generalspeaking

Inciting to Riot

The uneasy relations between Palestinian Arabs living within Israel as Israeli Arabs has not become any more easeful over the past short while. Aggrieved militancy threatens to raise its ugly head time and again. And this coincides latterly with the rise of Islamism world-wide, not least within the Middle East and Israel itself. Palestinians were known for their relative worldliness, an education level superior to that of other Arabs, and their relaxed attitude toward religion. That has slowly but inevitably changed.

Hamas became more popular than the formerly-secular Fatah, because of its strict adherence to Islam, concomitant with a determination to demonstrate how unlike Fatah they were; incorruptible, going out of their way to service the everyday civil and social needs of Palestinians. And at the same time demonstrating by their rigorous observance of Muslim orthodoxy in religious practise that they would ultimately expect Gazan Palestinians to follow their lead.

Within Israel also there has been an observable rise in religious orthodoxy; both among the Jewish population and the Arab population. Neither is entirely blameless for the growth of social hostility, one toward the other. The West Bank settlers devoted to their interpretation of their heritage and Old Testament history and entitlements, remain intransigent in their intention to remain, never to surrender the land they occupy to the Palestinians.

The Palestinians, for their part, insist that the West Bank was part of the land that the United Nations offered to the Arab Palestinians when the Jewish Palestinians were finally granted a country of their own. Those Arab Palestinians who remained within the geography of the new state have never regretted their choice, will those who fled bitterly do.

Arab Palestinians, while favoured with equality status for the most part, as citizens of the country, prefer to remain under Israeli rule, rather than to join their brethren within the proposed new Palestinian state, simply because they perceive themselves as better off, socially and economically. Logically, majority Arab geographies should be exchanged with majority Jewish geographies, re-writing boundary lines.

Yet from within the Arab-Israeli population has risen a movement of denial of Israel's right to exist unmolested, matching that of the populations in the West Bank and Gaza. The result of which has been a descent into civil unrest and vociferous blame of Israel for the fractionated state of the Palestinians whose own leaders have failed them at every turn. Elected Arab members of the Knesset engage in seditious activities in pursuit of Arab interests.

The status of Jerusalem which both entities claim as their rightfully-inherited capital has resulted in bitter enmity between Jew and Arab. While Israeli justice has scrupulously defended Muslim structures built over top of the Temple Mount and the right of Muslims to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, Arabs deny the right of Jewish worshippers to ascend to the Temple Mount, the primary holy site in Judaism, for that same purpose.

The leader of the Islamic Movement of the North, Sheikh Raed Salah, has conspired with his followers and agitated publicly to spread violence born of religiously-inspired panic, claiming that the government of Israel is preparing to destroy their sacred mosque. At the same time, he prophesies that Israel will be gone in 20 years, that Jerusalem will become the world capital of Islam, and a Palestinian state will arise where Israel, the West Bank and Gaza now sit.

Sheik Salah's call to 'protect' the Al Aqsa Mosque from Israeli intentions has resulted in hundreds of Palestinians stoning Jewish worshippers, and battling with Israeli police. Day after day Palestinian youths have assembled to take part in the called-for objections to Israel's malign intentions, to destroy the sacred shrine dedicated to Islam and replace it with a replica of the twice-destroyed Temple of Solomon.

His agenda at first viewed with suspicion from among the mostly secular Palestinians, is now accepted. As elsewhere in the world of Islam, fundamentalist Islamic values are being preached and cultivated. Islamists represent themselves as 'pure Muslims', beyond the usual corruption, whose only interest is in furthering the aspirations of Islam and its followers.
Co-operation with the State of Israel is now considered a corrupt act of politics, while dissent is represented as an honest revelation of how Palestinians really feel.

Sheik Raed Salah's Islamist movement and his intentions very much reflect that of Hamas, and of Hezbollah. He is no champion of a two-state solution, but rather impresses upon his fervent followers the practicality and inevitability of a one-state solution. The building of civil infrastructure, health clinics, municipal assets, schools is not so much a priority as that of building local mosques. In numbers far exceeding the population that would use them.

As for Fatah itself, heading the Palestinian Authority, President Mahmoud Abbas too speaks constantly of the need to become more aggressive for the preservation of Jerusalem as an Arab city, even while the Arab population now is far fewer than the Jewish presence. Just as Israelis fear the Palestinian Arabs will eventually represent a majority, so too does the PA fear the majority presence and the Judaecization of Jerusalem.

Relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, always tenuous, verges increasingly on the impossible, verging toward disastrous. Mahmoud Abbas, addressing Yemenite Television speaks warningly of "world Zionism" and Israel conspiring to "Judaize" Jerusalem, inciting Arabs to work more strenuously militarily to ensure that such an assault on Islam never becomes reality.

The solitudes are becoming evermore and increasingly solitary.

Labels: Israel, Middle East, Traditions, Troublespots

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, October 07, 2009