The fragile ties between Arabs and Jews - opinion

Last Friday evening, the UN Security Council adopted resolution 2720, which called for the increase of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as ensuring “humanitarian access to address medical needs of all hostages.” The resolution did not call for a complete and unconditional ceasefire. Thirteen members of the Security Council voted in favor of the resolution, while the US and Russia abstained – each for its own reasons. 

The US had intended to vote in favor of the resolution, but ended up abstaining for what the resolution did not include: a condemnation of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, and the atrocities committed by it on that day. The UN has systematically refused to condemn Hamas, while quite a few UN member states actually deny that the atrocities that Israel reported to have been committed by the Hamas terrorists on Israeli territory, and later on in the Gaza Strip, actually took place.

These atrocities are all prohibited by the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which define the basic rights of civilians and military personnel in and around a war zone, which, inter alia, require humane treatment of all persons held in enemy hands, without discrimination. The Geneva Conventions specifically prohibit the murder, mutilation, and torture of hostages, unfair trial, and cruel, humiliating, and degrading treatment of them. In addition, they require that the wounded and sick, taken as prisoners of war or hostages, be cared for. Though the conventions do not explicitly mention rape or other forms of sexual violence, these are prohibited under international humanitarian law.

After the vote in the Security Council, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield stated that she could not understand members of the Security Council that refuse to condemn the atrocities committed by Hamas during its surprise attack on Israel on October 7.

Part of the problem is that many states, organizations, and individuals believe Hamas when it denies the atrocities that Israel claims to have taken place, and this despite all the visual and recorded evidence collected, part of which was actually filmed and recorded by the Hamas terrorists themselves. The fact that the president of the Palestinian Authority – Mahmoud Abbas – denied the atrocities, and even accused Israeli airstrikes for the carnage at the Supernova music festival near Re’im, certainly contributed to the systematic denial.

A major diplomacy problem for Israel

In fact, over 1,300 civilians (most of them Israeli, but some foreign) and policemen were murdered by the Palestinian terrorists, with some of the women being raped before being shot dead, while quite a few participants in the festival were kidnapped – mostly alive, but some dead – to the Gaza Strip.

It is assumed that many Palestinians continue to deny the atrocities, and even within Israel there are Israeli Arabs – such as MK Iman Khatib-Yassin from Ra’am – who denied all, or at least part of, the atrocities. MK Mansour Abbas, chairman of Ra’am, was the first, and one of the few, who publicly admitted what had actually taken place, and condemned Hamas for the atrocities, which, according to him, are all condemned by Islam.

Besides the frustrating and enervating nature of the denials, the denials and their reflection on the UN refusal to condemn Hamas for the atrocities it committed create a major hasbara (public diplomacy) problem for Israel.

One of Israel’s justifications for the physical destruction and accompanying loss of civilian lives, for which it is responsible in the Gaza Strip – besides the fact that because of the exploitation made by Hamas of the civilian population, and civilian institutions and infrastructures, to conceal its weapons arsenals and to protect its members from Israeli attacks, they are impossible to avoid – is that both the terrorist organizations and the civilian population in Gaza must be convinced that the price they will pay for an attempted repetition of what was done by Hamas on October 7 will be catastrophic for them. However, if both Hamas and the civilian population continue to deny the nature of what Hamas did on October 7, they can simply feign innocence.

Israel must protect Gazan civilians, even though Hamas makes it hard

OF COURSE, none of this means that Israel should not make greater efforts to try to reduce the killing of innocent civilians in its merciless attacks in the Gaza Strip. Unfortunately, in Israel today there are deep differences of opinion between those who deny that there are any “innocent civilians” among the Palestinians in general, and the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip in particular, and those who believe that taking account of humanitarian principles, even when they are operationally bothersome, should be paramount in Israel’s value system.

Among those who openly argue that Israel should not attempt to reduce the civilian death toll on the Palestinian side (which, according to the Palestinians, has reached some 20,000 dead, of whom around 4,000 are children) is the head of the Arab desk of Channel 13, Zvi Yehezkeli. Recently, he declared that there is no such thing as innocent Palestinians (i.e., Palestinians who do not sympathize with Hamas and its activities), and that Israel should have opted, right at the beginning of the current war against the Hamas, for the killing of 100,000 civilians as a means of deterrence.

How many Israelis agree with Yehezkeli? We do not really know. What he says is certainly not the official policy of the security services or the Israeli government, though there are several ministers and quite a few MKs who undoubtedly agree with him.

It cannot be denied that since October 7 a growing number of Jewish Israelis have adopted much more extreme attitudes and positions vis-à-vis the Palestinians, including Israel’s Arab citizens. What has been described above is undoubtedly largely responsible for this and, at least on the face of it, understandable.

However, when this is translated into calls to kill or banish the Palestinians indiscriminately, or actual violence – either verbal or physical – directed against Palestinians who happen to enter one’s neighborhood because their work requires them to do so, there is reason for concern.

For example, in the neighborhood where I live in Jerusalem, all the pharmacists and most of the other employees of the local branch of Super-Pharm are Arabs, as are most of the employees of the local branch of Shufersal.

On the whole, my neighborhood is relatively calm, compared to some other neighborhoods in Jerusalem. However, the Palestinian who delivers the newspapers in the neighborhood told me that one of the reasons he stopped leaving the papers outside the doors of the subscribers, and leaves them all in the mailboxes on the ground floor, is that there are people in the neighborhood who prohibit him from entering the buildings they live in.

Hopefully, after the war will be over, feelings will start calming down a bit. Twenty percent of the population of Israel are Arabs. Forty percent of the inhabitants of Jerusalem are Arabs, while close to 50% of the population of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are Palestinians. Somehow, we shall have to recreate some sort of new modus vivendi with the Arab population. It will not be easy.

The writer worked in the Knesset for many years as a researcher, and has published extensively both journalistic and academic articles on current affairs and Israeli politics. Her most recent book, Israel’s Knesset Members – A Comparative Study of an Undefined Job, was published last year.