Palestinians give peaceful protest a chance
Israel relents after days of largely non-violent street prayers in standoff over holy site
Since the creation of the Jewish state seven decades ago, disputes between Israelis and Palestinians have begun and ended with violence.
But a recent confrontation over Israel’s security checkpoints at a Muslim holy site in East Jerusalem came to a resolution after a largely peaceful protest by thousands of Palestinians — and that outcome has not been lost on them.
It was “the beauty of non-violence,” said Mustafa Barghouti of the moderate Palestinian National Initiative party. The Israelis “wanted to provoke us, they wanted to create a clash, but now they know we are non-violent, we are organized, and we’re keeping the initiative in our hands.”
The protests were not free of violence. Hundreds of Palestinians threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli security personnel. They were a minority compared with the thousands who protested the metal detectors Israel installed around the al-Aqsa Mosque through peaceful prayers in the streets.
The confrontation began July 14, when three Israeli-Arab gunmen killed two Israeli police officers standing guard outside the revered plateau that Jews call the Temple Mount and Muslims refer to as the Noble Sanctuary.
The esplanade that contains the al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, and the Dome of the Rock, where Muslims believe Mohammed ascended to heaven, is where the ancient temples of Jerusalem stood before their destruction.
In response to the shooting, the Israeli government installed metal detectors and infrastructure for security cameras at each entrance. For 10 days, tens of thousands of Muslim worshipers refused to pass and conducted Friday prayers in the streets.
In the course of the standoff, seven Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli police. Three Israeli family members were slashed to death by a 19-year-old Palestinian who had written Facebook posts threatening violence in reaction to the steps Israel took at al-Aqsa.
By the 12th day, Israel withdrew its security devices. Friday, the peace held, and prayers took place at the mosque.
“These two weeks have been incredible,” bookshop owner Mahmoud Muna said. “Some of the Muslims going to pray are there for the first time, not because they’ve found religion but because they’ve found a cause.”
Israeli authorities took exception to descriptions of peaceful protests. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld noted that at most of the protests, hundreds of Palestinians threw “rocks, explosive bottles and firecrackers aimed directly at police, endangering their lives.”
For Palestinians who want to end the cycle of violence that has stalled their long quest for an independent state, the East Jerusalem protests mark a major step.
The “Palestinian Gandhi” is here, Zaha Hassan, a Palestinian-American human rights lawyer and former counsel to the Palestinian Authority, wrote in a weekend column in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
“Every little West Bank girl crossing a checkpoint to get to school is a Rosa Parks,” she wrote. “Every prisoner on hunger strike is a (Nelson) Mandela, and every Gazan, surviving despite the dehumanizing conditions, is a Palestinian Gandhi.”