Each day I wake at about 6AM because the baby wakes me up. We stay in the living room up to 7 (playing, eating, etc.) and then my wife gets up. She asks me what was on the news. The last days I answer 'same thing'.

Same thing means another day of shooting and bombing incidents all over Israel and the Territories (West Bank and Gaza strip). It means about one Israeli casualty and five Palestinians. It means more shooting on the neighborhood, but no casualties. But there are variations: today's news started with a hijacked Russian plane, which landed in Israel. This incident ended without any bloodshed, thank god.

There is no dull news day in Israel, that is for sure. Many Israelis share my fantasy to live in New Zealand. We perceive New Zealand as the opposite to Israel. It is lush and green, in contrast to Israel, which is a semi desert. It has no neighbouring countries, as opposed to Israel, which is surrounded by enemies. It is much less crowded, and most important it is almost never in International news!

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Yesterday, for the first time, shooting began in the morning. This induced concern because children were studying in school, and two of Gilo's elementary schools have classrooms overlooking Palestinian Beit Jala (see the entry Diary of the Situation 1 for details of Gilo's topography).

Many parents were concerned, and some say they will not send their kids to school today because they fear for them. I wonder what would I have done in their place. On one hand, there have been no civilian casualties yet in Gilo, so the danger seems slight. Children have to spend the day somewhere, after all we have to go to work, we can not let the situation wreck our lives. On the other hand, to expose your children to any kind of danger seems out of place. Plus, yesterday the kids displayed fear and confusion over the nearby shooting and you would not want them to experience it again. My boy is not of school age yet, so I do not really have that dilemma.

The news analysis said that there was shooting on Sunday morning when the Christian population of Beit Jala was at church. The Moslem Tanzim members who initiated the fighting, used a church, a religious clubhouse and the house of a rich Christian matron as fire bases. It is assumed that they wanted the Israeli counter fire to hit these targets and so to focus the western (Christian) public opinion against Israel. It was also said that the Tanzaim, who are not local (they are from poorer, Moslem neighborhoods in Bethlehem), were engaged in fistfights with local residents who objected to their shootings. As feared by the populace, a 12-year-old Christian boy was wounded in the retaliation fire.

As the fighting drags into its seventh week, and fire fights between Gilo and Beit Jala continues with no end in sight, there are voices calling for Israeli occupation of Beit Jala. If initiated, this could be a problematic move. Since the current conflict began, the IDF (Acronym for Israeli Defense Forces), have not entered territory that was assigned to the Palestinian Authority by the Oslo agreements. Entering Beit Jala would mean a new stage in the fighting. On the other hand, it is a much more efficient way of stopping the shooting and maybe a more humanistic way then retaliation fire. Hopefully that way no 12 years old would be hurt.

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This entry contains a lot of politics and my subjective opinion, so people who have no time for it or just get angry, will do themselves a favour by skipping it. I will answer any level headed responses, but not extreme taunts and insults sometimes traded in Middle East discussions forums.

Yesterday's list of events: 2 Israeli soldiers and 2 civilians killed in a series of shooting incidents on the roads of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and 2 events of shooting on my neighborhood, Gilo.

As the weeks drag on and the list of casualties rise (25 Israelis killed in the last 7 weeks), people are asking for a solution to stop all violence. Two answers emerge on both side of the Israeli political spectrum: the right says that the IDF should act much more decisively, and the extreme left says Israel should withdraw unilaterally form all occupied territories and settlements. My answer, which is not very popular, is that both solutions will bring more harm than good. The sad truth is that violence will accompany us for a long time, we are in for a long period of attrition warfare, and the side which is more resilient will eventually gain the upper hand but not total victory.

The fact is that, right or wrong, most, if not all, of the Palestinians see Israel as the aggressor, and do not think that a Jewish state has a right to exist. Israel will have to face some kind of animosity for the foreseeable future. An agreed peace agreement with tight security measure will stop part of the violence though not all of it. A unilateral withdrawal without agreed peace, will not bring an end to violence, it will just encourage Arab extremists because it will prove that violence and not negotiation is what brings achievements. On the other hand, a more harsh response by the IDF can cause more Israeli casualties among the soldiers, can cause more Palestinian civilian casualties and so diminish Israel's stature in the world, not to mention the humanistic angle of necessity to harm as few innocents as possible. And, at the end of the day, when a violent Palestinian response comes... and it will come... Israel will have to up the ante and respond ever more violently, until the brink of total Middle East war.

The only option I see is to continue with the current level of conflict. This will cause casualties but, in the end, the leaders of both sides will tire of it, and I hope the majority of the population will be open to the need for real and difficult compromise on both sides, and just not token symbolism.

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In 1979, leaders Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin signed the peace between Egypt and Israel and won the Nobel peace prize. At the same time in the Israeli town of Lod, a pair of twins was born to an Arab Israeli couple, and in honor of the great leaders the babies were named Begin and Sadat. This caught the attention of the media and the twins were given great publicity.

Yesterday, police arrested the twins Begin and Sadat, now aged 21, after they punctured tires of scores of Israeli cars. The motive apparently was nationalistic and anti Jewish.

This story may symbolize the story of the complicated relations between Israel and its Arab citizens. Israeli Arabs are in an almost impossible situation, they are citizens of a state which is an enemy of their nationality. For many years Israeli Arabs tried to walk this tight rope, watched with suspicion by Jews and non-Israeli Arabs. They had to cope with unequal treatment by bureaucracy, but still managed to build a relatively educated and prosperous society (relative to other Arabs in the Middle East, not to the Jewish population which is more affluent), which learned to fight for its rights and use its political clout.

In the current round of fighting between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, something was fundamentally changed. In the first 10 days of the conflict many Israeli Arabs took to the streets, blockaded main roads, burned Jewish property, stoned policemen and threw Molotov Cocktails (bottles with burning fuel) and in some cases even exchanged shots.

What was the cause of that behavior? The Israeli right wing has called them traitors, and said that they want to destroy Israel. The left said that this is a protest against discrimination. They pointed out that 13 citizens were killed by police during the riots, an uncomfortably high number.

The truth is, as it is almost always, in the middle. There is no doubt that feelings of discrimination fuelled part of the protest. On the other hand it is no coincidence that the protests broke out when Arafat wanted it, a big section of the Israeli Arabs owe their allegiance to Palestine rather then to Israel. This has broken relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel. You will see very few Jews entering Arab towns, and the once very popular Arab restaurants now stand empty.

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Yesterday night the sound effects were incredible. I stood near the window and tried to discern the different kinds of projectiles involved based on my army experience. There was the ringing of machine guns, the slight pops of grenade launchers, the more noisy booms of rockets and the sounds of the helicopters in the air.

There was temptation in my heart to walk the few hundreds of meters separating our block from the scene of the action and actually see and witness all the excitement. Wisely, I opted out to stay home and see the news. It was said that the Palestinians started shooting in the afternoon, that there were no casualties on the Israeli side, but one apartment was severely damaged and that Israeli forces had returned heavy fire. It sure sounded that way, the shooting went on for hours and hours, and the booms echoed every few seconds. I thought that they were flattening the houses in Beit Jala in retaliation for the shooting that started from there. However, when I took the bus this morning, and looked at Beit Jala, I could not see any damage. The houses, both in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, are made from sturdy mountain stones, and do not yield so easily to bullets.

I am glad I did not go to look at the action. Despite the fact that the sounds sometimes makes you feel like you are in a Rambo movie, this is a tragedy in which civilians get caught in the exchange of fire between two armed forces. The conflict is likely to rage on for months to come, and if I really want to see action, it is likely I will get more then I bargained for when I am called to army reserve service sometime next year.

I wish you all a quiet weekend.

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Tana

Other articles from this author:

Temple Mount article in the Post

Temple Mount article at Tana's homepage

How not to get killed in Jerusalem article in the Post

Diary of the 'Situation' Part 1 article in the Post

Diary of the 'Situation' Part 2 article in the Post

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