization that’s in the works, but I don’t think that its actions will thwart a normalization that would’ve otherwise happened. Now, there are considerable obstacles to normalization, and there are real difficulties and outstanding issues. The Saudis greatly dislike the Biden Administration. They would rather hand this gift to a Republican Administration. There are many, many reasons to believe that a normalization isn’t as imminent as it’s been reported in the press. But I don’t think Hamas had any reasonable hope that it could make the difference between normalization happening and not happening.
Why do this then? You don’t need to convince me that Palestinians feel completely hopeless about the situation and feel a need to turn to armed resistance. But the people who run Hamas are perhaps less sentimental than you or I, and would worry about doing something that might be suicidal to their movement. That’s why I was somewhat surprised by this.
I have written all about the explicability of everybody’s actions in this conflict through rational self-interest. That was the subject of my first book. And this move by Hamas appears to me to be inexplicable. They have put themselves in greater jeopardy than at any point in their history. Of course, this is going to increase the support for Hamas and make them appear heroic to some people, and there are political gains to be made from this brazen act, but the risks are just too high. This is perceived by Israel as a qualitatively different act.
Hamas can launch a bunch of rockets—and we’ve seen this pattern, and it lasts anywhere from a few days to a few weeks—and they survive because, at the end of the day, Israel doesn’t want to reoccupy Gaza. That is considered from the Israeli perspective to be an extremely undesirable task and a bloody and costly one. However, Hamas understands that this attack would be perceived by the Israeli public and political leadership as being of a totally different order of magnitude. And therefore, Israel would consider acts that it had not in past escalations, including coming in with ground forces and reoccupying Gaza and trying to eliminate its leadership.
Does this make you think differently about Israeli military preparedness and the competence of the current Israeli government?
There has not been a military failure of these proportions since the 1973 war. In 1973, on Yom Kippur, Israel was surprise-attacked by Egypt and Syria, and there was a commission of inquiry into the military failure. It is the trope in Israeli politics of a misguided conception of your enemies and what they intend. And every Israeli military official has in his bones the lesson of 1973: to constantly question your premises and to be prepared for them to be challenged. So, not only does this call into question for Israelis the competence of their Army but also for every outside observer. It’s shocking. This is one of the strongest militaries in the Middle East. And a group of fighters from a besieged ghetto penetrated the fence and took over Israeli military bases.
There has been some criticism of Netanyahu’s government for harming military readiness with its domestic plans. What do you think of that argument?
With the judicial reform, you’ve had all of these reservists, in particular those from the Air Force, who said they’d refuse to serve when called up. So the protesters say that Netanyahu, by doggedly pursuing the judicial reform, is jeopardizing Israel’s security. And that’s the partisan claim that has been made recently.
It’s entirely self-serving. It’s a claim made by the opponents of the judicial reform. I don’t doubt that it has harmed Israel’s capabilities. But there is a rebuttal from Netanyahu and his allies, which is, O.K., let’s not dispute the fact that this reserve protest has harmed Israel’s security and its preparedness. But who’s to blame for that? Is it that we are to blame for it, for doggedly pursuing what we consider to be an entirely legitimate judicial reform? Or is it that these reservists crossed the line?
And I would imagine you find both sides of this debate to be missing the point?
Yes, I very much disagree with the entire premise of the protests over the judicial reform, which are based on the assumption by both sides that Israeli democracy is at stake. I do not see how any definition of democracy can include a situation in which one in ten Israeli Jews lives in the occupied territories and has full rights—voting rights, civil rights—and, when they go to and from their workplaces and their homes, they do not cross an international border. When the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics publishes the number of Jews and Arabs in the country, it lists the Jews living in the settlements. It doesn’t say that they’re living abroad. When the people vote in the settlements, they do not cast absentee ballots; in every sense, these people live inside the state of Israel alongside millions of people of a different ethnic group who are deprived of basic civil rights. That has existed for decades.
The 1973 war is considered as having had very long-term political consequences for Israel, and for the Israeli Labor Party, which was never the same afterward. How do you think this might register politically? For now, it appears that Netanyahu’s opponents are going to join him in a unity government while this war continues.
This is an enormous challenge to Netanyahu and to this government because of the scale of the failure. That said, the opponents of the current coalition are not very impressive politically, and Netanyahu has proved himself to be extremely adept and resilient. Even on the day of a catastrophe of this scale, I am unwilling to predict that that will lead to the demise of Netanyahu’s political career.
There were a number of consequences of 1973. One of them was internal, as you say. It was the beginning of the end for decades of Labor Party dominance. But the most important consequence of the 1973 war was that it pushed Israel to reassess its policy toward Egypt and toward holding on to Sinai. And it started to take steps toward reaching an agreement with Egypt; that happened iteratively at first, and then led eventually to the peace agreements with Egypt and the full withdrawal of the Israeli forces and settlements from Sinai.
As you’ve seen the statements from around the world, Europe and the United States especially, do you think the full-throated support we’ve seen for Israel is a sign that Israel has had some success diplomatically? Or is this event so shocking and horrific that you would expect this kind of reaction regardless? I was not surprised by the condolences sent, but there were not many calls for “an easing of tensions,” etc.
First of all, Western and U.S. support for Israel is unwavering, and that is entirely unsurprising. In terms of the absence of calls for restraint: those are often perceived by Israel as a signal to quickly end some bombing campaign in Gaza. The absence of it here I interpret to be the opposite: it’s a green light for Israel to take the retaliatory steps that we all are sure are coming.
I am not under the impression that Israel is in a difficult place diplomatically. There’s lots of chatter about how much the Biden Administration may not like working with the most right-wing Israeli government in recent memory and open racists in senior ministerial positions and so on. But, at the end of the day, what is the policy of the Biden Administration toward Israel? It just allowed Israel to enter the Visa Waiver Program, which was a coveted diplomatic victory, and it’s doing next to nothing to stop a forced displacement of more than eleven hundred Bedouin in the West Bank.
How might Palestinian politics look different in a few months?
If there’s anyone who’s shaking in his boots right now, it’s Mahmoud Abbas. He is watching as city centers in the West Bank come out in support of Hamas and other groups in Gaza. He and the Palestinian Authority are perceived as working hand in glove with Israel to keep a lid on any kind of resistance to Israeli occupation. So this giant boost for Hamas’s popularity is extremely threatening to him, as is the increased violence that we see in the West Bank, both preceding Saturday’s events and immediately following them.
It suggests that the future is extremely unknown if this is extremely worrisome for both Hamas and Abbas.
A lot of it depends on how high a price Israel is willing to pay to really change the situation from the one that existed on Friday. And that’s what I meant by suicidal. If Hamas understands Israel—and I think that it does—it will have known prior to launching this attack that Israel was going to contemplate options it had never contemplated before.
What else have you been thinking about today?
I’m looking at the media coverage of this event. For a decade I was working at the International Crisis Group, and a lot of my job was to write a reactive report every time there was an escalation in Gaza, because all the world’s attention is on the issue as soon as we have any kind of a surge in violence. But we all turn our eyes away when that doesn’t exist. And the process, for me, of working at the International Crisis Group and writing the same report over and over again about the escalation, convinced me that I should leave the International Crisis Group and this sort of work. And that what I needed to do was to bring more attention to the root causes, which are ignored and we are just guaranteed to see more and more of these sporadic outbursts of violence, with civilians killed on both sides, because we refuse to focus on the actual causes of the violence.
When I was choosing a subject for a book, I wanted to explicitly draw the attention of the world to the structural causes. It was very tempting to choose something that is attention-grabbing, like bombings in Gaza, or attacks by Hamas. Those are the things people care about. But I deliberately chose something ordinary, something that happens all over the world—a car accident, a tragic collision involving a group of kindergartners on their way to a play area. What does it mean for something like this to take place in this specific system where the parents have different ability to visit their children in different hospitals depending on whether they have a green ID or a blue ID? And to explore the daily lives of the people who are trapped in the system that is the real driver of these explosions that grab our attention every few months or years.
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NEEA୨୧
tellatalestudios
Tell-a-Tale Studios