Opinion | Israelis Still Expect the Palestinians Will Surrender. They've Never Been More Wrong

Palestinians wave the national flag during a protest against an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Nablus, along the border fence with Israel, east of Gaza City, last week. Palestinian officials say several Palestinians were killed and over a hundred were wounded during a rare daytime Israeli army arrest raid in the occupied West Bank.Credit: Adel Hana /AP

“… provide a horizon and give Palestinians hope instead of despair.
Israelis search for all manners of security, except on the political level.”

Part of the problem with the way Israelis approach the conflict is that they have the false idea that their problem is not with all the Palestinians, but that only a few who they believe are stirring trouble. Or they might believe their own hasbara (propaganda) that Palestinians die and get arrested fighting the Israelis simply because they are told by the Palestinian Authority that their families will be rewarded financially.

A critical recent example of this dynamic was last Thursday’s dangerous daytime operation in Nablus by the Israeli military. We may never know its real goal, but in political and strategic terms it will be difficult to argue that this was a successful operation.

Israeli security personnel dressed as Muslim worshippers carrying prayer mats and some wearing full female veils entered the old city of Nablus in the northern West Bank. Snipers took positions on the roof and began an operation against armed members of the Lion’s Den Palestinian military resistance group.

The operation ended with eleven Palestinians including a child and two older men killed. Lion’s Den said that six were members of its group. (This, despite initial reports on some Israeli media outlets that all those killed were “terrorists”). One medical nurse, Elias Al Ashqar, was trying to resuscitate an older man only to discover that the fatally wounded 65-year-old man was his own father.

It is hard to fathom why Israelis with their traumatic historic experiences can’t understand that people don’t like to live under foreign military occupation. People might accept an occupation for a short while but will not accept it forever. When the Israelis stormed Jenin recently killing ten including an elderly man, what did they expect would happen in reaction? When the orders were given to storm the biggest city in the West Bank, Nablus, what did they expect?

A Palestinian child stands near a car burned in an attack yesterday by Israeli settlers following an incident where a Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli settlers near Hawara in the West Bank.Credit: AMMAR AWAD/ REUTERS

All that Israelis and their supporters need to know can be found in scientific theory. What is needed is to pick up a simple lesson in physics, specifically Newton's third law which states simply that “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

After their ranks were not eliminated in that failed Nablus raid the Lion’s Den called on all Palestinians to go out in the streets and on rooftops that night at midnight and to protest the Israeli killings. And sure, enough hundreds of thousands of Palestinians accepted the challenge and went out in the streets and on rooftops. The Lion’s Den is much more popular than any Palestinian leader or organization simply because they dare to take on the Israelis.

After a January raid in Jenin, Israelis were killed in occupied East Jerusalem and after Nablus also Israelis were killed in occupied Hawara, near Nablus.

Israeli security leaders who have egg on their face because they were unable or unwilling to convince their political superiors of what would happen when you kill ten Palestinians in Jenin and 11 in Nablus rushed to Aqaba, the Jordanian seaside city, with the help of the Americans to try and convince the Palestinian security to return so that Israelis don’t need to keep entering in stealthily, disguised as Muslim women causing havoc that will take a long time to address.

Palestinians including the Abbas leadership have been here before and they know well the Americans saying there is no free lunch. Aqaba will be costly to Israel both politically and financially no matter what is decided regardless of whether the Israelis acquiesce to the Palestinian demands, or make false promises in front of the Americans.

 A poster that mourns Palestinians killed during the latest Israeli army raid in Nablus, reading "Nablus hero Martyrs," is pasted at the front of a closed shop at the commercial center of the West Bank city of Ramallah, last week. In response to the Israeli army raid schools, universities and shops in the West Bank and Gaza responded to the general strike calls and shut down in protest. Most shops in east Jerusalem were also closed.Credit: Nasser Nasser /AP

Unlike the expectations of Israeli Zionists that one day Palestinians will forget, the national and personal memories of Palestinian longing for freedom cannot be extinguished no matter how much Israelis wish or hope for.

Sometimes the retaliation takes hours or days to happen, but other times it can take years. The armed attack in Neve Yaakov was carried out by a Palestinian Khairy Alqam who was named after his grandfather who was stabbed to death by a supporter of the racist Israeli rabbi Meir Kahane twenty-five years ago. A disciple of Kahane, Itamar Ben-Gvir, master provocateur, is now the national security minister throwing oil on the fire. Limor Son Har-Melech a member of his far-right party Otzma Yehudit party even visited the outskirts of Palestinian village of Hawara in the aftermath of a settler pogrom Sunday where scores of homes and cars were torched. One Palestinian was killed and dozens injured in the violent rampage that followed in revenge for the shooting of two settlers earlier the same day at a nearby checkpoint.

The Palestinian assailant, who was wearing a shirt with the insignia of the the Lion's Den, fled the scene.

Israeli soldiers take up positions at the scene of a Palestinian shooting attack at the Hawara checkpoint, near the West Bank city of Nablus, Sunday.Credit: Majdi Mohammed /AP

In a situation of an oppressor and an oppressed people, the latter knows a lot about his tormentors, but the general public of the occupier is oblivious to the subjects whose lives they are controlling. The Palestinian and Arab media are full of articles republished from the Israeli media, yet the Israeli media hardly gives attention to what is happening in areas that Israel occupies.

The Israeli operation in Nablus might have resulted in killing some of the armed Palestinians but has done little to extinguish the Palestinian aspiration for freedom. If anything, it has further enhanced this desire and with every foolish Israeli action against Palestinians, the Israelis are traumatizing more people, and planting more hatred and more calls for revenge.

Every student of war and armed conflict knows that there is no permanent cessation of violence without a political track that can satisfy the aggrieved parties.

Revenge and punishment by either side is not the answer nor is the failed idea of deterrence.

Violence can only end when both sides accept one other as an entity and the rights of one another including the basic right of self-determination. Palestinians have recognized Israel within internationally recognized boundaries, but Israel and western countries (except for Sweden) have yet to recognize Palestine.

The conflict is not symmetrical. Israel occupies Palestine and must end its occupation. This is a prerequisite for peace that is undebatable.

Israel’s army and security forces can do only so much. What is required is a political track that can provide a horizon and give Palestinians hope instead of despair. Israelis search for all manners of security, except on the political level.

It is in this context that one has to understand that the Israeli military operation in Nablus, just like all Israeli military-only adventures are on their own a failure without a parallel political track aimed at finally ending the violence.

Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist and a former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. Follow him on twitter@daoudkuttab