THERE are two things above all else that I’ve learned during the intermittent years that I’ve spent in Jerusalem covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first is that both sides have their own respective narratives of victimhood.
Each community has a story to tell, a litany of atrocities, that has befallen them over the decades at the hands of each other’s soldiers, gunmen, bombers, and assassins.
Indeed, one of the greatest difficulties facing any journalist writing about this conflict is the extent to which these dual narratives and the bloodshed that accompanies them have a way of blurring the specifics of each individual tragedy.
The second thing that I’ve learned, which is inextricably connected to these victimhood narratives, is that nothing is neutral in this seemingly interminable battle of wills. The perception that one is either pro this side and anti the other unfortunately goes with the territory irrespective of whether it’s accurate.
Working as a correspondent, I can think of few other international political issues that so quickly stir emotions or generate partisan responses and acrimony the way this bitter struggle does. Once again this is the case, as the region slips into another cycle of violence, that has spread from east Jerusalem to Gaza these past few days.
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Already the familiar tit-for tat accusations over responsibility for the escalation fly around with all the ferocity, force and political abandon as the stones, rockets and bombs that maim and kill those on both sides.
For those perhaps unfamiliar with the complexities of how we got here again or are confused because of too much heat and not enough light being cast on current events, a good place to start is with an observation made a few days ago by Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli attorney specialising in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
“There are two issues which cut to the core of the identity of both the Jewish people and the Palestinian people: displacement and Jerusalem,” observed Mr Seidemann, speaking to The Washington Post this week
“It’s all there in this limited space of Sheikh Jarrah, and once you put them together, it’s nuclear fusion,” added Mr Seidemann, who is also founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem, an NGO that works towards resolving the competing claims to sovereignty over the city.
The neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah that Mr Seidemann refers to is one that sits in Palestinian east Jerusalem. It’s there that for some time now dozens of Palestinians and their families, despite living there for generations, have been facing eviction in what they say is a move by the Israeli authorities to displace them with the wider aim of turning Sheikh Jarrah into a Jewish settlement.
The situation in Sheikh Jarrah is far from unique. The nearby Palestinian east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan is another area in which expanding Jewish settlements has led to increasing friction and there are many others too.
What’s vital to remember here is that both these neighbourhoods, like all east Jerusalem, are considered Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory by much of the international community.
Most nations simply don’t recognise and indeed many condemn Israel’s annexation of east Jerusalem, as a breach of international law.
It was back 1970 that Israel passed a law allowing Jews to reclaim property they had lost in or before 1948, the year of Israel's creation.
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In cases where former east Jerusalem Jewish landowners or their heirs were unavailable, Israel granted administration of the land rights to a government entity called the General Custodian.
Since then, according to Israeli anti-occupation groups and highlighted in a France 24 news report late last year, there have been allegations that the General Custodian has links to well-funded settler organisation Ateret Cohanim which states its mission is making, “Jewish life flourish in Jerusalem.” This also includes the Muslin quarter of east Jerusalem’s Old City and its Palestinian neighbourhoods.
For its part, Ateret Cohanim refutes claims that it is working to force out Palestinians, but like many settler organisations it doesn’t deny it receives massive donor funding, notably from the US. But while these American pro-settler organisations are the biggest donors, they are far from being the only cash source.
Last year an investigation by the BBC’s Panorama programme pointed toward companies owned or controlled by the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich who was granted Israeli citizenship in 2018.
According to leaked documents used in the investigation, such companies contributed more than $100m to Elad, a group that supports Israeli settlements in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan.
Many human rights organisations have long pointed to funding by such international donors, as providing the means to spearhead the settlers’ land grabs. This despite an assurance to the contrary from Ateret Cohanim’s executive director Daniel Luria, that “we’re only doing ideological real estate.”
What’s beyond doubt is that such financial backing, irrespective of where it comes, only further strengthens the settler movement and its allied political parties who have also become increasingly emboldened because of the rise in Israel ultranationalism.
It was from the ranks of these very right-wing parties that many came and took to the streets recently to confront Palestinians to push home their message that all of Jerusalem belongs to Israel.
The political groundwork for this scenario is nothing new, laid down as it was back in
1980, when the Israeli parliament passed a law declaring the “complete and united” city of Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel, including the eastern half that it captured in 1967.
In other words, it was only matter of time before the contest over east Jerusalem came to the fiery head that it now has.
Inevitably, the most pressing question now is just where this latest violence might lead. Is it the beginning of another Palestinians intifada or uprising?
If so, most observers agree that it will be hard for the Palestinian leadership to control a younger generation that they have repeatedly let down.
The Palestinian street is a very different place today than that I covered during the intifadas of 1987 and 2000 and Israel too is an even more politically charged and hardened entity.
Meanwhile, much of the wider Arab world equally found wanting for so long in assisting the Palestinians, now appears preoccupied with ‘normalising relations’ with Israel because of big money trade deals.
Which leaves us with the US Biden administration and European Union (EU). Here again as history has shown, don’t hold your breath for positive diplomatic intervention from either. This time it would seem, those young Palestinians on the streets of east Jerusalem are on their own as never before.
David Pratt is Contributing Foreign Editor. He appears in The Herald every Wednesday and Sunday
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