Israel’s war of the knives
The following is an excerpt from an editorial in the Guardian of London:
The new war of the knives in Israel is especially dangerous because it is so difficult to see how it can be stopped, and because it threatens to sever some of the few remaining human links between the Jewish and Arab communities.
The attackers are individuals motivated almost randomly by what they see on the Internet, Facebook or television. They are not part of an organization that can be identified and neutralized by Israeli or Palestinian security forces. If there is incitement, as the Israelis charge, no specific act can be directly connected to a particular speech or sermon. Their “orders” come out of the ether . . . their weapons come out of the kitchen drawer.
The fear that Israel was planning to alter the status of the holy place Arabs call AlHaram Al-Sharif and the Jews the Temple Mount set off the violence. Was there such a plan? The Israeli government says it has no such alteration in mind, and that seems to be true. Some Palestinian figures and media may well have fed the flames by exaggerating the threat of a formal change. But what is also true is that Palestinians feel that the status quo at the site is being eroded, as the Israelis limit their access, while increasing that for Jews.
The understandings that have more or less kept the peace on the Temple Mount during the past 12 months are unwritten and fragile, and need reinforcing. But while fears over the Temple Mount sparked the violence they are hardly its only cause. It is hard to imagine that the influence of jihad movements beyond Israel’s and Palestine’s borders has not played a part in inflaming young minds, a development that must be bad news for both Israelis and Palestinians.
But the fundamental point is that without a settlement there cannot be a true peace. Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent outburst about the grand mufti and the Holocaust would be ludicrous if it hadn’t been so utterly ill-judged. But it was typical of a leader who has never grasped that there must be a real political horizon for both peoples.