Israeli-Palestinian tensions erupt into open conflict

Battles between the Israeli military and the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) killed 49 Palestinians in the last week in Gaza, the territory where Palestinians live under often brutal conditions and repeated outbreaks of deadly violence.

Israeli forces launched a preemptive strike against PIJ targets on August 5, Reuters reported, after one of the group’s leaders, Bassam al-Saadi, was arrested in the Occupied West Bank. Israel claims to have hit a number of PIJ targets. However, several civilians, including 17 children, were killed in the clashes, both by Israeli weapons and possibly by errant PIJ rockets intended for Israeli targets. A ceasefire brokered by Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, the US, the UN, and the Palestinian Authority between Israel and the PIJ last Sunday has thus far held; however, an attack on worshipers in Jerusalem’s Old City late on Sunday could portend more violence. At least eight people, including US citizens, were injured in the attack, which was allegedly carried out by a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, according to Israeli authorities. They have not yet released his name, and there is no indication that he is affiliated with any larger group, according to Reuters.

The split in the Democratic Party on US policy toward Israel and Palestine isn’t just among politicians — it’s among their voters as well.

In a new poll with Vox and Data for Progress, Democratic voters are divided on whether President Joe Biden’s administration should be harsher toward the Israeli government. The poll, which had a 3 percent margin of error, was conducted from May 19 to 21 among 1,319 likely voters. In it, after being given a short summary of how Biden responded to the crisis last month, 32 percent of Democrats say they believe “the administration should condemn Israel’s actions.” Meanwhile, 39 percent agreed “the administration has the right approach to Israel.” Only 11 percent of Democrats believe that the administration should be more supportive of Israel.

For decades, American Jewish institutions have made it a priority to teach kids about Israel. Learning about the Jewish state is a key part of the curricula and programming at schools, camps, and community organizations around the country, with Israel often depicted as a miraculous entity locked in righteous battle with irrational Arab foes.

Given that the vast majority of American Jews never end up living, or even spending much time, in Israel, early and incomplete lessons can have a lasting effect on the political positions of the students who soak in them.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken had a choice to make. It was mid-May, and in a few days he’d travel to Europe for talks with allies on the Arctic and climate change, and to meet with his Russian counterpart ahead of a presidential-level summit in June.

But a fight broke out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, threatening to explode into a larger, bloodier conflict.

As the Israel-Gaza war raged, President Joe Biden made clear to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that there was a problem.

Full-throated support for Israel among Democrats was waning, namely because of progressives. Among the clearest signs were moves in the House and Senate to block a $735 million weapons sale to Israel, a deal that only weeks earlier Democratic congressional aides said they hadn’t considered controversial or even noteworthy.

Last week, Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in a conflict that claimed nearly 250 lives. But the underlying status quo makes another round of fighting all but inevitable, and a fundamental solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems further away than ever.

Worse, the long-running American solution for the problem — a US-mediated peace process aimed at creating a “two-state solution,” with an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank existing alongside Israel — has proven to be a dismal failure.

Marching in a recent Ithaca, New York, demonstration in solidarity with Palestine was one of the truly gratifying moments of my life as an internationalist.

Organized by Cornell University undergraduates, the protest against Israel’s latest, massive bombardment of the Gaza Strip and assault on Palestinians within and beyond Jerusalem proved that even in Ithaca — a sleepy college town in upstate New York — one finds some of the legions of civilians around the world who have mobilized against Israel’s brutal policies of occupation and collective punishment.

The ceasefire announced Thursday between Israel and Hamas will hopefully end the worst of the violence that in the course of 11 days killed well over 200 people, the vast majority of them Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

In the narrowest sense, Hamas and Israel have both accomplished their immediate goals. Hamas got to portray itself as the defender of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, where much of the unrest began in recent weeks, and prove its capacity to hit most of Israel with its rockets. Israel, meanwhile, can say it has degraded Hamas’s military capabilities, in particular the underground network of tunnels from which it operates.

With the ceasefire came relief. The shelling had stopped. People were visiting each other, feeling happy, Salwa Tibi, a Gaza program representative for CARE International, said.

Earlier this week, Tibi hadn’t been sure if she would see the next morning, or the morning after that, so heavy was the bombardment from Israeli airstrikes. This week, Tibi’s daughter, pregnant for the first time, gave birth in the hospital, Tibi’s granddaughter, Naya, entering the world to the sound of shelling for hours and hours.

Israel unquestionably has the military advantage in its ongoing conflict with Hamas. But in the fight to control the public narrative of the conflict, Israel’s edge seems to be slipping.

In previous rounds of conflict, the Israeli government was often able to capitalize on its widely followed official social media channels, as well as statements by leaders, to help shape the narrative in its favor, portraying itself as a nation unjustly under attack with the sole goal of defending itself.

Throughout the Gaza conflict, President Joe Biden has been about as supportive of Israel as its leaders could have hoped. He has issued statements supporting its “right to self-defense,” blocked UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire, and even chose to move forward with a previously approved US arms sale to Israel worth $735 million.

In short, it seems like the US-Israel alliance is as strong as ever. But beneath the surface, there are signs that the relationship isn’t what it once was. Despite Biden’s firm stance, the US and Israel may be heading for a divorce in the long run.

There’s a story Joe Biden likes to tell any time he speaks to an audience about Israel.

It’s 1948, a matter of days before Israel’s founding and three years after the end of World War II. Six-year-old Joey Biden is at the dinner table with his family, listening to his Catholic father wonder aloud why some people wouldn’t want to recognize the state of Israel. That’s when his father uttered the words “never again,” making clear to young Joey that the existence of Israel was crucial to preventing another Holocaust.

Israel’s military leveled a Gaza tower that housed offices for Al Jazeera and the Associated Press on Saturday as it continues to escalate its campaign against the Hamas militant group.

The 11-story al-Jalaa building, which also included residential housing, collapsed after being hit by an Israeli air strike, which the Israel Defense Forces said in a tweet Saturday was intended to target “Hamas military intelligence assets” allegedly based in the tower.

Bat Yam is an Israeli seaside suburb, nestled just south of Tel Aviv. It’s primarily known for its pretty beachfront.

On Wednesday night, Bat Yam erupted in violence. A mob of Jewish extremists surrounded a man they presumed was an Arab and pummeled him mercilessly. Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, aired live footage of the unnamed man being beaten with a flagpole flying the Israeli flag.

By now, you’ve probably seen the videos: dark skies, illuminated by exploding balls of light, like alien spaceships doing battle or a terrifying fireworks display, scored by air raid sirens.

This is the view of Israel’s Iron Dome, the aerial defense system the country uses to intercept incoming short-range rockets. The intensifying conflict this week between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militia in control of Gaza, has offered a renewed glimpse of the Iron Dome in action.

First-term Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), who stocked his office with 13 former Trump administration staffers, thinks the eruption of violence between Israel and Hamas this week is partly President Joe Biden’s fault.

“Last fall we saw a watershed shift toward peace w/the Abraham Accords,” Haggerty tweeted on Wednesday. “The entire region was eager for more. Biden had 4 months to build on this ... Instead, Biden squandered those 4 months.”

Over the past several years, the Democratic Party has moved further left on US policy toward Israel, showing a greater willingness to criticize Israel and speak up in defense of the rights of Palestinians.

But President Joe Biden doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. And that gap between him and the more progressive members of his party is becoming a visible rift as the Biden administration struggles to address the escalating conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Dozens have already died in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, and more will perish if the fighting continues to escalate.

But there is little chance that the root cause of all this death — the long-running political status quo in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — will be altered in the slightest. Israeli-Palestinian warfare has become routinized; it follows a familiar script that repeats itself endlessly.

Weeks of violence in Jerusalem, sparked by Israel’s attempt to evict several Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, have Democrats, activists, and experts calling on President Joe Biden to speak out forcefully against the American ally’s actions.

The problem is he and top members of his team are unlikely to — potentially missing an opportunity to stem the violence and avert a broader conflict.