The Israeli right-wing has a curious word to describe what happened this week in the Sheikh Jarra neighbourhood of east Jerusalem, where 52 Palestinians were forcibly evicted from their homes: redemption. If this is what redemption looks like than it is difficult to imagine what peace would mean.
Regardless of one’s religious beliefs or politics it is difficult to find a redeeming value to theft. The Hanun and Gawi families now live on the street; Israeli settlers now live in their homes. And this is not the story of just these two Palestinan families but of thousands of others.
Orwellian terminology and tortured justifications for such behaviour are a stark reminder of the toxic calculus behind the Israeli settler movement.
Even to Israel’s most loyal defenders, and perhaps even to a large percentage of Israelis themselves, the eviction of the Hanun and Gawi families has no defence.
Just as the United States appeared ready to give some ground to the Israelis on settlement construction, the inhumanity of what happened in Sheikh Jarra has surely served to reinforce their resolve.
The Israeli ambassador to Washington was summoned by the Americans for the second time in as many months. The US secretary of state Hillary Clinton announced that “the eviction of families and demolition of homes in east Jerusalem is not in keeping with Israeli obligations”.
But ultimately it is for the Israeli people to determine the obligations that define them. Do they commit to the values of a fanatical minority? Or are they committed “to practise tolerance and live together in peace... as good neighbours”?
These are the commitments that the preamble to the United Nations Charter demands of nations. And Israelis might remember that is was the United Nations that established important parameters that provided for their country’s existence.
The Arab world must also make a decision. What makes this choice so difficult is the recent memory of what occurred when it pursued peace and the path to recognise Israel as its neighbour but received nothing in return.
After the Oslo accords in 1993, 75 more nations recognised Israel, strengthening their economic ties across the world and leading to a decade of growth and prosperity for the Jewish state. Palestinians did not share in these gains. Since 1993, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, many of them displacing Palestinians such as the Hanun and Gawi families, has doubled.
Israel threatens its own security by using it as a pretext for further oppression. But the Arab world can do much to reveal the emptiness of their logic. Hardliners in Tel Aviv will jump at any excuse to justify the fanaticism that can so easily fly under the banner of Israeli patriotism.
The Arab world must do everything in its power not to provide them with an excuse. Venomous rhetoric, whether it be from Hizbollah and Hamas or Israeli defence officials, may satisfy a political objective but it solves nothing. And such rhetoric is all the more dangerous now that reports pepper the global press of both militant groups and Israeli units quickly preparing for their next exchange.
Violence, whether in the form of military action or forcefully removing families from their homes, will redeem nothing and no one.
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